Curious George (aka my dad)

On Saturdays on daily headspa, the idea is to have some fun with the weekly topic. The topic this week is curiosity so today I posted about two icons of curiosity: Curious George and Columbo.

My late father's name was George and he was a curious fellow, too. I mean he was odd and a bit quirky, but he was also curious about life and about other people. He especially liked curious characters. He peopled his world with eccentrics like Old Man Brown, a man who seemed to have always been in his late 90's who had more money than God but ran his empire of tug boats and waterfront land holdings from a seedy, mildewed office in a diesel soaked marina, tucked away in a polluted bayou off the bay. Or his roommate in college who came from a wealthy Indian family; his grandfather had "32 wives and a Rolls Royce for every one of them," I heard all through my childhood.

My dad had a curious aspiration in life, which I'm glad to say he accomplished. He wanted to be wealthy enough to not have to wear socks if he didn't want to. He drove the Rolls Royce he bought off of e-bay in deck shoes, sans socks.

I credit my dad in large part to my own sense of curiosity, especially about how things work. As I handed him tools at the boat yard, the truck yard, and the back yard, he passed along to me wisdom and wonder.

And he probably read me my first Curious George book, too.