My Dad - Storytime

as you may have guessed from my last storytime my dad is amongst my favorite people very high up all the way at the tippy top so let's talk about that as I said he's retired military he loves the Dallas Cowboys and cute little babies that he can dote on and his favorite pastimes are playing the dead by daylight game I got him for his birthday and antagonizing my mother and I miss favorite because he was military I spent the first few years of my life on a military base in Japan all the time he would take me on what he called daddy/daughter dates where we would go watch a movie together and then grab fast food for dinner afterwards my favorite song back then was the national anthem because they would play it before every film this is absolutely where I acquired my taste for movies this three-year-old is off watching x-men we moved back to the US when I was 5 so my baby brother would be born in the States and let me just say that baby Greg was the cutest damn thing little chubby cheeks blond dork with a bull cut it was adorable almost enough to make up for the fact that I wanted a little sister and got cheated mom what we were in the States my dad got to play to Afghanistan a few times for like six months at a time he'd be halfway across the world and missing out on us growing up I can't imagine how hard that was on him before he left we would make each other build-a-bears with our voices on them to listen to you when we missed each other and he recorded videos of him reading books for us to listen to before he went to bed and every time he came home he'd get the biggest smile on his face when we came barreling towards him because I was so young I didn't really know what being deployed meant for him but he was an engineer not any sort of fighter he supervised construction projects like rebuilding schools that had been destroyed for kids who lived there and he'd have my mom send over shoes from the states to hand out to those same kids who didn't have any but that didn't mean he didn't face dangers my dad received an impact award for rushing to save civilians from a suicide bomber and the person who nominated him directly credited him for saving numerous people's lives and limbs and when I was five I thought he just disappeared for a few months and to avoid and came back with mysterious permanent back problems that forced him to retire for no good reason now I know he was a hero to more people than just me when he retired he chose to stay in the military with a desk job to continue engineering no more deployment but we did get moved around still we went from North Carolina to Japan to places in California to Louisiana the Texas and we still bonded over our movie dates everywhere we went he's responsible for my love of Iron Man and terminator became my heart and soul and the first two alien movies and the one and only predator movie that has ever existed and there are no sequels were really important to me and we absolutely raged over how disappointing Prometheus had been no I love covenant so much Prometheus has been totally forgiven and you know what alien versus Predator was my absolute favorite movie at the time I thought it was such an amazing and innovative crossover and we watching it now it's absolute garbage but I still love it because positive Association is a powerful beast and you know what else again I absolutely got jealous when he started taking Greg to movies without me he took Greg to Thor 2 and I was Petty and as a result I never saw it for myself to this day it is the only MCU movie I have not seen at this point my brother and I were both grown up enough to know that Greg was just like my mom and I was just like my dad my dad and I both preferred to take time to ourselves to deal with our feelings and we're quick-witted and dedicated to work but he's a lot smarter than I am I loved sitting in the car and asking about how something works and letting him explain all the ins and outs of government or mechanics or science or whatever I could get him to explain to me he was also really good at driving once while taking me to camp the roads were slick and our back tires flew out to the side he didn't even bat an eye he just corrected the steering wheel and eased us back into the lane no problem and I remember saying wow you did that so easily and still totally straight-faced he said I almost just [ __ ] myself and went on to explain how important it was to stay level-headed while driving learning to drive was an interesting experience because of this the moment I got my permit my dad tossed me the keys and said you drive home and I said what literally my first time ever driving and for some reason he trusted me more than I could say for my mom I learned to drive at about 17 and I moved out as soon as school ended after I turned 18 I was a little desperate for independence so I made some choices I shouldn't have made without going into too much dirty laundry I moved in with someone who was dangerous and tried to earn my trust to tear me down but I just thought they were my friend who loved me I didn't see through them but my dad did and he tried to deter me with fatherly advice but he never tried to make a decision for me and for the time that I lived with and moved around with this person he did his best to support me in my journey of learning to be an independent adult eventually though he made it clear he couldn't help this person systematically take advantage of me any longer and he pulled his support off the table he was so emotionally there for me but he couldn't be my crutch any longer and I needed to see for myself but this person didn't care enough about me to step up and fill his void as frustrating as it