OOPS! IS IT 89 OR 90?!

"The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away" (Psalm 90:10)

The above verse about a typical human's lifespan being seventy or eighty years comes from Psalm 90. No, in the title, I don't mean I was confused about whether the verse is from Psalm 89 or 90. I feel like I've had some Rick Perry moments lately (if you're not somebody who follows politics you probably will not know what I am talking about). I've been telling all sorts of people that tomorrow, December 1, would have been my father's 90th birthday. I was totally convinced of this. I think it's largely because I have 2012 on the brain. We have all this medial coverage about the 2012 New Hampshire Primary that's coming up in just about five weeks. We have all the promotions about 2012 cars, and high school seniors are in the Class of 2012. SO, since my father was born in 1922, I kept thinking he would be 90 this week. A couple of days ago, it HIT me that since this is 1922 he would actually be 89! My father was a character. He was a very complicated guy. He was very authoritarian and very opinionated but also could be hysterically funny and have a great sense of humor.

My father was very mechanically inclined and pretty technically inclined. He was pretty good at math. I was TERRIBLE at Math. TERRIBLE! I actually went to summer school in 1969 because I failed Math in my Freshman high school year. In elementary school, I just couldn't "get" arithmetic. I can remember night after night my father standing over me at the kitchen table, making me do arithmetic exercises, and very sternly correcting my errors. Last night, I balanced the checkbook. Every time I do that, I can "hear" him in my head yelling about the correct way to add and subtract! So I guess about me saying he would be 90, he'd be saying, "So, you STILL didn't get addition right!"

(And he'd be correct!!)

I hope to jump on the computer sometime in the next couple of days, and write something of interest about my father. This one won't be about his law enforcement career or about him being a pilot or any of that stuff. I actually hope to write about his French Canadian stuffing that he made every Thanksgiving and Christmas. If you've never had French Canadian meat stuffing, it's a real TREAT! So watch the blog over the next few days, and when I get a chance I'll post that!