The Truth Behind Reality

Growing up, I pictured my family as being a fairly typical unit that fit quite nicely into the American stereotype. In this instance, I thought my father was a quote on quote normal man who had gone through pretty much the same obstacles that most males go through during the course of their lifetime. I didn’t realize how wrong I was until I was about fifteen or sixteen years old. I found out that my father was unlike any other man that I had ever met, and will ever meet in my life. I had originally pictured him as a middle aged man, who grew up in the suburb we live in now under the love and care of his mother and father, who went through school like most other children around the area, and then pursued his career in advertising once he graduated from college. My father, Eric (although more commonly called Rick) Ree Eggan, was anything but the man that I had thought he was.

I didn’t really begin to learn what my father had gone through as a person until I was in the latter stages of my teenage years, where I would merely sit down and converse with him about his life. These talks that I had with my father, either alone or at the dinner table (which happened often) will always be a part of me, as they have made me respect him and idolize him as my father, and as my hero. Through the conversations that I shared with him, I acquired many new facts about him that I never would have dreamt.

At the age of fifteen my father was kicked out of the house by his mother, for reasons I still don’t quite know. I do know that my father and his mother simply never saw things from the same perspective. Furthermore, my father’s mother cheated on her husband (with a man whom I am named after?) before he was born; thus, he never met his real father as a child. Luckily for my father, He later met his dad in Oregon just a year before he passed away. To add on to the story, my dad never attended college, but rather he began working at a gas station (where he actually met my mother) and limousine company after high school. Finally, against the will of my grandparents (mother’s side) he married my mother, Sally.

Without a doubt, meeting my mother was the best thing that happened to my dad, as she/my grandparents saved his life in more ways than one. Like I said earlier, he eventually became curious enough to search for his real father, and was successful. Furthermore, he went back to college and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Business Advertising in 2004. He began working for my grandfather, which led to him taking the company over, and eventually selling it; thus becoming a millionaire. To go from such troubles as a child, to living the life he does now shows what kind of man my father really is.

To have the completely wrong perception of the life my father has had, and to actually learn of what he has overcome to get to where he is now, will forever impact my life. I felt quite naïve once I found out the truth. To assume that my father was “normal” was foolish of me. I simply never understood how someone who went through all that could turn out as amazing as he has. But to find out that how something I had perceived for such a long time was so far from the truth, really made me comprehend how different everyone is. This newly found truth will influence how I make assumptions later on in life, and how “sure” I feel I am on a certain subject.