Kids and Dads

As part of Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) week, yesterday, in conjunction with a small carnival, was “Bring Your Child to Work Day” — an event I redubbed “Rugrat Tag-Along Day” many years ago.

I don’t think seeing where Mommy and Daddy work for my kids isn’t particularly exciting because they’re up here all the time. Until they started elementary school, both of my kids spent every day at the FAA’s Daycare, which is only one building away from where Susan and I worked. It was not uncommon at all for our kids to visit our cubicals after work, and they did on a regular basis. Both of our white boards were regularly adorned with drawings by our kids. When they get a little older and start to grasp what Sue and I do for a living, they might find it a little more interesting.

Visiting my dad at work as a kid was much more exciting for us, although he probably didn’t think so either. Growing up, my dad worked for a large local printing company. The printing presses were large, noisy, and dangerous. Earplugs were mandatory for workers, and walkways were clearly marked to keep visitors away from the presses (which were maybe a hundred feet in length) and out of the path of speeding forklifts. Seeing the press room, when we got to, was exciting and scary.

Back then Dad worked Monday through Friday from 3pm-11:30pm. Occasionally, we (Mom, Linda and I) would take him some food or go eat dinner with him in the snack bar. The snack bar has a collection of vending machines that dispensed cans of soda, cold sandwiches, and hot drinks (coffee and hot chocolate). Dad always had change in his pocket for Linda and me, which we would almost spent on M&Ms, Skittles, or Twix candy bars.

Typically, guests weren’t allowed to go back into the press room; instead, upon arrival, we would go directly to the snack bar and call Dad on the phone from there. After a few minutes of waiting he would arrive. He’d walk around the corner and we would run and hug him. His pants always smelled like ink. I don’t even know if I knew then that’s what the smell was, but it was ink. When I worked at Oklahoma Graphics during the summer of 1993, my pants smelled like that all the time. Before tossing them in the washer, occasionally I would smell them and it would instantly take me back fifteen years to that snack bar.

Dad’s breaks were never long. Soon he’d have to return to the press room and we would go back home where I would lie in bed and try real hard to stay awake until Dad got home so I could smell that ink one more time.