Practically the perfect dad in the movies, at least in Extraordinary Measures.
John Crowley might also be taking his background as Super Hero Dad, putting his life on the line to save his kids from a deadly disease, into the political arena, riding movie publicity to office as an elected Republican in New Jersey.
Scot pop Paul Stevenson was wandering through his life as a father of three when the Tourette syndrome that may have always been latent manifest itself in the wake of a friend's suicide. Does he embarrass his kids more than most dads? Well just wait until they are teens.
What is noteworthy — politically speaking — regarding the article is the reference to Stevenson as "busying himself as a stay-at-home dad," as if referring to a man as a "SAHD" is the kind way to define someone as without a paying gig. Similarly, the term doesn't mean a man who looks after his kids, which is how it was used in an article seeming to proclaim one-half of all British men are staying at home to dad, (the article discusses a percentage of men who were studied and took at least a few days off to stay with their newborn). So what's going on in the lexicon with SAHD? Has it lost it's way or it is just being used in a sloppy manner by lazy reporters?
Saving dad seems like a pretty good plan. So, kudos to Jack Foster, 7, who saved his father from dying at the hands of a drug addict who invaded their house and Caleb Truesdale, 9, who brought his unconscious, diabetic dad back from the brink.
There's also a shoutout due Lorraine Sommerfield, much older, who is saving the memory of her father, a compulsive saver (or soap slivers still able to froth and the last bits of shampoo, condiments, toothpaste and everything else that might still be in containers others are willing to give up on).
Intriguingly, if you Google father and I told you so you are directed to a link allowing you to watch the episode of Father Knows Best [Earlier: What a Father Really Knows and What Would Bob Say?] that has Bud aching to grow up and getting a little snippish at dad for not recognizing him as an adult.
Apparently, somewhere the show was also called "I Told You So", but the reason for looking it up is that Thing 1 is sick with fever and knife-edge sore throat. And polite. And nice. And all of this means that she now has to listen to me say that when she rushed out yesterday — not feeling well and before speaking with me — to play with friends rather than simply texting and Ichatting and resting for the day, she made a mistake and suffered the consequences I warned her against. Ironically, she did in fact make the same decision most adults make in those circumstances, but as I will try again and again to point out to her while I have her cooperation (i.e., until she is no longer feeling ill), that doesn't make it the adult decision.
And she should have and should always listen to her father. We'll see the effect of the "I told you so," but I am not counting on too much.
Is there a difference between father-son connections and daddy-daughter ties?
Can you guess the gender of the child who duplicated a dad's grand feat to the day? Whether it was a boy or girl who went into the restaurant business with a culinary naif pop? If lymphoma cared which kid it first manifested itself in before being discovered in the dad? Or, if it was a boy or girl who gave dad the financial leads that led them both to be arraigned on charges of insider trading?
At the back of the book of connections you'll find the answers.
It was Huffines (Texas) Middle School's Cameron Champagne who hit his first home run twenty years to the day that his father Stephen hit his first four-bagger over the outfield wall in a baseball game.
Gina Dandrea, 18, and father Pat, 50, are teaming the daughter's restaurant experience and father's construction capabilities (he demolishes and then rebuilds restaurants) to open up Cafe Amenity in Rochester, N.Y.
The malady first infected Red Sox pitcher Jon Lester and now threatens his father, Pierce County (Wash.) Sheriff's Deputy Pat, who credits his son's ability to battle with inspiring him. "Having lived it with him and going through the whole thing, he knew that I knew what he had gone through," said Jon. "There was kind of that understanding between the two of us."
And it was Donna Murdoch, an investment consultant, in Oaks, Pa., who was the dutiful child and shared some inside takeover info from a friend of hers. Although perhaps here's where she really went wrong: dad made less than one-sixth in illegal profits than she did.
So, how are your gender identification skills?
While reading the books will probably inspire hope, thinking about the two books by dads involved with their sons only brings (at least near) tears.
Norwegian literateur Halfdan W. Freihow wrote a book his son will probably never finish, although he did listen to half of it as an audio book. "Dear Gabriel: Letter From a Father" is the tack the father took to communicate what he couldn't to his autistic son. Amazingly, as he was writing the book, the then 9-year-old boy suddenly learned to read.
And a Los Angeles-area man is at work on the story he encouraged his son to start before a sniper's bullet ended the possibility of his finishing it. Darrell Griffin Sr. was recently visiting Iraq, trying to learn more about what his son went through there in order to give final shape to the journals of war his son kept as an infantryman in Sadr City.
Film rights have already been sold — with the proviso that it not be used either to support or denounce the war, only to tell the son's story — even as the Griffins' work continues. Says Sr., "I don't think you'll find a father and son closer than we were. He was the smartest man I ever met. I'm not writing this book, we're writing it."
