Me and my dad are complete opposites. He likes to take new things on nice and slow with caution, while I like to take new things on with excitement and little caution. He always minds the consequences, I don’t. He’s a runner, I’m a biker. He likes the color blue, I like green. He sees life as something you have to be careful with, I see it as something that you can do whatever the hell you want with.

And with being opposites comes the trouble of not getting along. We often argue with each other when doing the funnest things. Whenever we go kayaking together he doesn’t want to go down that narrow canal, but I do. I want to stop on that small island and walk on it in the middle of the ocean, but he doesn’t. Often we can both turn the funnest activities into the most horrible. Though the one thing we often do together without arguing is playing a good game of chess, though we haven’t done that in a while.

My dad has more of cautious attitude towards life. At first, I never understood why he was so afraid of taking risks, but then he explained it to me.

He grew up in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston. It wasn’t a rough part of Boston, but it wasn’t the safest either. He told me how he got this cautious attitude from his mother. His mother had to watch over nine children, and constantly had to know where each one was, who they were with, and what they were doing. She was the one who always proceeded with caution. So thus growing up with that kind of mother (he never told me about his father’s personality), the traits passed on to my father. He took those cautious and careful feelings.

And then you look at how I’m growing up. Small seaside town with little crime, middle class family, a little brat sister, and two loving parents.  Much less frightening than how my father grew up, in a much more peaceful place. And I love the town I’m growing up in.