Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Borders: The Chapel Hill Chronicles

Episode 14: In which Pat learns about The Sins of the Father

I know that not everybody is a fan of American Chopper, but if you get a chance to watch it, you will experience one of the funniest people I've ever seen on television: Mikey. The funniest part is, it's totally real. I have seen American Chopper before, but it was only Paul Sr. and Paul Jr., and Mikey wasn't on the show. But since I've just been sitting around here in Chapel Hill, and TLC was running an American Chopper marathon (and I had already watched A Christmas Story twice), I started watching. Mikey is SO awesome, I may buy some seasons of American Chopper just to catch more of him.

********************
Joey, Rachel, and Ross: YAYYY!!!
Chandler: What happened?! What happened?!
Joey: YOU KISSED MY GIRLFRIEND!
********************

Ah, The One With Chandler In A Box.

Today, I have become a firm believer in the whole "Sins of the Father" thing. Up until now, I basically didn't really believe that whole thing. The way I figured, the only reason your father (or mother) really passed them down was because you, as a kid being raised by them, were around them and were able to pick up their traits. Your mom paranoid? Welcome to paranoia. Your dad a heavy drinker? Go easy on the Stoli martinis.

But maybe not so much anymore. Spending a lot of time with my dad is not something I'm used to. And it's not really like we are doing a lot of conversing or doing awesome things. We mostly watch tv and sleep, broken up with me leaving to find food. But I have learned some things about him, and one of those is IMPATIENCE. His fuse is about the length of a grain of sand. And it's not like a good mood/bad mood thing. He is just totally impatient. It is his world and we are all in the way. And I struggle with being impatient. It makes me grumpy and angry and I hate it. BUT...I didn't spend my life hanging out with him. We weren't together all the time so that I could pick up those traits from him. So, how did I get them? I know it could be that I just became impatient and angry on my own, but it's hard not to watch those things in him and then blame him for them happening to me. Thanks a lot, pop. (I don't really blame my dad. I mean, who can blame him for being out-of-sorts right now, you know?)

So, Top 5 Things I Got From My Father
1. Impatience
2. Big Ears
3. Straight Legs (which my mom says are sexy. bleeghh!)
4. Bushy, "Hey You Should Let Me Pluck Those" Eyebrows
5. Funky Toes

Top 2 Things I Didn't Get From My Dad
1. Deep, "Hey You Sound Like An Actual Man" Voice
2. Cankles

6 comments:

Dottie said...

Top 5 Things I Got From My Mom
1. An absolute abhorence for being late.
2. Depression
3. Emotional Eating
4. No rearend whatsoever
5. basically my entire face minus my nose

Top 2 Things I didn't Get From My Mom
1. The ability to grow absolutely no body hair (not on her arms, not on her legs. . . it's incredible)
2. Attraction to very strange men (aka my dad).

Meredith said...

Top Five Things I Got From My Dad
1. my eyes
2. my sense of humor
3. my behavior at parties (off in the corner deep in conversation)
4. my love of making things
5. my health / resistance to disease

Top 2 Things I Didn't Get from My Dad
1. an INTENSE dislike for Apple/Mac/i-anything
2. facial hair

Sara said...

Great post, Pat.

Top Five Things I Got From My Dad
1. My liberal sensibility
2. The ability to finish my plate.
3. My drive to save for the future.
4. The longing for a full night's sleep.
5. His big teeth

I love Xavier Rudd.

Bree said...

Top Five Things I Got From My Dad
1. My eyebrows, ears, and shoulders
2. My affinity for puns
3. An addiction to ice cream
4. The ability to do a lot of physical manual labor
5. An appreciation of films where a lot of things explode

I really like this entry, Pat! :)

Jo said...

The is such a fun post! Sadly, I can only think of one thing I got from my dad (I inherited the 'ice cream gene'), which thus leaves me lacking four other things to complete the list. Ah well.

I do love you so, Pat. Hope you had fun last night at the party.

Kristen said...

Top Five Things I Got From My Dad
1. My sense of humor
2. The need/ability to make things with my hands
3. Perfectionism
4. My independent streak
5. A love of travel and thus a bit of a nomadic tendency

Top 2 Things I Didn't Get From My Dad
1. Any part of my physical appearance. (apparently I am the spitting image of my mom)
2. Melanin. He can tan like it's going out of style, but I remain the color of snow...paper...a ghost!