There was no one quite like my father in our town. When any other man had an extra dollar, he bought a drink; when Father had an extra dollar, he bought a book. Other people had pictures on their walls; we had books, 3000   of them, lining every vertical surface of our little four-room house.

Father was the most persistent scholar I ever knew. He earned seven degrees, attended 11 different colleges and universities, and in 1951, when he was 82, sent us a cheerful little note from England to say that he had just enrolled for a graduate course in Elizabethan literature at Oxford.

I was the immediate beneficiary of Father's unbelievable hunger to learn. Every spring, he would take me hiking through the mountains to study mineral formations. On clear winter nights, he would set up a telescope and wake me to view the stars. After I grew up, wherever I traveled around this earth, the stars remained my friends.

Plain, distinct speech was a particular concern of my father and he was constantly drilling me in the art of elocution （演讲技巧）.Before I was three, he was reading aloud to me from the Bible, Shakespeare and Mark Twain. Thereafter, read aloud to him so he could work on my diction. By the time I was in the fifth grade, I could recite from a whole range of classical literature and poetry.

Of course, there had been times as a young man, when I got tired of study and devoted my time to playing. Then Father would admonish me succinctly by quoting a saying from Shakespeare, "If all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious （乏味的）as to work."

Obviously, his efforts were not entirely in vain, for my voice has enabled me to earn a fair livelihood. But that fact doesn't begin to define the enormous debt I owe my father.

Take a seat. Daddy has something to share with you. I would like us to have a heart-to-heart-even though, over the years, you have slowly broken mine. Oh shut up; you so have! If you go out and ask any mother or father out there, I guarantee they’ll say the same thing: All children break their parents’ hearts. It’s just what children do. In fact, it’s what Daddy’s own mother continues to remind him still, to this very day, every time they speak on the phone.

In your baby years, you vomited (呕吐), pooped and peed all over me. In your teen years, you came home from parties and vomited red wine all over my already-dirty carpets. There was a time you experimented with drugs and all those things I hate. Where does the heartbreak end?

Still, I want you to know you are loved, because various parenting magazines insist that’s my responsibility: to make you feel special and valued and so on. And of course Daddy loves you! Don’t you see? And Daddy values you. Very much so. How could he not value you, when you, as a test-tube baby, cost so much to come into this world?

Now you’re old enough to hear the truth about parenting. And it’s this: all kids annoy their parents. Like you, I started off adorable. Then I went through my weird-body-shape-and-acne years, lost all my cuteness, developed an attitude and never once did I apologize to my parents for stealing the best years of their lives.

When you become a parent yourself, here are some parenting skills you might want to try that have been passed down from countless generations of angry Asians before me. Passive aggression is always welcome. Regular scream“I WISH YOU HAD NEVER BEEN BORN” will help keep your own kid’s self-respect in check. But whatever happens, ensure you earn enough money in your adult life. Then give it to me, so I can go on expensive international tours. If you do this I promise I’ll stop complaining and leave you alone, because we both know that’s what we really want. Love you lots, Cutie-Pie.

Daddy