What My Father Told Me

A lot of my childhood consisted of listening to my father telling me stories. He was a master of story-telling. In fact, as far as I can tell my father is a master of everything. Although that might be a biased view point on my part and my mother loves to tell me otherwise. She says that it's bad for his ego if even his daughter thinks he's absolutely perfect, although even she admits that he comes pretty close.

You see, my father's pretty famous, for acting amongst other things. He has a pretty rabid if fairly boundary respecting fan-base and he's incredibly proud of them. He's forever trying to do little things for them, things that'll make them happy like wearing t-shirts they've created and posting the pictures online. Often he'll stop and talk to a fan in the street. I like this side of him but unfortunately it means that I have to share him with the rest of the world. I can only imagine how my mother feels. What with all the swooning fan girls all the time. Sometimes a couple will discover where we live and they'll either agree to not let it leak or we'll have to give them something that they want. Usually it's a kiss from my father, if they're so bold. Either they'll swoon when he exclaims he's a taken man showing off his ring finger or my mother will give him a discrete nod, watch as he kisses them on the cheek and roll her eyes before huffing inside. Apparently there was this one waitress...

Oh, but I'm getting ahead of myself. That's the story of my parents' first date. I'll come to that later. Anyway. My father told me stories. He'll still tell me stories. We'll be on video chat during term time and he'll break in to a 'did I ever tell you about the time?' Usually he will have done but I like to hear them just the same. Sometimes my mother will butt in with random facts and try to start a conversation with me halfway through the story. My father will bat her away impatiently declaring that he was just coming to the best part (every part was the best part) and send her off with a cheeky pinch. The way they are disgusted me when I was younger and I'm still a bit iffy about them being all touchy-feely in front of me now. But there was a stormy patch when I was maybe fifteen and I've learned to appreciated it since. Sometimes, and this is truly disgusting to me, my mother will come over and offer him whatever she's baking, she loves to bake. She'll dip her finger in to the bowl, he'll lick (truly this grosses me out) the mix off her finger and they'll both hurriedly sign off.
Ew.

I love the stories that I'm told though. When I was younger it was ancient myths and legends. As I grew older and more curious about my father's lifestyle it was stories of his life. My mother told me stories when my father was working and they were made up fantasy epics improvised on the moment. They'd both charge around the house with me, playing made up games of their own. They said it was designed for me but both of them are such playful big kids that I wouldn't be surprised if it was just for them. To be fair to her though, my mother has also lived an interesting life – traveling everywhere before settling down when her and my father became serious. But I tend to travel with her during the summer holidays when my father's away as she's a teacher and I'm in university.

It was on one of these long university summer holidays that I somehow managed to collect all of the tales involving one of the greatest stories of all time. How my parents came to be.