[Note: This isn't a typical post. It's my dad's birthday today, and I want to get him a nice shout-out. There are no mentions of C#, Microsoft, or other techie things, although there is talk of light drugs, the CIA, and living on beaches in Honolulu, which is always interesting on a Friday.]

[Update: My dad felt that he was misrepresented in this post because I failed to mention that, during his lie detector interview with the CIA, the CIA also got him to admit that he had killed someone. He thinks that this was the clincher and that it sealed the deal with the CIA (although he turned down every offer they made).

I've also included a photo of the guy when he was wandering through Mexico several decades ago.]

If you think I'm a weird and offensive guy, then you should meet the male half of the pattern against which I was stitched:

I think there's a severed, and very flat, head in the bag

It's my father's birthday today, and I've been thinking about some of the weirdness that I experienced while growing up with him.

One of the first things that leaps to mind is his particular, and rather odd, brand of parenting.

I had a brief period of flirtation with the lighter drugs in high school (alcohol/pot/anything that looked or smelled like one of these things). My dad's a pretty liberal guy, but even he knew that it wouldn't be terribly responsible to just let his kid go on experimenting without some sort of interference.

However, his approach was great. He knew that the real problem wasn't drugs or alcohol. He didn't attack either of these vices head-on. Rather, he flew right on past them and nailed the true issue.

I remember a time when I was sitting down in the basement with a few friends. We were all getting stoned together and feeling the exciting naughtiness of knowing that we were doing something strictly forbidden by our parents (oh, and The Law). Of course, marijuana smoke has a readily identifiable smell, and the stuff was wafting upstairs in huge quantities, probably nearly asphyxiating anything that got in its way.

I heard the door to the basement open. A bit of light trickled down from above through that smoky pit, and then I heard my father speak:

Dad: Hey, Rory!

Me: [nervous - quite nervous] Uh... Yeah, dad?

Dad: What are you doing?

Me: You know... Hanging out with Shawn and Eric.

Dad: Are you sure you aren't just having a pot party with your little friends?

Me: [baffled silence]

Dad: [laughing while closing the door and going back to whatever it is he was doing]

You see, he understood that my interest wasn't really in pot. As he puts it, "You can get the same experience by holding your breath underwater in the bathtub for two minutes." It's not a terribly exciting thing (for those of you who've never felt the urge to try it).

Nope. This was a guy who understood rebellion.

After another episode similar to the one above, I had little interest in drug experimentation. When it feels like you can get away with something, about 90% of the temptation goes right out the window. Stripping away that layer of excitement, smoking pot is really just a way of temporarily handicapping your mental faculties while giving you halitosis and bad taste in music.

His was an excellent strategy, although I am a chip off the old block, and I've had my revenge. Long hair, earrings, booze, loud music, and drugs weren't good platforms for rebellion in the Blyth household because, compared to my father's experiences in the 60s, I was a total amateur. Nope. Had to be something different. So I cut my hair, shaved, and went to work in corporate America. That worked.

It would be tough for me to compete with him in the traditional vices. He was an air force brat as a child and spent his teen years in Hawaii, surfing Pipeline on acid.

For a brief period, he actually lived on Waikiki beach. And I don't mean in a beach-front condo or anything. I mean that he lived on the beach. He slept on the sand with his surfboard tied to his ankle. He eventually decided to get a place to stay when he woke up one night while being dragged across the sand by a guy who thought he'd take off with the board. That's when my dad got himself a proper home, again, right on Waikiki beach. It was a short-lived luxury, though, as he came home from a day of surfing one evening to find that his home had been towed away. I think it might have been a broken down Edsel, but I don't remember.

Fast forward a few years, and he was in Washington D.C., being interviewed by the CIA for a position in Arabic intelligence. He had been kicked out of high school following an incident involving his ROTC service, a hand grenade, and a water tower (which, to this day, he claims he had nothing to do with), but had gotten his act together a little while later, and had a degree from the Army's "School of Languages and Applied Cryptography."

During the interview, he was given a lie detector test in which he admitted to:

1) Not knowing his mother's maiden name

2) Smoking marijuana more than 5,000 times in one year

Lie detectors, although totally bogus, are still used all over the place, and the CIA loved my father's results. It turns out that it was simply impossible to tell if he was lying or not. There are some theories that he himself didn't know what the truth was, but it's safe to say that he didn't smoke marijuana more than 5,000 times in one year (there wouldn't have been any time for the acid if that had been the case).

Yup. Growing up with him was pretty bloody interesting. He was sort of like a cross between Indiana Jones, Einstein, and Cheech and Chong.

I've been thinking for a while now that he ought to start a blog. Then he could tell you all first-hand about his preferred method of tie-dying his dresses.

So, happy birthday, dad. You're a freaking weirdo, all right.