My father and I get along great.  Growing up he was a loving and giving dad, and we had lots of great times together.  In my adulthood, we continue to chat often.

All this being said, my Father is also a guy who doesn’t always have his priorities in check.  The day I announced that my wife and I were expecting our first child was a great example.

As a bit of backstory, you should know that, due to some medical complications, we had no luck getting pregnant “the old fashioned way.”  So when that didn’t work we tried sex.  Still no luck, but we kept at it… for 9 years.  We had also been married a total of 12 years.  So it had been a long period of no grandkids for my father.  When I got my current job, I was fortunate enough to get some medical assistance with in vitro fertilization (IVF), and it was a crazy process.

My portion of it was easy, as I simply had to give a sample of my swimmers, but my wife had to be subjected to a minimum of 3 shots a day, in both her belly and her hip.

During this process, I kept in constant contact with family members, including my father, and provided updates on where we were in the process.

So just to sum up: 9 years of trying, followed by countless needles jammed into my wife, and an insane amount of stress, but in the end it worked!  We were expecting our first child.  It was an amazing moment, and I couldn’t wait to share it with everyone, including my dad.

I called him on the phone, and the conversation went EXACTLY like this:

“Hey, Dad!”

“Hi, bud.  How are you?”

“Good!  I’ve got some great news!”

“What’s that?”

“Tessa and I are expecting! The IVF worked and she’s pregnant!”

“Alright!  That’s great news.  Say, did you hear that Ron from across the street has to turn his pick-up in on the Lemon Law?”

“Dad, I feel like you sort of blew right past the news about us expecting.”

“Nah… that’s great news, Davey, but Ron has only had that pick-up for a month and it’s been in the shop 3 times already.”

I knew my Dad was excited in his own way, even if he happened to be just a bit more excited about the news of Ron from across the street turning in his month-old Nissan on the Lemon Law.

My son is now a couple of weeks away from turning 4, and my dad couldn’t be happier to be a grandfather.  Not only that, but Ron from across the street hasn’t had any problems with his replacement pickup and is still driving it to this day.

I know this because my dad updates me on it every time I take my son to his house for a visit.