Paternal iconic moments

I was thinking about my dad today and came across some fairly iconic moments in my life which involved my dad. For instance:

1) My dad told me that, "Goats is good people." I don't know what that means or if it has a meaning beyond the surface. Does it refer to the differences between the sheep and the goats as referred to in the New Testament? Does that mean that the goats are as good as the sheep? Who knows? Maybe God. Maybe my dad. Maybe both.

2) My dad told me often, "Don't stick beans up your nose." I never knew what that meant, until one day I said, "Dad, I wouldn't do that." And he replied, "Exactly." [Aha moment]

3) When I was in college, I found a stray cat which I named General. About the first day that I brought him home, he decided to climb up in a pine tree in the backyard, from which perch we were all trying to coax him without success. After several hours of effort on our part, my father called home to check in and I told him the whole story about the cat in the tree and our unsuccessful efforts to remove him from the tree. After listening to my story, Dad paused and said, "Son, have you ever seen a cat skeleton up a tree?"

4) The very first day that my father met my best friend, John Boswell, we picked John in the driveway of his parent's house. I exited the passenger seat and attempted to try to get John situated into the backseat of my father's Ford Pinto. As I maneuvered the front seat to allow him room to get in the back, my father said, "John, do you suffer from hemorroids or piles?" That was John's first introduction to my father.

5) One summer, Frank and I brought some bottle rockets home from Tennessee. One evening, about ten of us were standing in the front yard trying to launch a bottle rocket into the sky. As we lit the wick and watched the bottle rocket shoot off into the sky, we noticed its trajectory was aiming over toward the house across the street, which was owned by the neighborhood crank. It disappeared behind the house and we could hear the report of the gunpowder inside the rocket exploding somewhere behind the house. Everybody scattered to the four winds. Frank and David Balfour and I quickly ran into the house and slid into the den where my father, mother and sister were watching tv. We slid into the group, panting like puppies from the exertion. Suddenly, the doorbell rang. Without a pause, my father, who never answered the door, got up from his chair and answered the door. It was the neighbor. The neighbor started the conversation by saying, "Your boys set off a rocket and exploded it in front of our kitchen while we were eating supper." My father stood there staring at the neighbor, then replied, "How many boys were there?" The neighbor said, "There must have been about ten or twelve." To which my father replied, "I only have two boys," and closed the door.

6) Finally, when I was a young boy living with my family in Indianapolis, my mother looked out the kitchen window and noticed that I was chasing some of the neighborhood kids around the backyard with a lead pipe. She quickly ran out the back door and took the lead pipe away from me. A few moments later, my mother looked out the same window and noticed the same kids dragging me around the back yard by a rope tightly secured around my neck. Again, she ran out, chased the neighborhood kids away and removed the rope from my neck. Later, when my father called from work, she told him the whole story of the lead pipe and the rope. After a pause, my father said, "Perhaps you should have quit while you were ahead."

There were probably other moments, but those are the ones I remember.