I Love My Dad

Actual phone conversation between me and my father:

Me: "Hey dad, so I got three tickets this weekend."
Dad: "Yeah?"
Me: "Yeah, I got a $35 parking ticket at De Anza, then Sunday night we went up to Rancho San Antonio, and I got another parking ticket, and we all got infractions for being there after hours."
Dad: "You know how much the infraction is going to be?"
Me: "No."
Dad: "Well there's a leason to be learned from this.  You just need to pay more attention to these things.  It's fine though, it's not like the world is ending."
Me: "Yeah...  but there goes my paycheck."

Now there is a few different things going on here that I want you to notice.
  1. I'm paying for it, which really kind of sucks.  I very well might spend as much on citations as my radio costed.
  2. He didn't get mad at me.
  3. Because of #2, it would make sense for me to ever tell him something like this again
I really want you to roll #3 over in your mouth for a while.  How many parents do you know that would just explode, ground the kid, etc etc.  All that is doing is training the kid to not let the parents know what is going on.  I already feel like crap; I just got three tickets in ONE WEEKEND.  Having my dad call it "No big deal" was exactly what I needed to hear. 

Now I'm going to go pay a couple hundred dollars in tickets, and move on with my life.  Ham radio is an expensive hobby, but usually it's the equipment that makes it so, not the citations for doing ham activities.

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