I’ve found that as time passes, stories about your activities get passed around. It becomes interesting when these stories get back to you.

One story involved Dad’s company. In the neighborhood of his home base there was a store with its own set of shopping carts. Some folks had taken to leaving these carts around the neighborhood rather than returning them to the store.

Some of Dad’s employees grabbed a couple from ditches and whatnot to use for shifting smaller parts around the warehouse. After a while the store owner came by and suggested that the carts be returned to his store. Dad agreed. It wasn’t like he had a claim to them or anything.

Then the store owner suggested that Dad pay for the damage that had been done to the carts. While Dad wasn’t too happy about this, he agreed without any fuss. Other folks pointed out that Dad could easily have refused and been legally in the right. Dad agreed but said that paying was the right thing to do.

Dad later found out that this tale was being passed from fathers to sons as an object lesson in how one should act. He had mixed feelings about this as it implied that he was more saintly than he was.

The other story was about a recent immigrant who wanted to try a pizza for the first time. He was unimpressed when he got the pizza home because it was an awful, sticky mess. This is how the immigrant found out that you should always carry the pizza box flat and not on its side. One of my brothers was telling this tale to Dad. Of course, the immigrant in question was Dad.

Both of these tales have been floating around for decades. One surprise was that the tales were mostly intact. After this many years, you’d expect that the stories would change.

The other surprise was that they both got back to Dad within a day or so of each other. Especially since there was such a contrast in his roles: thoughtful good-guy in one story, dipsh1t in the other.

Dad tells me that he’s more comfortable in the dipsh1t role – it’s easier to live up to.