My Dad

this is a shout out to my dad. he is one of the greatest people i know. my dad and i have our differences, and we don't always see eye to eye, but in the end, he always loves me no matter what. and i always love him no matter what. my dad is a hard worker. he is a loving husband. (my mom and dad still act like newlyweds, holding hands all over the place and kissing in front of their kids all the time.) he is supportive of my choices, even when i almost went to the rival university. also, he taught me early on in life (generally while shoveling snow) that service is something that doesn't take a long time, but it can mean a lot to other people. whenever we'd shovel snow, we'd do a neighbor's walk way (and sometimes driveway) as well. we always happen to live next door to people either who are young and only have young kids or who are on the older end of things and are empty nesters, so it makes a big difference to them to have the snow taken care of for them. i have some favorite memories of my dad. one christmas when we were little, my dad got us a Nintendo 64. it was the coolest thing ever. we got donkey kong and super smash bros. those are the two main games. for that whole next year he'd come home from work and sit down with us to play nintendo. sometimes he played the story game that is single player and we all watched, but the best times were when we would all play a multi-player game. I didn't get a controller in my hands often because i wasn't as good as my brothers, so they liked to take it from me, but even with my poor skills, i loved playing nintendo with my dad. another memory of my dad: one night, i woke up in the middle of the night after a bad dream. usually i woke my mom up for these kinds of things, but for some reason that i can't recall, i woke up my dad this time. he had me tell him about the dream. then he gave me a big hug and told me not to worry because nothing bad would happen to me while i was in his house. he would protect me no matter what. i slept much better at night after that. i love my dad a lot, and i hope he knows it. he has been an excellent father to me.