If it ain't broke, don't fix it (if it is it may be too late)!

Whenever you answer a question you reveal something about yourself and sometimes it becomes something you may not have realized or just something you have never expressed. This falls into the latter category.

Something that I broke became a thought provoking, soul-searching question. Like mielikki, my hands have shattered many tangible items and they don’t matter at all and many things I had responsibility for somehow broke (probably poor design) that did matter at the time but became insignificant in the long run (my M-16 in Vietnam for example). Sometimes you can break something that will mend over time, sometimes it does not. In thinking about it, I believe I accomplished both.

I think when I told my dad that I was getting married it broke his heart. He was dead set on my going to college after I got out of the service and he did not think I would do that if I was married. His response to me that Sunday afternoon was "that’s your problem". No other conversation, he just waked away, did not want to try and talk me out of it, give me a reason why I should wait, nothing. It took awhile but he got over that one. I don’t know if it was because I did go to college and became the first in our family to get a degree or if it was just the passing of time and I never will because we never discussed it (and that breaks my heart now).

In all my wisdom I probably broke his heart a 2nd time in 1974 when our firstborn and only son (his only grandson) was not named the third. I don’t think it ever fully mended and while he did not overtly show any sign of disappointment, it was there and again it was not discussed. We knew what he would like the name to be and we never really considered it as an option. I don’t remember if we told him in advance or after the Droid Whisperer was born. I do remember not caring what dad thought and that was wrong. We had a number of reasons we chose not to play the same name game and we did not share any of them with him. While we would have stuck with our decision, we should have shared our feelings with him. Maybe that would have kept something from breaking.