Dearest Popsicle

Some facts about my Daddio, Owen Stanley Reichman:

-He is a doctor. His favorite medical advice is to take some Advil and go to sleep and it'll probably feel better in the morning. And you know what? It usually does. His other favorite medical advice is to diagnose whatever ailment I'm experiencing as chronic neurosis. And you know what? It usually is.

- He is hilarious and always makes me laugh, even when I'm really grumpy and don't feel much like laughing. He loves jokes and he always has great ones. I always try to remember them when he tells me so that I can retell it, but it's never quite as good as when he told it. My brother recently bought him a t-shirt with his most favorite joke of all time:

 - He is the hardest working person I know, and we are all spoiled rotten from all of his hard work. He has taught me through example that hard things are worth doing. And that if work was always fun, it would be called a hobby.

- He loves his family. His happiest times are when we are all gathered together. Unless we are playing cards, in which case we all need to just be quiet and play cards and stop talking and singing and play the dang game.

- He is the definition of selfless. I'm pretty sure his picture is next to that word in the dictionary.

- He is a great teacher. Even if some if his students are positive that they already know the proper way to swing a golf club/ get up on slalom skis/ drive a car, even though they have never done any of the aforementioned things before.

- He is way cool. He loves boating, hiking, camping, golfing, jet-skiing, scuba-diving, traveling, working out, biking, and just about everything else that can be done outdoors. And even though my default setting is to be very "indoorsy", I am slowly learning to love all of things too. Except golf. Never golf. 

- He is my favorite sounding board for any ideas/worries I have. He is so smart and wise, and he almost always has a better idea than whatever I came up with. But on the rare occasion that I have a good idea, he is an excellent cheerleader and supporter.

- He has a favorite child, and her name is Amy. Come on siblings, you know it's true.

- He is the best Dad in the entire world.

 I am my Dad's daughter, in every sense of the phrase. People have been telling me that I look just like him since I was little, which I really didn't take as a compliment. My dad is handsome for a middle aged man, but it's not really what I was going for as a 13 year old girl. I lamented one time to my Mom that I looked just like Pops, but with boobs and hair. We have the same butt chin. The same brown eyes. The same skinny chicken legs under our same thick torsos. When I was 13, I wasn't very excited about all of these similarities. But now, I couldn't be more proud to look just like my dad. And I hope that our similarities don't end with our looks. In fact, if I grow up to be exactly like my dad (minus the whole being a man thing), I will consider my life to have been a tremendous success.

One of my greatest triumphs in life is making my dad cry. For years and years, he was an absolute rock. I never saw him cry! But now that his babies are all growing up and getting married and whatnot, the dam has burst. Making him cry may not be as much of a rarity these days, but it's still something worth noting. And if my Dad cries? I am toast. It doesn't matter if he's crying because BYU is stinking it up at basketball; If he cries, I cry. We have this kind of unspoken bond. Neither of us is very fond of getting all touchy feely, so we just side-hug it out, with the silent message being that I'll always be my daddy's little girl. So when we did the daddy-daughter dance at my wedding, I chose some dumb song that I don't really care about so that I wouldn't bawl like a goober through the whole thing. But the song I really wanted to pick was "Father and Daughter" by Paul Simon. But I knew that if we danced to this song, I would sob uncontrollably and I didn't think I could handle it.

And there will never be a daughter loved her father more than I love you.

Happy Father's day to the best of them all.

Love,

Your Amy Lynners