... was his ability to make anything fun. For instance, at Christmas he would hide presents in special places and make a game out of finding them. My most vivid early memory was Christmas when I was eight. My youngest brother had just been born and the family had moved to Scotland. Being the oldest, I was on the verge of not believing in Santa any more, but the consequences of admitting to it were just too dire to imagine, so I kept on "believing" for a while, just for the presents.
The house in Scotland was huge and had two reception rooms and a big dining room. The older three of us (8, 7 and 4 years old) crept downstairs at some ungodly hour and split up to see what was there. Our presents were each in a different room. As we figured out whose was whose, I started unwrapping. Shirt. Socks. School satchel. What the heck was this? Where was the cool stuff? Well, I must have been less smart then than I am now, because it was hidden all around the room, but I think I was too upset to look for it right away. Eventually I found it all, of course, and all was right with the world. I got a cool rocket launching set that I immediately tried out, only to put a nice dent in the dining room ceiling. Oops.
But there was a lot more to it than that. We used to go on vacation every summer to Butlins, a British holiday camp chain. Sort of a cross between Club Med and German WW2 prisoner of war camp. It promoted itself more as the former, but the reality was more like the latter. The great attraction for parents was that the places were set up for mass babysitting - nearly every activity had some supervised activities for kids so parents could frolic with a clear conscience. And at night they had "chalet patrols" that walked around the sleeping quarters (chalets) listening for crying babies. The location of any that were detected were relayed via Tannoy systems to all the parents boozing it up in the various pubs and clubs around the campus.
Anyway, my point, and I know I had one when I started, if only I could find it, is that my dad would come back from a night out (he wasn't a big drinker) with a box of sweets (candy) for each of us kids and slip them under our pillows. These were gifts from a certain "Mr. Fox", who was a character much like the tooth fairy, except no dental work was required to get this particular gift (and a good job too, what with the state of British dentistry...)
Just a couple of glimpses of a great dad.
