Who's Your Daddy?--On Modern Day Fatherhood

"You were content to let me shine, that's your way. You always walked a step behind..."

I was kitchen-table tall, pacing back and forth, and steaming mad.

“Shannon, sit down. Everything’s okay,” my dad had his arm on the table next to the woman with the ugly shirt and white pants.

But everything was not okay. A strange woman with a box of tubes was preparing to take blood out of him. There wasn’t anything okay about that. I had been told that this was for some dumb thing called medical insurance, that it was necessary, and that it wasn’t going to harm my dad. I didn’t believe one word of that.

“What if she takes too much?” I asked in front of the nurse. She smiled, which made me even angrier.

I knew nothing of blood volume or the circulatory system at the time, but I did know a strange woman had shown up at our house to take his blood, and I knew he needed to keep his blood for things. I had to supervise her.

“Make a fist,” the nurse said to my dad. I made a fist.

“How many are you gonna take?” I asked the nurse, whom I didn’t like, as she picked up tubes for blood.

“That’s enough, Shannon. It’s fine, sit down,” my dad said sternly.

While the nurse drew his blood, I asked my dad if it hurt. He told me that it didn't. I saw his dark red blood go in rainbow colored tubes that looked mysteriously like toys to me. I believed it hurt a lot and he was just trying to be brave. I was so mad.

In a lifetime's worth of a minutes the nurse was finished and gone from our house, while I watched my dad carefully for signs that he might vanish into thin air, now that his blood was gone. He didn't. I still kept my eye on him all day.

It was all very simple. The center of my world was this man--Daddy. And there was no way I was letting him disappear without a fight.

"So I was the one with all the glory... While you were the one with all the strain."

My childhood was sadly rare for its goodness. I speak about growing up in Maryland to people, and they look at me as if I'm talking about Narnia, or Wonderland. Daddy for me is the person who can't bake, or cure your sickness as well as mommy, but who makes what goes wrong--right. Upon deciding to write this hub, I was doing an image search for "daddy." The first picture I got back was this one:

As a citizen of earth I hoped this was a web crawler glitch. I figured the subsequent images for "Daddy" would improve. They did not. The theme I got back upon searching for "daddy" had an unmistakable message: "Daddy" means pimp in 2011. Initially, I was mildly amused and annoyed by this discovery. We live in a world where Maury Povich's infamous brown envelope, and "you are NOT the father" announcement provokes end-zone dances, and the kind of celebratory cheers usually reserved for a sweepstakes win. Okay, I get that. But doing an innocuous search for "Daddy," I get back an obvious pimp culture. When I really let this sink in, it hurt. I found myself actually tearing up over this. The way Google works as I understand it, is by generating the most popular thing associated with a given search. It's "smart" that way. Here we are at the brink of 2012, all grown, and advanced, and sophisticated and what not, and the best we can do as a human race is associate pimp with the word "Daddy," on the world's most popular search engine. If this is true more people associate the word "Daddy" with a man who abuses and sells women, than with the thick-knuckled man who came home from work and read them something colorful.

Daddy.

"It might have appeared to go unnoticed; But I've got it all here in my heart . I want you to know, I know the truth--

Of course I know it.

I would be NOTHING without you..."

A pimp, (or a modern day Daddy), is defined this way: A man who controls prostitutes and arranges clients for them in exchange for collecting part of their earnings. Wikipedia gives more information on the pimp lifestyle saying: "The pimp-prostitute relationship can be abusive and possessive, with the pimp using techniques such as psychological intimidation, manipulation, starvation, rape and/or gang rape, beating, confinement, threats of violence toward the victim’s family, forced drug use and the shame from these acts."

Daddy.

The fact that you ask Google for "Daddy" and you get back pimps, is not Google's sense of humor. If you search "Mommy" this is the first image that comes up:

We as a culture do not associate mommy with anything foul or negative. But the elusive male parental figure has become an endangered species. Even when I changed my image search to "Father" instead of Daddy, a significant portion of the images I got back were religious. In essence, if I say "Father" that must be some sort of Jesus thing. If I say, "Daddy" that must mean that I want to find a photo for an abusive nitwit who traffics human beings as his livelihood. In many ways, in more ways than we'd all like to admit, the internet is a mirror of who we are as we evolve socially. Google is essentially, "giving the people what they want" in an electronic manner. Google inc. does not support the trafficking of human beings, and recently donated a significant sum of money to help bring the human market to an end. The "miss" here isn't Google's to own up to. It isn't a matter of a glitch in technology; it is a matter of a traumatic glitch in humanity.

One of my biggest strengths, and worst flaws is that I tell the truth. But hopefully, this daddy/pimp association in our modern culture is just my dramatic telling of the facts. Even if this is so, far too many people are clueless on what a true Daddy is. A Daddy isn't a pimp. It disgusts me that the association is even made. While I'm here, a Daddy isn't the person evading child support, dancing on a Maury Povich stage, or abandoning their offspring when they need him the most. The ability to ejaculate does not a Daddy make.

A Daddy is miserable at the very thought of your unhappiness. A Daddy's words resonate in your soul for as long as it remains.

A Daddy's love is one of the few places where you can accomplish things without worry. There is no envy, no bitterness, no competitve strife, no desire to see you stumble in a Daddy's love. Your success only makes a Daddy happy and proud, without any hint of selfishness.

I can not help but wonder how different a path a prostitute, or a boy in a gang would have traveled if their Daddy had been involved. As a woman who had a wonderful father, I can speak easily on the type of image that SHOULD come to mind. A Daddy is the imperfect man that loves, protects, and believes in you from your wrinkly, helpless beginning on this planet, until the day he dies. A Daddy wants what's best for you, hurts when the worst comes at you, and guides you no matter what you choose. When I was growing up, people could not figure out if I was a prodigy or a problem, but there was no convincing my dad that I was anything but special. Daddies always believe that.

One of my favorite things that's come from my writing here on Hubpages, and not just in my notebook, is that I have male readers. Some of the men that read what I've written here on this site are excellent fathers, and as I wrote this to celebrate mine, I want to take the time to celebrate you as well. Because a good Daddy being a Daddy, in my opinion, is what love, in all its power, looks like when it's going right. We all know what love gone wrong looks like. Everyone has seen it, or been there. Really, any type of love going wrong can send you to the Big House, the crazy house, the poor house or the pancake house. But ANY type of love, at full strength, gone right....damn.

If you are a good Daddy, thank you. If you plan to be a good Daddy, thank you. And if you're a good Daddy, whose offspring haven't figured that out yet, rest assured, they will.

--SJ

The GLORY of children is their fathers. ~Proverbs 17:6 (American Standard Version)

On behalf of every man looking out for every girl, YOU are the guide and the weight of her world. So Fathers be good to your daughers. Daughters will love like you do." ~John Mayer "Daughters"

Father! - to God himself we cannot give a holier name. ~William Wordsworth

You will find that if you really try to be a father, your child will meet you halfway. ~Robert Brault

Where do broken hearts go? Can they find their way home? Back to the open arms, of a love that's waiting there... ~Whitney Houston's "Where do Broken Hearts Go?"

A man never stands as tall as when he kneels to help a child.
~Kights of Pythagoras

There are no adequate substitutes for father, mother, and children bound together in a loving commitment to nurture and protect. No government, no matter how well-intentioned, can take the place of the family in the scheme of things.
~ Gerald Ford

Noble fathers have noble children.
~ Euripides

My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me.
~ Jim Valvano

God is love. ~1John 4:8