Dads don’t wear capes, but they’re heroes

In a lot of ways, my dad, Stu Cole, is the typical middle-aged boomer dad to whom so many of my millennial peers and I are paying homage today. You know the kind: He wears New Balance tennis shoes. He has a recliner in the basement pointed directly at the TV, and it’s “his” chair. He owns a set of books about military aircraft. He keeps a few pairs of reading glasses in various spots around the house. He owns a smartphone and relies on the occasional tutoring session from his adult children to use it. (The first time he called my brother on his iPhone he held the phone up to his ear, not realizing he’d tapped the FaceTime button. Rob had to shout “LOOK AT THE SCREEN!” and when he did, Dad about jumped out of his skin to see his son looking back at him.)

Yup, he’s the quintessential dad, the kind one can always count on to bring their whole toolbox when he comes over to replace a deadbolt or hang a picture frame. To the rest of the world, he’s an ordinary dad. To his children, he’s extraordinary. And today is the day for the ordinary father to be honored by the ones who find him extraordinary.

Dad has gotten used to seeing himself mentioned in anecdotes I put in my columns every now and then. The first instance was about two years ago, when I wrote about incentives as a powerful driver of action and detailed how I was secretly training him to associate doing maintenance work in my condo with getting a sweet treat. Specifically, I’d convinced him to offer to come by and fix a leaky toilet valve I’d been complaining about by texting him a picture of some gourmet cinnamon rolls I’d picked up. Dad hadn’t read my column before I brought a print copy over that afternoon, but as I handed it to him, he said, “Is this going to tell me why everyone in church was teasing me about cinnamon rolls?”

I don’t have to hoodwink Dad into coming by and fixing things anymore. He knows what’s in store for him if he’s willing to install a new light switch, and I’ve always got his favorite treats in stock because like him, I have an insatiable sweet tooth — one of the many ways in which I am like Stu Cole. Many of my early memories of my dad involve us getting some sort of “treat” together — a Heath Bar Freezee at the old Tastee Freez, a toasted coconut crunch donut at Donutland, a pack of Peanut M & M's at whatever gas station he was buying his newspaper at that day. I frequently tell my friends that “Coles never met a candy we weren’t at least willing to try.”

I inherited more traits from my father than just a terrible sweet tooth. I have the same shade of natural blonde hair that he has. I have the same self-deprecating sense of humor and the same capacity for useless trivia (though once-a-week trivia night makes it not so useless.) I have the same easygoing disposition underneath which a ridiculous temper lurks, waiting to reveal itself during a “project” when something goes wrong. I have the same zeal to cheer for the Iowa State Cyclones no matter how many times they break my heart, and the same appreciation for 60s-era music, opining like Dad that “Pet Sounds” is by far the Beach Boys’ greatest album.

Another trait I inherited in my father is a disinterest in alcoholic beverages. Coles aren’t teetotalers by any means, and we certainly aren’t going to pretend that the fun we had in our teens and 20s never involved alcohol. Coles don’t drink for one simple reason: We don’t have a palate for any of it — not beer, not wine, and certainly not liquor. But I’ll admit that Coles have another reason to avoid the bottle: We’ve seen up close how dangerous the bottle can be.

I mean that quite literally. The incident happened in March of 2000, the night the Iowa State men’s basketball team faced the Michigan State Spartans in the Elite Eight round of the NCAA tournament. The Cyclone nation was buzzing with excitement and had gotten it in our heads that the Cyclones could actually win that game and advance to the Final Four. Unlike my father, brother and me, my mother does enjoy an occasional cold beer or glass of wine. Wanting to be ready to toast our team’s victory, she grabbed a bottle of Champagne and set it in a little receptacle between the two front seats of our family minivan as we went to leave to watch the game at the home of some family friends.

As Dad was backing the minivan out of our driveway, we heard a “pop.” Enough pressure had somehow formed in that deceptively still bottle of Champagne that it spontaneously blew its plastic cork, hitting Dad squarely in the elbow from only inches away with enough force that for just a moment, he thought that he’d been … well, shot. The man went ballistic, sending the van lurching up the driveway before grabbing his elbow and yelling, “I’VE BEEN SHOT!”

To this day, my mother, brother and I don’t know how, even just during a split second in a state of terror, Dad could have thought he’d been shot in the same sleepy, peaceful suburban Marion neighborhood where his children could ride their bicycles unsupervised. On the other hand, none of us have been hit in the funny bone by a plastic projectile with 90 psi of pressure behind it, either. What we do know is that witnessing the whole thing proved to be hysterically funny, and like the very sympathetic family members we were (and still are,) we laughed without one iota of shame or restraint while he held his elbow and howled.

“I’m fighting back tears, and you’re laughing!” he protested. (In all fairness, we were fighting back tears, too.)

We whip out that story every now and then at family gatherings for a good guffaw, and now that the piercing pain of being shot with a plastic Champagne cork has subsided, Dad will join in the laughter and help tell the story. While typing out this column, I took a moment to research the pressure behind Champagne corks and realized that volatile cork could have potentially caused some serious harm had Dad’s elbow not blocked its path. Dad may be the laughingstock of that story, but he’s also the hero of it. (Now that I’ve put that part in writing, he’ll be delighted to tell the story.)

And that’s what loving fathers are — the heroes in their children’s lives. The hard worker who protects his kids from being unsheltered. The scary disciplinarian who protects his kids from growing up to be hooligans. The flag football coach who protects his kids from feeling incapable. The calming presence who protects his kids from feeling unsafe. They can’t leap tall buildings in a single bound. They’re not faster than a speeding bullet (or a Champagne cork.) They’re ordinary men, in an ordinary role, raising children who will always know them as extraordinary. And reading glasses, sweet tooth and all, to me, Stu Cole will always be extraordinary.

Comments: 319-398-8266; althea.cole@thegazette.com