Suburban Dad Quotes

The look he was going for was Friendly Suburban Dad, because that’s what he was, but he suspected he’d achieved only Cialis Guy.

From quite early on, I had this idea of compartmentalized identities - 'this is how you are when you are with your mum, and this is how you are when you are with your dad' - so it seemed like I could never absolutely be myself. And the image of myself as compromised and inconsistent made me want to withdraw from the world even further. I had a sense of formulating a paper-mache version of myself to send out in the world, while I sat controlling it remotely from some smug suburban barracks.

I knew Dad was concerned about my past associations. I was from the Trash Alley. It was my community. I hung out with thugs from the Frog Bottom, the Burns Bottoms, the Red Line, the S-Curve, the Sandfield, the Morning Side, and a bunch of other places that shall remain nameless. I knew all of the “Legends of the Hood”: Sin Man, Swap, Boo Boo, Emp-Man, Cookie Man, Shank, Polar Bear, Bae Willy, Bae Bruh, Skullhead Ned, Pimp, Crunch, and Goat Turd (just to name a few). I thought maybe Dad had summoned me as a “show and tell” for the kids in his neighborhood—the hardliner to scare those wayward suburban brats back into reality.

That girl is a suburban dad's midlife crisis in a high school senior's body

At Last It's a perfect winter day. No wind. No Arctic freeze. Cloudless azure sky. A day to fly. Snow drapes the mountain like ermine, fabulous feather- light powder coaxing me to flee the confines of my room, brave the mostly plowed road up to the closest ski resort. To run from the cloying silence connected Mom and Dad, into encompassing stillness far away from city dirt and noise Far above suburban gridlock. Far beyond the grasp of home.

When my grandfather went to war against Saddam Hussein after the invasion of Kuwait, he wrote a heartfelt letter to my dad about his worries and his fears. I remember the yellow ribbons tied around the trees throughout our suburban Texas neighborhood, and my dad remembers the gravity of the words his father penned: “I guess what I want you to know as a father is this: Every Human life is precious. When the question is asked ‘How many lives are you willing to sacrifice’—it tears at my heart. The answer, of course, is none—none at all.” When my dad was weighing whether to go to war against Iraq, when intelligence reports were telling him that Iraq had chemical weapons and when Saddam Hussein refused to allow weapons inspectors into his country, he wrote his own heartfelt letter to Barbara and me: “Yesterday I made the hardest decision a president has to make. I ordered young Americans into combat. It was an emotional moment for me because I fully understand the risks of war. More than once, I have hugged and wept with the loved ones of a soldier lost in combat in Afghanistan.” His words spoke of how much he didn’t want to go to war, how he had hoped the battle could be averted.

Slowly, I slid him a glance out of the corner of my eye. With his thinning brown hair combed neatly into place, and his blue button-up shirt free of wrinkles, he looked like a normal suburban dad. But if there was one thing I’d learned early on in life it was that normalcy, as we thought of it, didn’t exist. It was amazing and frightening what

I wasn’t interested in becoming a man. I was interested in becoming a more dashing, brilliant, charismatic, mysterious, attractive-to-girls version of what my suburban, television-age upbringing had turned me into—which was basically a collection of appetites.

like the fog currently drifting in from the harbor. Slowly, I slid him a glance out of the corner of my eye. With his thinning brown hair combed neatly into place, and his blue button-up shirt free of wrinkles, he looked like a normal suburban dad. But if there was one thing I’d learned early on in life it was that normalcy, as we thought of it, didn’t exist. It was amazing and frightening what humans were capable of. His pale blue eyes met mine. My heart slammed

…I am a storyteller. From barstools to back porches, from kitchen tables to campfires, from podiums to park benches, I have spun my yarns to audiences both big and small, both rapt and bored. I didn’t start out that way. I was just a dreamer, quietly imagining myself as something special, as someone who would “make a difference” in the world. But the fact is, I was just an ordinary person leading an ordinary life. Then, partly by design, partly by happenstance, I was thrust into a series of adventures and circumstances beyond anything I had ever dreamed. It all started when I ran away from home at eighteen and hitchhiked around the country. Then I joined the Army, became an infantry lieutenant, and went to Vietnam. After Vietnam, I tried to become a hippie, got involved with Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), and became a National Coordinator for the organization. I was subsequently indicted for conspiracy to incite a riot at the Republican Convention in 1972—the so-called Gainesville Eight case—and one of my best friends turned out to be an FBI informant who testified against me at the trial. In the early eighties, I was involved with the New York Vietnam Veterans Memorial Commission, which built a memorial for Vietnam veterans in New York City and published the book Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam. In the late eighties, I was part of a delegation of Vietnam veterans who went to the Soviet Union to meet with Soviet veterans of their Afghanistan War. I fell in love with a woman from Russia, married her, and spent nine years living there, during which I fathered two children, then brought my family back to the U.S. and the suburban middle-class life I had left so many years before. The adventures ultimately, inevitably perhaps, ended, and like Samwise Gamgee, I returned to an ordinary life once they were over. The only thing I had left from that special time was the stories… I wrote this book for two reasons. First and foremost, I wrote it for my children. Their experience of me is as a slightly boring “soccer dad,” ordinary and unremarkable. I wanted them to know who I was and what I did before I became their dad. More importantly, I hope the book can be inspiring to the entire younger generation they represent, who will have to deal with the mess of a world that we have left them. The second reason is that when I was young, I had hoped that my actions would “make a difference,” but I’m not so sure if they amounted to “a hill of beans,” as Humphry Bogart famously intoned. If my actions did not change the world, then I dream that maybe my stories can.

