This Was My First Father’s Day To Feel Lovely

I feared fatherly lineage would skip me over. My ancestors decided differently.

For Father’s Day, my in-laws drove up to Little Rock. Pops, the man who got me into cigars, wanted to run out and pick up a few high quality stogies to flavor our grilling later in the evening.

My son played compare and contrast with my beard and Pop’s, my all-black hair with his longer, peppered stubble. He picked him up and zoomed him through the air, with my kiddo leaving an exhaust of giggles and laughs in his wake. When nap time came for baby, we went to our office, where he gave me tips on how to season the large humidor my wife gifted me. We departed to Cigar Republic a few minutes later.

I was wearing my Notorious BIG “Big Poppa” t-shirt. The cigar sommelier was a deeply melaninated brother wearing a dark pork pie hat with a complementing, short sleeve Hawaiian shirt. He complimented my shirt and immediately declared BIG to be the superior rapper over 2Pac. His opinion was the correct answer.

Pops disagreed.

“Boy, I was in LA when Pac was alive! I can’t tell you what it was like to get out there on them streets and to have Pac blasting on the radio.”