Father's Day Quiz

Father’s Day Quiz

Father’s Day is coming up and it is a bit sobering to realize that my dad has been dead for fourteen years already.  Though there is a lot that I could say about him, the main thing that I have to thank him for is that in an age when males dominated their families, and women were often treated as second class citizens, Dad shared the housework and treated Mom as an equal partner.  That is a legacy that I hope he has passed on to his sons and grandsons.

Rather than saying more about someone that my children actually never really got much chance to know, I thought it might be fun to re-employ the quiz format to see how much every knew and let them find out more about him.  Siblings should be able to get an 8 on this, but for others, a 7 would be a great score.  These are all true or false.

1. Dad came from a family of mostly redheads.
2. Aside from mutton, the only two foods Dad said that he did not like were hominy and fried green tomatoes.
3. Dad was raised Baptist, when he and Mom wanted to get married he first had to convert to Catholicism.
4. Once when Mom could not get the laundry done, Dad had to wear her underwear for the day.
5. Dad did not want any of his sons named after him.
6. When we were young, Dad took the boys every two weeks to the barber shop to get haircuts.
7. Dad was pretty style conscious, so that probably helps to explain why all of his sons are the same way.
8. When he went he graduated from high school and went to join the Navy, Dad had to change the way he had always spelled his last name.
9. Though most of Dad’s family had blue eyes, Dad always listed his eye color as green.
10. Dad did not believe in corporal punishment.

Answers:

1.       True. Dad’s father, one sister and the majority of his brothers had red hair.

2.       True. Dad would eat almost anything. After having mutton for three months straight when stationed near Australia in the Navy, he said the site of it almost made him nauseous.

3.       False. Dad had to promise to raise the kids Catholic, but he did not actually convert himself until much later in life.

4.       True. I don’t think he advertised it, though.

5.       True.  But Steve had his first name as a middle name (Stephen James) and Ed has his middle name as a first name (Edward Charles).

6.       False. Dad bought a barber kit and cut all of our hair himself.

7.       False. Have you seen the family pictures?

8.       True. His immediate family had always spelled the last name Northern and so had he up  starthrough high school, but his birth certificate read Northen, so the Navy made him use that. His grandfather, William, by the way, had spelled it Northen.

9.       False. While Dad’s eyes had a lot of green in them, he always listed his eye color as hazel.

10.   False. Dad was not big on physical punishment. Mom was always the one who said “wait until your Dad gets home” but he would spank us once in a while when we misbehaved and on rare occasion got out the belt.

How'd you do?  Post comments, results, corrections, etc. below.