Like Father, Like Daughter

The ill-fated former principal at the high school was well known for being verbose---to the point of filibuster. He simply would not shut up—ever.

I was on the site-based team with him.  And at a meeting when this principal was in a circuitous oration, I, in total frustration, while sitting next to him, touched him on the arm, looked him straight in the eye, and respectfully said I think you have made your point—can we move on to the next item on the agenda because I’ve got be back home by dinnertime.

And last week I was in Yonkers at a wake for a family friend. My mother noticed in the crowd a man who had been a colleague with my father back when he was an administrator. So the two of us went over to speak with him.

The man told us that whenever he thought my father, he thought of a particular story. It was a tale my mother and I had never heard before. It seemed my father, at a superintendent’s meeting, was frustrated at the way a committee member had been carrying on way too long about a particular topic. And so, at his breaking point, my father interrupted him, looked at his watch and said Excuse me. Is there any chance we might be out of here sometime before Thanksgiving?

Apples do not fall far from trees.

Like father, like daughter.