Evan needed to do was waste time dicking around with a bunch of suburban-dad-looking human traffickers.

Tripp was like this—a suburban-dad philosopher. “You tell me.” “It’s

I got a few curious glances from some of the girls as I headed over to the DJ booth. As I neared, the DJ looked up with a friendly smile. Dan was a big-boned guy with a crew-cut and he looked like a suburban dad who’d cheer for his kids at their soccer game.

John was your typical west suburban, chest-thumping meatbag, with a body built for date rape and a giant shellacked auburn head that remained defiantly empty, save for a handful of professional baseball statistics and whatever Greek letters you need to learn to pledge the fraternity with the most lenient academic prerequisite. John was the kind of dude who already looked like someone’s dad; you know what I mean? Like, the kind of dude in mirrored shades who chews bubble gum really hard with his arms crossed over his chest, the kind of perpetually tan, leathery-skin motherfucker who always looks like he’s standing on a sideline somewhere. The kind of asshole you are continually surprised to find without a whistle around his neck; a gentleman who should be shouting red-faced into a Bluetooth or standing on a deck he proudly built flipping burgers on a grill he got on sale at Lowe’s.

When Mom and Dad die, they’re taken care of by strangers in a nursing home two towns over. The kids don’t have to see them go. They don’t even have to see them after. They just get a “we’re sorry to inform you” call late that night from the institution’s management, for whom such calls are as routine as putting out the weekly garbage is for a suburban homeowner. The funeral home picks up the body. The cemetery buries it. Unless you’re a professional, you might live your whole life without seeing someone in the moment of leaving his own.

There is an irresistible impulse among the boys of suburban Minneapolis to kick a football as far as they possibly can. Even among the men. Mike McCollow’s dad will come home from his dental practice, having stopped at the VFW hall for a brandy Manhattan en route, and drop-kick a half-frozen football between the uprights of two barren tree branches without even setting down his briefcase

Penny’s house was a standard three-bedroom postwar suburban home. The décor wasn’t what I would call gaudy, but it was definitely froofy. Kind of like a ten-year-old had been allowed to order anything she wanted from the Sears catalog. Everything had a damn ruffle on it. It didn’t suit my idea of Penny. When we got to the doorway of her room, I noticed how dramatically different it was from the rest of the house. Her bed was covered in a simple black comforter, and everything projected a modern aesthetic—sharp angles, cold, and minimalist. “Do you live in here with a vampire?” “Ha-ha, very funny. You can sit there and wait for me.” I sat at her glass desk in an office-style chair as she tossed clothes out of her bag and into a hamper. “Some of this furniture is from my dad’s old office, so it’s pretty sterile.” “Seems like you have different tastes from the rest of your family. No ruffles and flowers?” “I like flowers,” she said absently. “What, like Venus flytraps?” “If you grew up with all this frilly shit, you’d be over it, too. I mean, do you know any other families who still use doilies? Every surface is literally covered in them.

Well, then, mademoiselle, shall I take you to the Riviera?'" "'Yes,'" -Camille smiled- "'I'd like that.' 'Have you brought your bathing suit?' he'd ask. 'Perfect. And an evening gown as well! We must go to the casino. Don't forget your silver fox coat, it can be cool in Monte Carlo in the evening.' There was a nice smell inside the car. The smell of well-worn leather... It was all so lovely, I remember. The crystal ashtray, the vanity mirror, the tiny little handle to roll the window down, the inside of the glove compartment, the wood. Its was like a flying carpet. 'With a bit of luck we'll get there before nightfall,' he promised. Yes, he was that kind of man, my dad, a big dreamer who could shift gears on a car up on blocks for hours on end and take me to the far corners of the earth in a suburban garage. He was really into opera, too, so wee listened to Don Carlos, La Traviata or The Marriage of Figaro during the trip. He would tell me the stories: Madame Butterfly's sorrow, the impossible love of Pelléas and Mélisande- when he confesses, 'I have something to tell you' and then he can't; the stories with the countess and her Cherub who hides all the time, or Alcina, the beautiful witch who turned her suitors into wild animals.