Always There

On this FathersGiraffe day, I thought I'd drop a few sentences about the guy on the left. A single dad working shift work at the chemical plant, this guy did more for me than any human being who ever lived (prior to Mrs. Giraffe, of course). And I didn't make it easy.

With bloodshot eyes from working midnight shift, he would drive me 45 minutes to school because I got kicked out of all the local ones when I was 9 years old. When I was 12, I got jumped by a gang on the corner. They beat me to a pulp. Pops picked me up, carried me home, wiped away the blood, iced me down, and said, "ok, what're you going to do about it." When I was 13 and went away for a year, he was there every single week. He made sure I got letters and post cards. He made sure I got Christmas. When the birth-mother intervened and took me away in my teens, he drove the two-hours one way to see me when I did stuff like football or theater. He made sure I had $5 bucks in my pocket. He bought me my first car. He made sure that no matter what, we would get out of the city one week every summer and go camping up in the Pocono Mountains. When I wanted to be a boy scout, he said ok and shelled out the cash he didn't have so I could be a boy scout. He went on all the camping trips and went to all the meetings. Even when I was older and my friends and I found ourselves outnumbered at a bar that wasn't ours, Pops was there with some of his friends and was ready to go back-to-back to get us out of there (*side note - I'm still not sure how we got out of there without a punch being thrown.) When the Flyers won the Stanley Cup in 1974, he drove us around an insane city leading the celebration honking his horn at all the streakers.

He did everything he knew how to do for us. For me, my brother, and my sister, Pops was the rock we were able to build our foundation on. He never faltered. He never wavered. He always tried to do the right thing and at 80, still does.

Thanks Pops!!