There would always be one gift he would hide from us. There would be clues all over the house that we'd follow, ending up somewhere obscure like inside the dryer. Every year after the last gift was opened, he would go into the faux befuddlement of hmmm, 'is that all?' until we found the first clue. The best year of these surprise gifts was Intellivision. As everyone who knew Dad well is aware, he was no conformist when it came to electronics. He was a Macintosh guy before anyone knew what a computer was. When VHS was sweeping the nation, he bought a Beta max. Video gaming systems were no different. No Atari games at the Patty household. We went crazy with delight when we followed the clues to a shelf in his office, where at least 10 games were fanned out on a bookshelf and underneath it a shiny Intellivision console. Robyn jumped up and down with glee even though at 7 she wasn't really sure what she was so excited about yet😄.
We spent all of that Christmas and days after that playing Skiing, Football, Poker, some Space Invaders knock-off, some cool snaky thing called Snafu, etc... Robyn and I were mesmerized at Dad's skill level, which we could only attribute to his many years playing high school sports. It wasn't until many many years later that Mom told us the truth. He'd been staying up every night before Christmas playing the games after we went to bed. HA!
I love and miss you so much Dad.
xoxoxoxoxo
Joi
Monday, December 12th, 2016