Dads can tell old wives' tales too

An old wives' tale is a type of urban legend, similar to a proverb, which is generally passed down by old wives to younger generations. Such 'tales' usually consist of superstition, folklore or unverified claims with exaggerated and/or untrue details. Today, old wives' tales are still common among children in school playgrounds, but there are some that are, shall we say, more home grown.

When we were kids, I remember sitting on my parents' bed, and my Dad telling us bedtime stories. Oftentimes, the story line involved Indian scouts and their encounters with wild animals, such as grizzly bears or mountain lions. He'd set the stage, as if we were sitting around the campfire, and we'd imagine ourselves under the star filled skies. Sometimes, we'd request to hear them again, maybe a day or so later, but if he changed the story in any way, he was destined to be corrected. It was his way of introducing us to stories of the West, which was always one of his passions. We were his "little Indians", and believe me, if we got out of line, he and my Mom would have been on the warpath.

One of his stories was not about Indians or grizzly bears though; it was a personal story of how he was stepped on by a horse when he was young. My father has quite the chest you see with a deep indentation about the size of a man's fist, and for years, he told us that a horse had stepped on him when he was back on the farm in Iowa. That was how he "acquired" his chest deformity; it was deep enough that water could puddle on his chest when we were swimming at the beach. Of course, who were we to question him since there were indeed horses on the farm? Over time, naturally, we figured out the truth about his high stepping horse story, but it was one of those tales that will always remain with us.

After his open heart surgery in 1987, my older brother received the phone call from the hospital signaling that Dad was out of surgery and doing well. Knowing that we were all anxious to hear the news, he said, "they fixed Dad's chest too". That's when we knew he was out of harm's way.

Yes, there are lots of stories from those years growing up at home, but trust me, none could have been any closer to his heart than that one!