The phrase shouldn’t be a threat but a gentle reminder
“You listen to me. You say you don't want to tell me how to live my life. So, what do you think you've been doing? You tell me what rights I've got or haven't got, and what I owe to you for what you've done for me. Let me tell you something. I owe you nothing! If you carried that postal bag a million miles, you did what you're supposed to do! Because you brought me into this world. And from that day you owed me everything you could ever do for me like I will owe my son if I ever have one.”
--Dr. John Prentice to his father in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?
Believe it or not, this father/son exchange was considered simple logic from a play/movie of the late 1960s; the dialogue would seem almost comedic, outdated, and ridiculous today—the thought that a father “owes” his son, and that a son could speak so frankly and openly with his father about his obligations. It’s probably unheard of anymore. And isn’t that indicative of so very much? But frankly, I like to think the world ran a little better when fathers felt an overwhelming obligation to their children and children felt a similar obligation back!
My dad, uncles, and grandfathers all seemed to have one common thread running through their treatment of me as I grew: I was to be treated as a young man—not a child. Everything they suggested, every behavior they modeled, was intended to be an example of the man I was to become. I drank thirstily from that cup. I couldn’t wait to be “like them.”
