Today is the 14th day of July. It’s Independence Day in France, it’s the day a peanut farmer from Georgia won the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, and it’s the day my father was born. Today is Dad’s birthday.

My Dad—or I should say our Dad, because he had five of us… three girls, two boys and a lot of responsibility. But when we were growing up in that big and busy household, we really weren’t aware of any of that. He was Dad. He went to work all week, came home every night, worked on the yard or worked overtime on the weekends, got up Monday morning and did it all again. As far as we knew, all the Dads did that. So—no big deal.

Dad wasn’t an astronaut, a movie star, a famous athlete or a steely-eyed mogul of a business empire. What identified Dad was a reasonably successful career, and head of a household of seven living in the suburbs. He took an annual family vacation, occasionally did the “guy” thing of wearing stripes and plaids together, and always thought he looked pretty good. Taken all together, he was probably pretty much an average kind of guy, and not the type you would generally think would be a standard bearer of some kind or a hero. At least, we didn’t when we were kids. Why would we? He was Dad to us, and all our friends had one.

But it’s funny how things change as you get older. Those flash-in-the-pan moments of stepping on the moon, catching the winning pass or winning that gold medal are certainly something to be admired, but we don’t generally sit around and contemplate all the work that went into it. It’s only that moment we all admire. As you climb up that ladder of years, you realize it isn’t the single moments of glory or brilliance that makes the world go round.
It’s that unrecognized, everyday hero who keeps us all going forward. It’s that guy—the one who gets up every day and goes to work, and then comes home and uses all his earnings to support a household full of people. It’s that guy—who takes his kid to baseball practice, shoots baskets in the backyard, shows up at the Father-Daughter Brownie dinner, and drives crappy old cars because he can only afford one nice one, and he thinks his wife and kids should be going around in that one, even though he probably spent more time in the car every day than we did.

He’s that guy. Maybe you don’t know that guy, but we all do. That was our Dad.

I know no one is perfect, and neither was our Dad. And we’re all certainly proof of that genetic link, because none of us are perfect either. But who needs perfect when you have “present and responsible”. Dad was there. He came home every night. He went to work every day. He didn’t spend his money on clothes, flashy cars and personal entertainment. He spent it on us—including college educations for five kids. He didn’t complain about it, he didn’t refuse to do it—he considered it all part of the deal of having a family.

That’s what our Dad was. An everyday hero. I hope he knows how hard we all try to live up to that. I hope he knows how proud we are he set that bar so high. I hope he knows we miss him.

Happy Birthday, Dad!
Love,
Vicki

And PS:  Also sending up a happy birthday wish to our Grandfather Leslie as well– Dad’s Father-in-Law.. who had 5 kids of his own that he raised during the Great Depression.. another everyday hero to our Mom, her brother and both her sisters.

Wondering what the big deal is about a button? Well, let me start at the beginning…
It all started with me registering to be a member of an Internet Marketing forum, called the Warrior Forum (absolutely no clue where the name came from). People who participate in internet marketing clearly need content for all those websites, products and blogs. So if you are a writer, you participate in their forums. And the Warrior Forum is the largest, most well known of them all. Wanting to get my little enterprise off the ground, I joined. Seemed like a good plan, and a sound move.
Having taken care of the registration part, I started out just reading the various posts. I wanted to get the lay of the land—or at least the basic protocols—before I jumped in myself. It’s pretty straightforward. Someone starts a post and others jump in with a response, either with a comment in the form of a “quick reply”, or a more “advanced” comment, or just a “Thank you” acknowledgement.
OK.. so far so good.
Now, I am what the more seasoned Warriors call a “newbie”. It’s a reference to being new to the forum—and basically someone who doesn’t know very much, or in my case– absolutely nothing at all. All the more reason to just “thank” the more experienced posters and take your time about “easing into the pool”, so to speak. So I look at my screen, and I see the names of the people who just said “thank you”—all showing up in a box just for that purpose right below the post. Now comes the tricky part. You can’t just place your cursor in that little area and type in your name. The area won’t let you do that. Going to the posting area and just typing in “thank you”, comes out as a full post with just two little words. In the Warrior world, that doesn’t even count as a post and is kind of frowned on.. especially for a newbie.
So I’m looking and looking. I see a button for a ‘quick reply” post, and another button for a “more advanced post”, but nothing else.
I really can’t figure out how those people are getting their names in that “thank you” field. There was no button at the top of the post, the bottom of the post, lurking around inside the thank you field or hanging about the signature. No clue anywhere. So I go to the “help” icon, and in the search box type in “thanking a post”. I find the protocol—as in, it’s good to thank a post that you really liked—but not a word on exactly how to do that. After reading through all the documentation, I went through my usual self-conversation of: why do they always have programmers write the help stuff? They always assume something is so obvious they don’t have to say it, and skip steps. I hate instructions written by programmers.  (I have this internal conversation a lot).
Once that silent rant is out of the way, I have to admit it..I’m stumped.
Well, I did kind of have another option. I’ve been having an occasional conversation with an internet marketing “guru” named Tiffany. I thought maybe she wouldn’t mind answering a really stupid question, so I sent off a hopeful e-mail asking how to do the “thank you” thing in the Warrior Forum. She very graciously responded, and told me to just use the “thank you button”.. She even told me where it was—lower right hand corner of the post.
Aha..well. I must not have looked there. So I log on and look there. I don’t see a button. Now, I am sure Tiffany sees that button. But I’m not seeing it. Now I’m thinking: Oh great. Another little gift of menopause, button blindness. Just another one of those little things your doctor never tells you.. because he’s male. (Actually, that isn’t true. My doctor is female—but she’s younger than I am.. so she doesn’t know either).
Well, I was at a crossroads. Do I just go with the probable onset of the dreaded “button blindness”, or do I investigate further? And if I do decide to investigate further—exactly how do I do that? I’m not asking Tiffany again. I had already hit my tolerance limit for sounding stupid. I guess I could have asked Tiffany’s mentor and partner, Craig. But he lives in Japan. Did I really want to sound stupid on two continents? While certainly not out of the realm of possibility, it still wasn’t my first pick. I’m sure that will happen soon enough.
So I log back into the Warrior Forum, and go to the help screen. There I hit the “contact us” on the Help Menu, and proceed to ask the dumb question. I rationalize the “well duh” question by deciding I shall make a point of never, ever speaking to that hopefully helpful person again.  Even though he or she didn’t do anything to deserve that.
Less than 24 hours later, I had a response. “You need to use the Thank You Button” (and I’m thinking, no shit, Sherlock. Where the hell is it?) “It is located in the lower right hand corner of the post” (great.. we’re back to the button blindness problem) “It will appear after you have made 5 posts”. What??? You have to make 5 posts before the button just magically appears out of nowhere? Oh come on. Who would know that? Let me guess—this is perfectly obvious to anyone.. who’s a programmer!
As it turns out, this story does have a good ending. I put up the five posts, and right on schedule, the magic “thank you” button suddenly appeared. I am now living happily ever after “thanking” the posters, and have lost my fear of developing “button blindness” I’m just making “do” with hot flashes and no sleep.
The End…….