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I am not a great father. I am an uncle that 'helped' my wife raise a niece and nephew. Many consider my guardianship to have been, at best, poorly implemented. I simply went along with whatever they had wanted to do. My wife was stuck with all the non-fun stuff. We climbed mountains, we hiked across deserts, we flew airplanes, we canoed rivers, we ate whatever we wanted and when we wanted (at least when the wife was not around), let them routinely skip school when the wife was not in town, taught them to use all of the power and hand tools in my shop, taught them to use all of the equipment on my electronics benches, took them to IPSC matches, took them to rock concerts (at least I did not allow any weed smoking). Took them to whatever R-rated movies they wanted. Read Heinlein, Asimov, Sprague de Camp, Le Guin, and other such stuff when they were young as bed-time fare. I shit you not, their favorite was 'A Brief History of Time' - not a chance that kids at 5 and 7 years of age understood that Hawking shit, but they liked it. The boy got a fancy PhD and does stupid shit for stupid people that pay him obscene salaries. The girl got music and math degrees and teaches music and math in a New Mexico public school. My wife says that they turned out ok in spite of my non-efforts, not because of them. She may be correct, I dunno. |