In the spirit of dad appreciation – what was/is your dads superpower and why was it important?

To start the ball rolling. My dads superpower was listening. No matter where, when or why he would listen and then give very gentle advice. No matter what was going on in his life, he could always spare energy to help his boys in this way.

He can make me feel like a **** with three words.

Bless…

Fixing and building stuff (he’s a mechanic by trade, but could/can turn his hand to anything practical).

Not sure whether it’s nature or nurture (as he left when I was 9 although he kept in touch) but it’s something I seem to have inherited.

I also totally believe I got my drawing ability from him – one of those ‘sticks with you for life’ moments was when I was seven and he explained how internal combustion engines work by drawing out the whole suck-squeeze-bang-blow thing for me as an impromptu comic strip.

My dad was an excellent listener who always let me be myself. I never felt judged by him.

On top of that, he could fix/build pretty much anything.

Three sentences don’t do him justice, but in terms of superpowers, I’ll leave it there.

An inability to drive slowly. Which is why I’m 20 years older than him.

And of course ginger that’s a superpower I did inherit.

Mine could bend the ball either way with either foot.
A forgotten art, much to his disgust.

If all dads combined their superpowers, this is the result…

Mine has two, the ability to eat, and seeming enjoy, well done steak.

Also, the dullest man alive, but in a nice way.

Farting.

Which is hereditary. Parp.

My Dad is a silent assassin. He usually sits there quietly saying very little until the absolute right moment, then cuts you down with a thoroughly deserved jibe or insult (in a nice/funny way).

He also has an ability to do an endless amount of chin ups. It’s quite impressive from someone so small of stature. A former housemate was a climber and had a chin up bar up in the hall way. My parents came to visit and as they were leaving I asked the housemate how many chin ups he could do, he obliged managing about 20. I asked him how many he thought my Dad could do, he though he was giving a generous estimate, by the time Dad got to 40 he asked my mate “shall I stop now or do you want me to carry on?”

political knowledge. Never met anyone so well informed.

Golf 🙄

Back in the day my dad had, er, ‘run ins’ with the Soviet Union. Does that count?

He had tales of being pulled off a train in Berlin by the KGB, and having to jump between moving trains in Poland to avoid arrest/detention (back in the Cold War days of the late ’50’s).

He was in the Intelligence Corps, I’ve seen his JSSL ‘diploma’ in Russian (an 82% pass). ‘Officially’ a Signalman I believe.

After leaving the army he was forbidden from getting within 75 miles of the Iron Curtain. Iirc he was only officially discharged in the ’80s!

Intelligence and his generosity with it. He’s a very smart man and can do anything he turns his mind to. That was usually helping us three sons with something or other be it a balsa wood catamaran, fixing a remote control car after my brother drove it into a wall at 30mph on Christmas morning or helping me struggle through A Level Physics.

He just knows stuff. Not useless stuff, like people’s birthdays or capital cities or even where he left his glasses. Useful stuff, like what to do in a difficult situation, how to handle a difficult person. He’s the first person I go to for advice, and when he isn’t here any more I won’t know what to do.

(Admittedly if that advice requires him to read something, being able to find his glasses would become a useful power too)

He’s also been a brilliant partner for my mum for 55 years; she’s not been well with diabetes, fibromyalgia and osteoarthritis for the last 10 years and he’s always there to fetch and carry and help. That’s a proper superpower.

I’m seeing them tomorrow, we’re off to join them on holiday. My daughters are beyond excited. My mum’ll be great because of warmth and she can float around all day in a pool taking the weight off her aching bones. Me and my Dad will just sit and talk. I really should tell him that stuff up there before too late, but I probably won’t because we don’t do that sort of thing.

And he’ll boil my piss by losing his glasses about 73 times in the week 😉

First up, he is the kindest, most generous person you will meet. He is loved by all, and the way he treats my niece is arguably the only reason I even consider having kids. If my brother and I are half the man he is then we will do very well.

Super powers? Well, he has the ability to make the simplest thing in the world astonishingly complicated, that’s a skill I guess. This is related to his ability to turn a 5 minute conversation into a 30 minute one.

He also has the ability to just do stuff, not stuff mentioned above, more sports stuff. Cycling? “not my thing but I’ll have a go”, buys bike them smashes out 40 miles in under 3 hours. Golf? “I’ve played a bit, I’ll have a go”, handicap of 15 within 12 months. Cricket? “played as a kid, I’ll help out” Best average of any batsman in the club, 2nd best for bowling, didn’t drop a catch in 5 seasons. He was still helping my Sunday league football team out at the age of 62 after a total knee replacement and was definitely not the weak link in that team.

He’s awesome my dad, awesome.

Invisibility, particularly when he had to do dad things.

Building/ fixing everything himself. I can’t remember a single tradesman turning up at home. Although there was a fair amount of experimentation going on too. At one point there were 3 different types of homemade windows to see which gave the best thermal performance. He’d also be arguing for hours with manufacturers of white goods to get them to supply parts for supposedly non-servicable elements. All good and a better attitude to minimising waste than I can manage now.

My Dad could clench his two fists together then slide them apart and, apparently, split his thumb in two. I have inherited this and now my kids think I have superpowers.

Mine was an engineer / draughtsman.

He started designing stuff in the 1950s after leaving the RAF all the way to the late 1990s. He once built a new kitchen without using a piece of paper to design it first, all the details were in his head.

His superpowers? Farting and casual racism.

My dad has plenty of super skills. The one I admire the most is the ability to conform to the MTFU Rule in even the most extreme situations (like loosing a house and business due to a massive flood, while having a big family to feed) and going through a real shi**y times in a way, that none of us – his 5 children – would even realise that the times were any bad. He’s a Real Badass.