was at the time I was never mad at him for it at this point I'm very glad he did that as much as I wanted to believe and it helped this person I did come to realize how badly I had been played and I'm able to recognize these situations quickly now so I don't play into someone's hands again backtracking of it the last apartment I had with this person is when I got him the ps4 and dead by daylight for his birthday so that we could still bond when we were so far apart he didn't like the game at all at first but because he thought that playing it would be our only way to really connect with me halfway across the country he played non-stop until he became a top tier player he'd be playing for hours and then going out and chopping wood to get out his frustration because he died too much we only got to play together once before I was mentioned previously I realized the kind of person I was living with and I needed his help I was working myself to the bone for so long to take care of everything because I thought I was giving this person some sort of relief in their life but when I confronted them when I found sabotage they just up and ran out on me it took me a few days of being alone before I felt like I could call my parents and explain myself a few days of being afraid to tell them that I [ __ ] up I get lectured on listening but the lecture didn't happen he didn't hesitate at all he just bought a plane ticket to fly up and move me back home I had to wait a few more days before the quickest flight he was able to give at the moment but right before his flight my mom texted me a picture of him standing right outside the airport with the same big smile he had when he to come back home from deployment because he was so excited to bring me back nothing could ever compare to that moment of me realizing the true extent of unconditional love if they had said she didn't want to listen to us so she can do with their choices and left me to deal with the situation myself I wouldn't have blamed them one bit they dropped everything to make sure that I was safe and to help me recover and just be happy again I don't regret anything about that situation the roommate was a hard lesson to learn and I hate that they played me for a fool for so long but it really put into perspective how I was so lucky to have the friends and family that I do and how much I wanted to make everything up to them when his flight landed we packed everything that we could fit into my car which had no a/c and is absolutely tiny and I had to leave a lot behind including my entire closet I almost forgot to pack every single sketchbook I had ever filled and had packed into a box on their own and the car was too full for another box so though I was devastated I was fully prepared to leave all my personal art history behind my dad was the one who insisted that it had to come with and unpack the box and found a place to stash each and every one of them individually I didn't know how much he respected my art until that and yet again I got really emotional about my family we drove for three nights to get home through the desert with no air conditioning he went through hell for me there were a lot of tears when I got back mostly from my mom they set up the guest room to be my new bedroom since my old bedroom was occupied by the new foreign exchange student aka my replacement aka my shorter sister aka inugami they actively encouraged me to stay and continue to work so that I could build my savings back up before moving out again but they also just wanted to spend time with me and while living dependently again hurt my pride of it I wasn't about to hurt everyone else by walking out again immediately I've been home for about half a year now and honestly thank God because about a month ago he pulled me in Greg aside and told us that he had cancer I had borrowed his card to go to the gym and absolutely destroyed the door while pulling out of the gas station my mom kept saying you should go apologize when you calm down and as much as I love my dad that scary factor gets to me too so I didn't want to get chewed out on top of beating myself up for the accident the next day he pulled me and Greg into his room and closed the door and I was bracing myself to be absolutely murdered but he calmly explained that he needed us to figure out how to do things on our own because he had a Safa Geel cancer it had already spread to his liver so it was Stage four they'd waited about a month before telling us he explained to us that the doctor gave him two or three years with a chance of making it to five but he needed us to step up and support our mom and each other being given an expiration date like that really forces you to consider what you want to do with your life but now I knew I wanted my pilot episode out in the next two years so he could at least see my studio start if you couldn't see it through all the way to my bigger projects were there any trips that we could take him on did he have a bucket list was getting married in the next two years so he could give me away possible if he beat the odds and made it to five years could I give him his first grandkid what could I do to make the last few years the best that they could possibly be and show him that I would be okay without him would I be okay without him of all the things that I was scared that he would miss out on the only one I felt like I could control was my work so I threw myself in headfirst to work longer and harder so that I could show him what I was gonna do with my life and so I could start helping with covering bills so he'd be able to quit his job two years to spend time with him when he wasn't too exhausted and keep everyone happy and put my life's