Answer Me This: Ejection Seats and Atticus Finch.

The estimable Kendra at Catholic All Year has brought back her popular linkup, Answer Me This, for the summer. Here's how it goes: she posts the questions one week; you take your leisurely time answering. The next week, she posts her answers and next week's questions. Join us, won't you?

1. What's the best thing about your dad?
He can spin a yarn -- you can't believe a word he says, but you will be entertained {I'm not saying he's a liar, just a teaser}. I waffled a little bit about last week's AMT question about things you believed as a child; I almost shared some of the nonsense my dad told me, but ended up going boring with Santa anyway because ultimately I never believed my dad for long. 

For instance: once he had me and my immediately-younger sister very upset because he told us that the seat-adjustment lever was an ejection seat in his Jeep. He explained that it was there in case you were about to get into a head-on collision, and that the part where the sides of the car met the cloth of the roof had little explosive charges to blow the roof off. It seemed very real (I was probably 11 and my sister was 7 -- but I have to admit that even 20ish years later with an engineering degree under my belt, I still think it was pretty clever and entirely too plausible). 

He maybe took it a little too far when he said he was going to pull the lever and eject us under an overpass (Jeez, Dad) -- that's when my sister started hysterically crying into the Mylar balloon she'd gotten from the party from which we were returning home. Her face was silver where the Mylar rubbed off from her tears for the rest of the day! 

2. If you've got kids, what's the best thing about THEIR dad? (If you don't, feel free to substitute your grandfather or another father figure.) 
His generosity. My husband is a giver, and he would walk over broken glass for me or our kids. Or, you know, wear the 20lb baby and hold the toddler's hand on the way to breakfast while Mommy lurks and takes photographs.

3. What's the best advice your dad ever gave you? 
He's fond of the John Wooden quote, "The best thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother." And I think it's absolutely true for mothers too: I shall love my husband as a favor to my children. My dad has also always told me that the order of my devotion ought to be: God, then my spouse, then my children, then my other family, and then everyone else. Parents of littles, especially mothers I think, find it hard to put our spouses over our needy babies, but my dad was right. We have to maintain Us first and foremost amidst the chaos of molding young lives -- we made a vow to each other. 

4. What's something you have in common with your dad? 
I may have picked up his fondness for teasing. I hope I have a better sense of when it's going too far and I'm about to traumatize my kids! 

5. What's the manliest thing you know how to do? 
I am really good with my hands. I love power tools, although it's been years since I used one -- apartment living is a drag. And unlike a man, I do not think it a mark of weakness to take the proper precautions. {If I catch my husband doing electrical work without having turned off the breaker one more time...}

6. Who is your favorite fictional dad?
I'm sure 95% of everybody is going to say Atticus Finch. Because Atticus Finch is the best. And then when you watch the movie and realize that Gregory Peck is the absolute handsomest, you love Atticus Finch just a little bit more.