Remembering Timber Tom Part 1

Often times when nothing at all is going on I tend to have a drink. Usually vodka, straight, and only because I liked to get it down as fast as possible to skip the tasting part. Unlike my father, I think mixed drinks and cocktails are disgusting unless it's a kind of milkshake. I digress. This particular evening I decided that I wanted to archive my dad's facebook posts, as, in his later life, his facebook profile was a lot like his old website: a convenient way to share his thoughts with his friends and family. I think he really transitioned over only because it was more convenient and public, but the part that is unknown to me (and likely will be until I myself meet him in heaven or whatever lies beyond) is why there was such a large gap between Motman's Hideaway and Facebook dad, something like 14 years.

Like my dad, I carve out a place here on the net for myself in hopes that maybe one day someone will read this. Unlike my father, however, I have yet to live a full and rich life, knowing many people and doing many things, so the chances of someone stumbling upon this out of the blue is fairly unlikely. But, I hope, maybe, someone comes to look at my server tutorial for long enough and gets curious. Who knows...

Back on track here, I write this post because I think it is fairly interesting that someone's life can fairly accurately, yet completely falsely, be summed up by what they post on the internet. I see some of the wittier things my dad posted on facebook and think for a moment "wow, this guy was a genius!". And, having known my dad for 24 years I can certainly say that is true, the wit he shares online was a lot unlike his wit he hand inherently: he was more of a playful, funny trickster IRL, whereas online he poses himself as a 'pondering fool' or other wit-meets-intellect type persona that was most clearly not him in his common state. But, at the same time, this is how he viewed himself, and how he strove to be, and so I guess in a way he shared only his best parts, or at least what he thought were his best parts.

I have known people for a long time on the internet, and while I also strive to show only my best parts, with the fact that I am chronically online in the frame, I am certain that I often share my worst sides, and my most normal sides as well. My worst parts are always anger, frustration, jealousy, envy. But not my dad. His worst parts were always good: overly trusting to his own detriment, self deprecating (which, inadvertently, kept him honest), sometimes overly joking, the list goes on. But note that none of these things are like "torches houses" or "beats children" or "verbally berates people" or "smashes shit out of anger". I'm sure my dad did his fair share of not-so-great things in his life, as all men do. But I think the measure of a great man is not how much good you do, nor how little bad, but rather the offset of good vs bad. I think my dad swung very, very, very far in the positive direction.

I leave you, dear reader, with a nugget of my dad's philosophical wit, of which, at the time of writing this, I still do not fully understand. Maybe it will come with age:

The Challenger Deep challenges not the depths of my misunderstanding ~ Timber Tom Wyma