Father's Day blog Posting -- #36

Father and Daughter

This blog posting is the entry I sent in to the Geekdad contest in an effort to win some cool geek electronics. Although I did not win it lead me to reflect on where my affinity for inquiry-based learning came from. If this story isn’t a classic inquiry than what is? Thanks Dad!

Here is my Geekdad story:

Many years ago I was engaged to be married. Although I was 100% sure I wanted to be married to the man of my dreams I was not so keen on the actual wedding ceremony. Though a series of compromises the wedding was scheduled for 10 o’clock on a Monday morning. Following the church ceremony there would be a sit down lunch catered by some church ladies, the bride and groom would leave on our honeymoon and the partying would continue at my parent’s house. My parent’s house, which is my childhood home, is a large Cape Cod style house that has seen many parties over the years. These parties include some fantastic teenage parties that my sister and I would host when my parents and brothers went on summer vacations without us. (We couldn’t go! We had to work!)  For sure there had been at least 200 kids in our house dancing and jumping up and down on a number of occasions and although there were a number of consequences on a variety of levels the house itself withstood all the partying unscathed and unchanged.

Family Home

This is where the Geek Dad part comes in. My dad, a trained engineer, spent weeks prior to my wedding day fretting, wandering around the house with a measuring tape and  his trusty slide ruler while scribbling little calculations on scraps of paper and the back of napkins. You may think he was upset that his baby girl was marrying, that he was designing a new suit for himself, or that he was calculating the cost of all these shenanigans. But no! This is not how Geek Dads think! What he was actually doing was calculating how great a load the floors of our family home could withstand. What if there were so many people in the house that it collapsed! This was a very real worry for him!

Naturally, like all good daughters, when my Geek Dad tried to talk to me about the consequences of the partying continuing at our family home I just laughed at him. Who ever heard of a house collapsing from the load on the floors during party? I have been at  many parties and I have never heard of such a thing, have you? Our family home is a sturdily build wooden two story house, we had never had any indication that the floors might collapse. All the woodwork was in tiptop condition. Stop worrying, Geek Dad!

The night before my wedding day my father must have conceded that the after-party would, indeed, be at the family home. The father-of-the-bride is easily lost in the shuffle of wedding plans and he had definitely lost this battle. (The story of the force that is my mother shall be told another day!) As a last resort Geek Dad enlisted the help of our Best Man.  He showed him all of his calculations and explained, as only an over wrought engineer can, the potential danger of the wedding guests enjoying one last cup of tea at our family home the next day. To his credit our Best Man listened politely and nodded attentively as my dad instructed him to make the rounds during the wedding feast and dissuade everyone from attending the after-party. He did not, however, act on these carefully laid plans of subterfuge. 

The wedding went off without a hitch, the wedding feast was enjoyed by all, my new husband and I drove off into happily-ever-after and the after-party was in full swing until the wee hours of the morning. Did the floors cave in? Did the house collapse? What do you think?

I love you, Geek Dad!