dream into immediate action making plans to take him to my old apartment and go on family trips and get a bucket list from him that we could put into action it sucked but we had time two years wasn't enough but we had breathing room and wouldn't you know it five weeks later he was gone the first round of chemo Shrunk his tumors by 30% but his kidneys had been experiencing unrelated issues and they went into earlier in the process he was admitted to the hospital for a fever we only expected him to be there overnight but instead he stayed for a week and had to go into intensive surgery to fix it mom called us in the morning before his surgery so Greg missed his first day of school she wanted to make sure that he got to see us all in case of the worst case scenario we were all waiting around for a while until grandma got there so I stood with him and joked about mom fretting too much and how I was here for him and I'd hurry people out of the room soon so he could get this over with the last words I heard from him were rolling his eyes at my mom and Greg and telling the doctor that I was his favorite and I held on to his wedding ring so if he got too swollen it wouldn't hurt his finger someone visited everyday thinking things were almost over and we'd bring him back soon but the doctor called us in at 6:00 a.m. and said to bring everyone who would want to see him up until that point I'd personally taken the role of keeping the mood light and people laughing and happy because my mom had been so devastated but I really couldn't keep it together that day the doctors said they wanted to give us a chance to say goodbye and let him die peacefully now but mom stopped crying and became an absolute Rock to say that he didn't go through the last week to peace out so easily that he'd want Highway to Hell the blast at his funeral and we were gonna let him have it he'd said way before cancer ever happened as a joke that he wanted Highway to Hell the blast at his funeral and she said we were gonna let him have it one last chance to do everything in the doctor's power to bring him home again a lot of our close friends came to spend time in his room for the day his co-workers were coming in and out and he was so sedated that he couldn't move her interact but we had to assume that to some extent he could hear us everyone was telling stories about him and it was all so apparent how much of a positive impact he'd had in these people's lives I made a whole setup assuming that I'd be there for a few days overnight and I'd get some work done and I'd be right there when they could loosen the sedation and he could breathe on his own again and he could hug me we only got eight hours before they made us leave the room and then maybe two minutes later it was all over I didn't get my two years my dad's never gonna see my studio officially launched in person or walk me down the aisle or spoil his grandkids and we never got to see the new predator movie together like we wanted but when a friend took me home from the hospital it was suddenly blowing so strong and I almost felt like I was gonna be swept away I rolled the windows down in the car and let it tingle my hair beyond repair and pressed my glasses into my face so hard I thought they might break and it felt like him it was strong like how strong he had been to put himself through all this pain for us for every one he'd ever put himself through pain for and other than my dad's strength I thought about my mom's she lost both her parents young they didn't get to see a lot of what my dad won't get to see but she's here and she's had a happy life and she loves us I know she cries because she loves him and she misses him but I also know she cries because she never wanted me or Greg to go through what she did and I want her to know that even if I joked about dad being my favorite that I love you and I need you just as much you say you would have taken his place in a heartbeat but losing you instead of him wouldn't have saved me any heartache I chose not to go back into his room to say goodbye to his body I didn't want to see him that way when I think of my dad I think of the man who took me to the movies and made the craziest faces for mariokart icon pictures and laughing over it what does laughed he always just threw himself into was such genuine joyful abandon because he thinks he's so hilarious he is I think of when I was tiny and misbehaved to the point that my mom got mad and threw my favorite Wiggles cassette tape out the window and my dad went out at night to scour the neighborhood streets before it just because it made me cry I think about how it despite his intimidating demeanor so many people like nago me got to know him like I did and loved him for being such a dad to everyone I think about how he always did what he thought was best for everyone from family members who maybe didn't deserve it to strangers in Afghanistan I think about him calling me his angel brat baby or I think about how he introduced himself to my friends with jokes that they thought were threats I think about the picture of him coming to get me from LA the day my dad died my mom kept saying that he was making a heroic effort and she was absolutely right in more ways than one he's my hero even if the dreams of I'm seeing where I can take my life are gone I'll make it through this and when I get back on my feet I'll work just as hard and I'm gonna make them proud [Music] you [Music]

Channel: GinjaNinjaOwO

Views: 2,090,024

Rating: 4.9799051 out of 5

Keywords: storytime, story time, storyboard, animation, animated, ginjaninjaowo, ginjaninja, rea

Id: Xp4Y2nCNNS8

Length: 17min 4sec (1024 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 18 2018