i wrote this story//anecdote for him. it's a true story.
how a day out for teriyaki changed everything

It was a Saturday evening, and I learned that little things are the building blocks for a hero. My mom had gone out with a friend, and my dad and I had to eat dinner by ourselves.

I didn’t know my dad. Because he worked all the time, he wasn’t a familiar face to me as a child. When I entered my teenage years, he would work and come home late at night and spend the weekend watching television with the lights off.

We occasionally went out to pass a volleyball together. But that was when I was younger. At fifteen, my spirits can’t be lifted from merely tossing a ragged ball back and forth, back and forth.

My dad is like me. He has always been a quiet person, the peacemaker for my mom, who is just the opposite. Yet what got him angry got him angry, and some things that seemed like little details to me would make him yell until he had no words left.

To this date, my dad is the only person who can scare me to tears.

As I rode with him that Saturday, without looking back from the road, he asked me, “You want teriyaki?”

All of these thoughts that had been so busily spinning in my mind stopped. We were rarely alone together, and because we are both so quiet, there were rarely conversations. Just us doing our own thing. “Okay,” I said, and went back to my phone.

The owner of the teriyaki restaurant turned out to be my dad's friend. I eavesdropped--his friend’s voice was loud enough to hear.

“One beef teriyaki,” my dad ordered after an affectionate hello.

They talked a little, and then my father murmured, “oh, business isn’t going well?” I could see him smiling sadly. “Then I’ll have a spicy pork, too.”

His friend protested in furious Korean.

“I was thinking about having pork anyways. Give it to me.” He curtly ended the argument.

It was a simple conversation, but it twisted my original opinion of him from a jagged, angry shape into a somewhat heart. My dad took my mom’s side; he criticized me. Although he was far from a monster, my head, fearful and hateful of his words, made him an awkwardly evil figure. This short conversation changed it all.

I didn’t know my father, but I knew he didn’t like pork. I knew his business was tight. I knew he came home tired. I knew that spicy pork was the most expensive item on the menu.

My father isn’t a perfect man, but he supported his friend who was struggling. Although it was with the words “I’ll have a spicy pork, too,” the sea of endless, faceless thoughts running through his mind were colored with empathy. The $31.48 we paid wouldn’t change the business, but his friend had a smile on his face when we left that wasn’t there before.

My father isn’t a perfect man, and doesn’t care that he isn’t, but for me that September day, he was the best man ever.

Before, I never understood my friends who wrote “my dad” on the list of people that inspired them. When I asked them why, they would say things like,
“My dad rescued our dog from the shelter.”
“When I was hurt, my dad nursed me back to health.”

My father hates dogs. He tells me “suck it up, you’re okay,” when I get hurt.

Yet now I can write his name. I can proudly tell my friends, “My dad did all he can to help his friend’s teriyaki shop on a Saturday evening.”

My dad may not be as outrightly heroic as your dad, dear friend, but my dad does all he can.

And to me, I think that’s what makes someone a hero. This I believe.
by flec.