Father’s Day reality check: Dads can give really odd advice

Today is all about gauzy tributes to the deep, soulful wisdom of our beloved fathers, about proclaiming our eternal gratitude for Dad’s profound guidance on how to live and grow and thrive.

Except most of us didn’t have THAT father.

“Eighty percent of people don’t care about your problems, and the other 20% are glad you have them,” the decidedly unsentimental father of art dealer and erstwhile Laguna Beach city councilman Peter Blake once observed, setting him up for years of internal reckoning.

“You can’t run with the big dogs if you piss like a puppy” was the tough-guy motto of the Sartor family of — where else? — New Jersey. Their father’s alleged wisdom has provided material that  Lisanne Sartor and Colette Sartor of Los Angeles — identical twins, writers and filmmakers — mine to this very day.

Diana Hong’s dad had a rather dark sense of humor. When she was a kid, too scared to go on a roller coaster or somesuch, he’d say, “What’s the worst that can happen? You die? That’s already going to happen, so if the worst is already going to happen, what do you have to be afraid of?” He also told her to take French instead of Spanish in high school, “which is probably the worst piece of advice, considering we’ve always lived in California.”

Amid all the greeting card schmaltz you’ll hear today, we’re aiming to be your Father’s Day reality check. While our dads may have loved and sacrificed and provided for us — and for that we are indeed grateful — they’ve also given us outrageous, funny and just plain dumb advice. They’ve yelled at the waiter, pounded on the hood of the boyfriend’s car, drank too much at the family reunion and told Uncle Billy precisely why everyone hates him.

This is the paternal reality we embrace today.

Father knows best?

Pat Boone has sold more than 45 million records, logged dozens of Top 40 hits, and, at age 89, is running around the country promoting his new single “Grits,” a love song to the southern staple. The song literally came to him in a dream. It’ll be out on a new double album called “Country Jubilee” in September. But his dad — who was an architect and building contractor — was not exactly encouraging Boone’s musical career.

“He didn’t say ‘Don’t to it,’ ” Boone said. “He said, ‘Look, the life of an entertainer is an iffy thing. So many people go into that profession and get lost. They get popular and successful and their lives go sideways. I don’t think that’s smart of you, to be a professional singer.’ “

Perhaps Dad changed his mind when Elvis Presley was Boone’s opening act?

Brian Levin had a lot to live up to. His dad grew up during the Depression and was a teenage medic in the U.S. Army. Dad was still a kid when he was captured by the Nazis in 1944.

“His counsel was to never waste food, and make sure you get a practical medical education because his stated ‘ability’ to perform surgeries saved his life while in prison camp, where he was slated for execution for anti-German espionage,” said Levin, a criminal justice professor and director of CSU San Bernardino’s Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism.

“He pleaded for me to be a doctor, learn French and play the piano, three things I never achieved.”

The advice from Christian Senrud‘s dad has always been eminently practical — save 10% of every pay check, get your oil changed regularly, etc. “He also taught me how to drive a stick shift, then accidentally ran over a groundhog on the way home from the empty parking lot where he taught me. So it was a hard lesson of ‘keep your eyes on the road,’” said Senrud, a stand-up comedian from Long Beach.

Jeffrey Ball, president and CEO of the Orange County Business Council, was forced to develop a good sense of humor. “While in college I interviewed at a local radio station for a part-time job as a newscaster. When I got the call telling me that I got the job, the first thing I did was call my father to let him know. His response: ‘From the moment you were born, I just knew that you would have the perfect face for radio.’ “

He has learned to pay it forward. Ball’s son had an open fracture on his finger. The anxiety was high as they met with the surgeon. Ball asked if, when this is all over, his son would be able to play the violin. “Of course,” the surgeon said. To which Ball responded, “That’s great! Because he doesn’t play the violin now.”

Ba-dum-bum.

No, Dad! No!

Nancy Clark had two dads to deal with: Her bio dad, and her stepdad.

Her bio dad didn’t like her college boyfriend. That young man drove an old car with doors that wouldn’t always open, requiring the youngsters to climb through the windows for ingress and egress. Her dad predicted her boyfriend would be a bum, but he turned out to be very successful in real estate and helped her start her business — Nancy Clark and Associates, which provides treatment for substance use disorder and has been a Costa Mesa staple for 33 years.

It was Clark’s stepfather, her mom’s third husband, who is “without a doubt the person who directed my life.”

