Dad

Now, I know I’m going to take a lot of heat for this post, because obviously only creeps and sickos like BOTH their parents. But since a lot of you have asked about my mysterious dad – yes, I read every comment! – I’m going to take a crack at describing him.

I trust my father more than anyone else in the world. He inspires me and believes in me. He is fair, brutally honest, and brilliantly rational (even when the rest of us are freaking out about something). I want to be like him.

It would have been so easy for my dad to "score points" with me and Lulu by undermining my mom – but he never did. Looking back, I have huge respect for that. He may not identify as a tiger parent, but I know he wanted to raise us with what he thought of as traditional American values. My dad always demanded morality.

I’m way more scared of my dad than of my tiger mom, but my dad and I are also really good friends. We’re similar in many ways (people say I’m exactly half my mom, half my dad in personality): we love puzzles, take any challenge, and categorically need to do things our own way. We hate asking for help and are horrible at taking constructive criticism. We’re perfectionists who want to win at everything, even if we’re in no way qualified to do so.

My dad is unshakable, a perfect judge of character. He thinks like a chess player and rarely makes mistakes. Sadly, I didn’t inherit all those traits. So whenever I end up in an ugly situation ("Daddy, they’re trolling my blog online!" "Daddy, no one will take me to Prom because I’m going to Science Olympiad!" "Daddy, my omelet’s on fire. And do you smell a gas leak?"), I turn to him to save me.

Another difference between us is that my dad is actually good at everything. He runs the table at pool, always cleans up at poker, fought the mafia way back when, and his books don’t do too badly either. (One exception: my boyfriend killed him at ping-pong. Then he killed my boyfriend. Just kidding.) He tends to question the system, so he takes matters into his own hands. My dad wrote the Haggadah we use for Passover, and he formulated the only convincing interpretation I’ve ever heard of Hamlet’s "To be, or not to be" soliloquy.

It’s also my dad’s fault that I’m not girly. He read little-me books like Treasure Island and The Lord of the Rings, and since then I’ve preferred Balrogs to Barbies. He taught me how to throw a baseball (not that well, but I excel at watching the Yankees do it), jump-start and drive a car (stick shift’s still a work in progress), pan-fry a steak (rare as you can legally serve it, please).

When I think of my dad, I think of knowing the difference between right and wrong. I think of self-motivation, self-sufficiency, self-assurance.

I know he likes to stay out of all this tiger stuff, but I’m putting this out there anyway.

Thanks, Daddy. Love, your tiger cub