My Dads Resume

As an adult man, one of the weird feelings that I get is when my dad asks me for help with something. I am not put off by it, I really appreciate that he looks to me for help with something that he thinks I am good at. That's a really wonderful feeling, especially because I have my own son and know that it's really important for me as a father to be able to impart knowledge on my son and that he feels confident in me and my abilities.

My dad is going through some issues at his job where he's just got an overall shitty work environment. He has people that he works with that are just assholes and it's a back-stabbing environment. It's pretty messed up too because he's been there for over 20 years, given so much to the place that he works at but all of that changes when you have pieces of shit that you work with. I think we can all relate to that situation!

One day my dad turned from ranting to asking me for help, can I help him fix his resume so he can put it out there and apply for jobs? I was taken aback for sure, because he's complained about the people he works with before but never to the extent where he is thinking of saying fuck it and going to work somewhere else. This was a pretty serious step, but I was also a little nervous that he was instilling a lot of trust into me, to help him build a resume that works! Ahh what the hell?!

I took my resume which is much different than his in terms of the various skills since he works in a different industry than me, but I took my shell and applied a bunch of the things for him so that he can at least have a starting point. It really felt weird putting his name at the header, info and all that and then trying to figure out how I would break down his work experience and all that shit. I spent a good hour on it one morning and really got it to where I thought it was something half decent, but it just needed his professional touch to add in the details of his job that I really had no idea about.

I wonder if he would ever go through it, and get a new job? I don't know because he's had challenges in the past with other things in life and instead of saying fuck it and throwing in the towel, he digs in and gets things figured out. With this situation, I don't know if there is a lot he can do because of the shitty people around him but it was definitely a strange feeling to have to help my dad, who I've looked up to for so long and tried to work to be as good of a man as him, needed my help with something.

It was a very somber moment for me in a lot of ways, and a sign that we are indeed getting older. It reinforced a little bit of the finite nature that is life, and how beautiful but sad at the same time it can be. I've seen a bunch of memes lately that I think I'll drop in the comments but it's the dad taking pieces of himself so that he can put his son together as whole, and things like that choke me up thinking of how I have gotten those wonderful experiences with my dad, and I'm in turn doing the same with my son. I know these are really important things to have happen in life, because they are normal but man it doesn't prevent them from being emotional and hard to deal with!

I think at the end of the day though, I am just happy to have been able to help my dad in whatever small way I did, considering how much he has sacrificed for me. Whether or not he actually goes and uses the resume to apply and subsequently accept a position is one thing, but just being able to help my dad even take that first step was huge for me. I'm getting a little choked up writing it but it's a proud and sad moment for sure.

What about you, have you had to help your parents with something big like this? How did you deal with it?