They met when Clark was 7, and he had no children of his own. “But I always knew he loved me and wanted the best for me and of me. A strict taskmaster, his mantra was to ‘Work hard to play hard.’ So on Father’s Day, though I celebrate my father, I am most grateful for the ‘dad’ who inspired me in a life-changing way.”

U.S. Rep. Katie Porter said it took her some time to puzzle out her dad’s advice.

“When I would get frustrated, as a kid, my dad would tell me to ‘lower my expectations.’ I used to think it was terrible; shouldn’t every parent want their kid to have high hopes and push for the best things in life?” she said.

“But there have definitely been moments in Congress when I ask myself how to keep enduring the naked partisanship … and I tell myself: Lower your expectations! I now understand that he meant that not to cap my potential, but to help me stay engaged even in difficult situations.”

Stuart Gibbs, author of the bestselling Spy School series, said this: “My father honestly gave me this piece of advice when I was a kid, and I passed it down to my son as well:  Never pee into the wind.”

A father’s heart

There are, apparently, some very lucky people.

Try as we might, we couldn’t get a “bad dad advice” story out of many of the folks we pressed for same. Marshall Kaplan is one of them.

The son of a typographer for the Lynn Telegraph News, Kaplan drafted urban policy for Jimmy Carter’s White House and built the University of Colorado Denver’s graduate school of public policy into a respected institution. Locally, Kaplan ran Paul Mirage’s charitable foundations and has poured his heart into the El Sol Foundation, supporting the dual-immersion science and arts academy in Santa Ana.

His dad came to the U.S. from England and had to quit school in the 8th grade to help keep his family alive during the Depression. He was an air raid warden during the war. When Kaplan, a second-grader, wrote plays, his dad had them printed up in zinc-based type. “Hot off the press,” his dad would say. “You are going to be good writer.”

One winter night, his dad filled a hollowed out part their yard with water, let it freeze, and presented his kids with their own ice rink. After Kaplan achieved the pinnacle of parental ambition — admission to Harvard Law School — he quit a few days later to enroll in MIT’s public planning program. His dad was still supportive. “I am proud you had a good choice between two good schools,” his dad said. “We have many lawyers…and you will be a good city planner.” His books on urban planning were proudly displayed over the fireplace, and Kaplan’s dad encouraged him to make what we now think of as “good trouble.”

Lucky. Same for “Illustrator to the Stars” Robin Preiss Glasser.

Much of her dad’s family was killed by the Nazis, and he fled Germany for the Philippines. He said that every day he wakes up alive is a gift. When young Preiss Glasser wanted to become a professional ballet dancer, he was behind her 100%. When injury made her hang up her slippers and she returned to school to become an illustrator, he cheered her on. Through the “Fancy Nancy” series and all the rest of her fabulous success, her dad was her champion.

“The only thing he ever said was that, when they went to the Philippines from Germany, he couldn’t swim and was afraid of the water,” Preiss Glasser said. “So his dad said he needed to learn, because the Philippines was an island, and in case it sank, he had to know how to at least tread water. A good metaphor for life, basically, no?”

Yes. Ken Potrock, president of the Disneyland Resort, learned the subtleties of hospitality from his dad — developing an aversion to pickles in the process.

“My father loved being a restauranteur and his guiding principle was that you treat customers and employees as you would treat members of your own family. I channel this sage advice every time I interact with our Cast Members or welcome guests to The Happiest Place on Earth. To this day, I still have an aversion to pickles which means I won’t go near the pickle barrel on Main Street, U.S.A.!”

I’m happy for these folks. Really. But I wasn’t quite so lucky.

My dad couldn’t conceive of why a girl wanted to go to college, and ordered me to secretarial school instead. He tried to talk me out of taking my first newspaper job in Louisiana and threatened to nail my feet to the floor when I announced I was taking a year off to travel through Africa, India and Europe (though I was nearly 30 at the time). His career advice to my brother, who was never academically inclined, was to be a dentist. His life advice to us all was, “When someone hits you, you hit them back TWICE as hard!”

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, they say. Peter Blake understands. He spent years working through that “nobody cares about your problems/ some are actually glad you have them” wisdom from his dad. But no regrets.

“I’m glad he did it because, really, who the hell wants to hear about our problems?” Blake laughed.

Happy father’s day, y’all.