Something My Father Taught Me

It’s not really that easy being a military child. Usually your mother is in the medical field, and your father is a Marine. So when you were sick it was double hard to get them to let you stay home. Like with my mother, you couldn’t stay home unless you had a fever, there wasn’t no helping that. If you didn’t get above 100, you couldn’t stay home you had to go to school. So there would be days when i didn’t feel too well, and I would tell my mom “Mom I don’t feel good, I think I need to stay home”. Then she would say “Let me check your temperature and we’ll see.” At this point I knew I was going to school, but I usually wouldn’t break 100, so if it was 99 I was gettin’ on the bus and I was going to my home room, lol.

Finally, one day when I wasn’t feeling well, my mother said “Well, you go to school and if you don’t feel well when you get there, call your father, and he’ll pick you up”. I’m like cool, finally a fighting chance. I’m my dad’s boy, he’s going to pick me up. So I get to school and I ask the teacher if I can to the nurse. I go and I call my dad at work (cause I know there isn’t any reason to call my mom at home). So i call my dad, who I know is the boss at his shop and can get off anytime he wants to pick me up from school. I tell my dad I’m not feeling well, mom said to call you if I wasn’t feeling better when I got to school. And my father, being the best dad that he is would ask me what was wrong? I would tell him, my head and stomach hurts, throat etc. The regular symptoms of a cold, then he would tell me “Well son, see if you can make it til lunch, and if you can’t, you call me and I’ll come pick you up. Can you make it til then?” And you know being my dad’s lil man aka strong buddy I said “yeah I can make it til lunch”.

So time would go by and I still wasn’t feeling so well, so I called my daddy. I called him at lunch and was like “dad, I’m still not feeling well and I need you to pick me up”. Then he hit me with a line I wasn’t really for, he said “Well, son half the day is gone now, you might as well stay the rest of the day”. LMAO, I would be like “WHAT!!!” And he would explain why I might as well ride the bus home, cause by the time he came to get me, the buses could have took me home. Now as a child, I thought this was messed up and abuse, lol.

But as I got older I found myself trying my best to make it just halfway, no matter how hard the struggles were, or how sick I was or how bad I was feeling. If I could make it just half way, then I was strong enough to make it the rest of the way. And that’s what my father taught me. No matter how bad things are, no matter how weak i may feel, if I can just make it halfway, then I was good enough to finish, and I’ll always love him for that. I love you Sir! Msgt. Marion Edward Weatherington.