Growing the best spuds, carrots and green beans I ever tasted. Oh and his generosity of spirit (aka sharing his whisky).

A bit more seriously he saw to it that I wouldn’t be following him down the pit.

Some brilliant superpowers for sure! Keep them coming!

My Dad has the ability to identify and given you loads of “interesting facts” about pretty much anything Wildlifey or Naturey.

Probably helps that has a PhD in Ecological Genetics and was head of Pure And Applied Biology at Cardiff Uni.

To add to his clever bloke credentials he was undergrad at Cambridge and postgrad at Oxford, you know just to rub it in.

But can he get his iPad to work properly???…nope.

My dad wasn’t a heavy drinker, but he did love the pub. You could put him on the moon and not only would he find a pub but by last orders he would have talked the landlord into a lock-in.

My Dad could make the loudest noise in a swimming pool by doing a sort of “yelp” on the surface of the water and make everyone in the pool jump and not know why.
Laughing just thinking about it.
He could also make the word “Sweat” sound like a swear word. <- this has been known to save the World from any supervillian 😆

Made me laugh. Passed away when I was 21 and a selfish ****, I’d love a pint with him now….

The ability to fall asleep anywhere at any time and for any duration. And when he wakes up it’s like he’s never been asleep. Amazing.

To knock shit out of my Mum on Xmas day and then piss off to his other secret family without hint of remorse.

My Granddad on the other hand, never swore, never raised his voice, or a hand to anyone (my Dad being the sole exception) outside of the ring, generous, warm and caring especially to me and my Brothers – but at the same time “**** Nails” but not in a hard-man scary way, just buckets of presence and charisma. First job carrying sacks of potatoes at the docks at 14, then the Army mostly boxing, then dry-dock ship welder and mechanic into his 60s – heavy, hard labour all his life – to me he could pick up anything and carry it off with one hand, and he probably could.

Married an Arab girl in the 1950s when most people thought was perfectly polite to call her the ‘N word’ or the other one that rhymes with Tune (My Gran was very dark skinned and had a pretty wide nose so to most she looked Black rather than Arabic).

Broke his back in his 30s he neck in his 40s and lost a decent lump of his hand at some point.

Feared nothing apart from my Nan.

I’m told I’m “just like your Granddad” I wish I was.

P-Jay hero grandads are very acceptable.

6 days a week my stepdad would be out of the house by 6am and would get home between 8pm and 10pm, covered in blood and engine oil and stinking of BO

He’d pop into the house for a cup of tea and some dinner and a quick opportunity to snarl and scowl at everyone, before disappearing out to his workshop behind the house to bash bit of engine together and swear loudly til 2am

On Sundays he’d smash around the house and garden often building a bonfire, before retiring to his workshop around lunchtime to bash bits of engine together and swear loudly til 2am
Our Sunday afternoons were spent baiting him until he finally managed to hit one of us with the constant barrage of lumps of gearbox and spanners and screwdrivers that he threw at us when he reached boiling point every 15 minutes or so..

I suppose his superpower was his ability to survive on a diet of barely controlled rage, spindly roll-ups, tea and swarfega

P-Jay hero grandads are very acceptable.

Yep. Never met any of my grandads, so I’m ‘adopting’ his. 🙂

The ability to grow peaches on an allotment in Halifax (amongst a plethora of other fruits and veg – including a Pinot Noir vine, from which he makes his own wine).
Only last night I went to pick up the kids from his house and was offered a bowl of ‘peaches in wine’ (his own of course), a treat which always reminds me of visiting my Nonna and Nonno in Italy as a young boy – my brother and I must have been constantly pissed on those holidays!
Mustn’t forget the ability to work all hours god sends (when he was still working) – Up at the crack of dawn to start breakfast service (worked as a waiter/restaurant manager/Maitre D’) back home for an hour at 10 for a wash and brush up – back to the hotel for Lunch service – back home for a quick nap in the afternoon before dinner service in the evening, which often carried on through to the early hours. I wish I had half his energy.

Yep. Never met any of my grandads, so I’m ‘adopting’ his.

I was lucky, had one grandad who was a hero to me then and another who was simply a very gentle, caring man who is definitely a hero to me now. Still, even with that – I want to adopt P-jays grandad too!

Oh and peaches in wine! Just lush!

Back in the day it was the way he could finish broadsheet paper cryptic crosswords when I felt accomplished if I ever managed to get three answers.

These days it’s the way I can hear his tuts of disapproval and disappointment (in my head) at everything I do and think about doing.

Putting up with me. Seriously.

He could disappear in a split-second and reappear some hours later smelling of ale….
He inadvertently taught me one of the most important lessons I have learnt.

My dad was the best tree climber in our village.
When it was conker time he would take my brother and I to the best trees, climb way up in to the high branches and shake all the chestnuts loose
It was like it was raining.
The other village kids that had been there for ages,throwing things up at the branches,they couldn’t believe their luck.
He was a lovely man and did lots of cool stuff for us through the years,but that’s the time when I first thought “my dad is awesome” .
I miss him every day.

Gift Giving

the ability to really know someone and give them something they’d never know they’d appreciate – a genuine surprise – rather than something they would ask for. I use his present-giving abilities whenever I have to illustrate the merits of creative interventions over consultation-based consensus.

I miss my Dad’s terrible sense of humour – although fortunately my son does seem to have inherited that. Also his ability to “bodge” things from whatever was at hand. This is what I’ve happily inherited from him. Give me some old bits of wood, and I’ll bodge it into whatever is needed. I’m quite proud of my two wood stores and the 2-boat rack made from bits of our old sheds.