This blog is for you. Hidden away in a place where you or your mom will absolutely find it should I pass, is a letter leading you to this blog. You are 14 months old as I write this and if you have have my journals, you've already read dozens of the letters I have been writing to you since fifteen years before you were born. This is a place I will talk candidly, where I will give you advice to follow when you are thirty or three.
Your grandfather, my dad, died when I was thirteen. As I have grown older, some of the things he taught me to keep me safe have saved my life. However, when I think that by 13 I had learned how to safely stick my finger in a light socket, neutralize acid burns, identify when something was about to explode, flirt, play mubleypeg, build a bolt bomb, drive a car, repair plumbing. I had heard stories about his best friend taking a head shot defending a hill in the Korean War, I knew he was taken from his mother when she was arrested for prostitution during the great depression.
These are not things I think I would have known if not for the fact that when I was 3, they gave him six months to live. With the limited time he had he made sure I knew as much as possible. The night he died, your Grandma was directing her first show, and I was taking my first girlfriend (a ravishingly intelligent (and busty) 7th grader) to opening night. I think he felt he could finally rest.
I think of my father every day of my life. For everything he gave me, I wish I had something like this.
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