The Dreams Dads Have for Their Kids [OPINION]

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Looking for the positive in this "Shelter In Place Mandate", it occurred to me that one of the best things to come from it, has been the quality time I've gotten to spend with two of my three sons, who still live at home.

Man, these are some great kids.  Thank God their Mom had so much influence on their lives or things could be a whole lot different.  With that, the thought hit me, that I'm sure most guys with kids spend a little time each week thinking about their goals and dreams for their kids.  Especially now, with high school sports ending for the year.  No proms, different plans for graduations.  Things have a different twist, but the dream continues.

Whether we’ve got an athletic son that we would love to see in the Major League or NFL or a daughter we can picture in her Miss America sash, we want them to do so much more than we thought we ever could.

Course, we don’t always have the same dream for all our kids.  We dream different things for each individual child.  While we might dream for one to win the Nobel Peace Prize, we dream another does less than 5 to 10 in a minimum security prison.  We dream for one to be President and another to pass his G.E.D. before he’s 30.

And it makes you wonder what our Dads dreamed for us. I look at the guys I grew up with. One’s a dentist, another the president of a steel company, and another one has a huge cattle ranch in Texas. Then, there’s me. I just can’t imagine my Dad sitting out on our porch when I was 13 years old, day-dreaming about the day his son would be getting up at three o'clock every morning and heading to a radio station where for four hours he’d drink coffee, sling a stream of B.S. deep enough to drown in and have the audacity to call it a job.  I’ve been doing this nearly 40 years and my Dad still believes that one day his son’s gonna grow up and get a real job. No, he’s not disappointed in me, but I think he still doesn’t understand why in the world someone would pay me to do this. “Son, you’re just talking," he'll say. "I do that for free.”

And what about Dads who would have never dreamed of the things their kids would accomplish? Think about Bill Gates' Dad. He was probably always getting onto little Billy about “spending too much time playing with all those little toys.”  I can hear him now: “Young man, if you spent as much time studying your history lessons as you do playing with your little gadgets, you might be able to get a college scholarship.”  Yeah, that road had a few curves in it, didn’t it?

Then there’s Phil Robertson, the Duck Commander. He was actually a great quarterback at Louisiana Tech. Imagine his Dad saying, "You’re gonna quit football? To play around in a duck blind? Well, not while you’re living in my house, you're not!”

We just never know, do we? I think it’s okay to dream, but probably a lot more important to SUPPORT THE DREAM. 'Course, I could be wrong. Wouldn't be the first time.