How many dads?

Found myself exchanging e-mail today with my friend Jerry Cimisi, a man I know from the late 1990s at a newspaper we toiled at. I made a special bond with him that I was unaware of at the time, so much so that when I left that job to move down south, it was emotionally wrenching to say goodbye, even if it was going to be for just a few years. Only in retrospect did I realize that I bonded with him as if her were a father - one of many such relationships I would maintain over the course of life.

The question - how many dads can a person have? With the absence of any real paternal figger in my life post-13 years old, I guess I could have just canned the idea of a father and ran along on my own, role-model-less. What was cool and subconscious was that I made these relationships very quietly - quiet enough for an unexamined mind to not even notice. I filled my life with authority and paternal love from people willing to offer it - one of the most important developments that have ever developed at me.

So, I offer my own Ward Cleavers - William Reynolds, Jerry Cimisi, Lee Weisbecker, Duke Dosik, and Lawrence Erlbaum, the round table of men who have all saved my psyche and helped me become the person I am today.

And because I want to keep getting traffic off of Google, I'll drop the search strings "Lazy Sunday," "King Kong," "Federline," Brokeback Mountain," and "Joseph Ratzinger."