Week of Geoffrey

Two months ago, I lovingly called my father and aggressively told him he was coming to Chicago for the NASCAR race.  Gently accentuating my demands with perfectly placed f-words, I let him know I selflessly bought him a plane ticket and race tickets.  I then told him to shut up and get on the plane.  Being incapable of expressing kindness without intertwining it with excessive dollops of sarcasm is a telltale sign of being emotionally well-adjusted.

The next day, I went to San Francisco on a work trip.  Turns out, my hotel was a mile and a half from my dad's high school.  So I woke up early and walked over there.  It was both cool and surreal to imagine my father walking through those gates.

Because my father and his parents are and were ridiculous, I had never seen a picture of him when he was older than 4 and younger than 26.  So I walked into the school and asked to see yearbooks from over 40 years ago, which is slightly less creepy than asking to see the current yearbook.

The 1970 Galileo Lions.

The 1969 Galileo Lions.

NOT PICTURED: The senior pictures from 1970 nor the junior pictures from 1969.  Dad chose not to take class pictures and his parents chose not to make him do it.  Thanks, guys.

ALSO NOT PICTURED: The entire page of 25+ seniors of 1970 with the last name "Wong".  Seriously.  Every single kid on the page was named "Wong".

In the front hall, there is an Athletic Hall of Fame.  Fred Setting '50 was my father's baseball coach.  O.J. Simpson '65 had a career in television, among other things.  I'm sure Otto Sempel '45 was a terrific fellow.

After seeing the football field that is no longer named after O.J. Simpson '65, I went to see my grandparents' old apartment, which mom and I actually lived in with my grandparents for a few months when my dad was apparently really poor at sea in 1983.  He was a Somalian pirate in the United States Navy.

Turns out my grandpa put the numbers on this door. In the mid-1970's.

It was an incredible experience to walk the same steps my dad did. Sounds crazy, but I kept feeling like I was about to see my 17 year old father walk out that door or walk past me on the street.  It was very special.

Next week, maybe I will travel to Miami to the now horribly rundown neighborhood my mother grew up in.  You know, the one where I was scared to fall asleep at night when I stayed there with grandma in the early 1990's.  Or maybe I won't.  And since my mother actually did things like take class photos and buy school yearbooks, I don't have to do that.