I was only four years old when my dad came home upset from work one day. “I quit!” he said. “I’m officially done working with buses.” Whatever. At that time I didn’t really care, but years later I would be begging to hear those same words again.

            My dad is about six feet tall and Jewish. He had straight blond hair as a kid, but it turned curly and black by the time I was born. Two important notes:  (1) He is enthusiastic about everything he does, and (2) sometimes I can’t figure out how he ever made any friends. After leaving his job at Muni, he and his friend decided to start a publishing company called “Basement Press”, and after four years of working at home, you can guess where they were still printing. That’s not to say that they didn’t publish anything good. In fact, one of his greatest projects was re-typing, editing, and printing a book written on scraps of Bounty paper towels (“the quicker picker-upper”) written by John White, the corn farmer from South Dakota. The book didn’t end up on the New York Times bestseller list, but thousands of people – I mean hundreds – fine, my dad’s closest friends – still bought it.

            After four years of working late every night as the vice president while his friend sat around drinking beer, my dad realized that he should have been the one making all the money. So he called him up one night.

            “Jim, let me have control of the company.”

            “No.”

            “Fine. I quit.”

            “Fine.”

            “Fine.” Silence. “Will you please hang up?”

            “Why do you care? You hang up first – you’re the one who’s quitting.”

            Awkward silence again.

            “OK, then I will.” Click. And that was the end of his publishing phase.

            After two more months of sitting at home, playing games on the New York Times website, and “riding his bike” (although for some reason it was always covered in dust), he came home seeming quite animated one afternoon. I sat comfortably positioned on the couch. “Nate, Daddy just landed himself a new job. I bet you can’t guess where!”

“AC Transit,” I said.

“Wrong! It’s at AC Transit!”

“That’s what I said,” I said.

“I know you’re excited too! I start work on Monday. As an AC Transit employee, you get to ride the bus for free, isn’t that great! FOR FREE!

“I know we’re Jewish dad, but the bus is only 50 cents a ride.”

“You don’t understand, Nate. Every 50 cents spent on a bus ride could go somewhere else. You’re always thinking about yourself, but what about the starving children in Djibouti? What about the countless number of animals put to death each year because nobody wants to adopt them? What about world peace, and the hope of a better tomorrow, a tomorrow without nuclear weapons and mass warfare, a tomorrow where everybody can live together, holding hands and singing songs of peace and happiness? What about that, huh? I’ll give you some time to reflect, young man.”

            Over time, my dad got more and more wrapped up in his job. I went to a few bus ceremonies, like the one introducing the new exhaust pipes for intercity routes, and the one in San Francisco where my father was just about to cut the red ribbon when a drunk homeless man without any pants approached and started pissing all over it.  But none of it was very interesting, and my dad’s new job didn’t seem like it was anything special. That is, until he heard about a new technology, a technology that would change my family’s life forever.

            “FUEL CELLS!” My dad jumped up and down in front of my room. I kept my concentration on the remaining sixty math problems I still had to do for homework.

            “Is that a different kind of fare box?” I asked nonchalantly.

            “Ho ha ho, you are very funny Nate. Actually, fuel cells are the new technology that will define our future. They’re little devices that create electricity when you add Hydrogen and Oxygen.

            “Cool. I have a lot of homework to do tonight, so could-”

            “And the only byproduct is water!”

Alright. I was getting a little upset with fifty-nine-and-a-half problems left. “Great dad, whatever makes you happy. But I’m really trying to-”

            “They can work on cars, and even on buses! EVEN ON BUSES!”  I didn’t really care, not because I wasn’t a good son, but because I knew that this would be another one of those little phases which blows over in a couple of days. “Nate you’re not paying attention. Listen. The wheel, electricity, the internal combustion engine, carbon fiber vehicle frames – all important inventions in the history of buses, right? But this one, this one surpasses them all.” My dad enthusiastically began to wave his hands about in the air. “It is a turning point in the reliance on oil, a hallmark in the transportation industry, a milestone in world of buses…”

            Suddenly my mom screamed from downstairs. “JAIMIE! COME DOWN HERE THIS INSTANT AND CLEAN THE PEE OFF THE TOILET SEAT!”

            “It wasn’t me I swear.” my dad said. “Actually it might have been.” He scampered off down the stairs like a little boy.

            When I said that I thought the fuel cells were just a phase, I was wrong. Very wrong. Unbelievably ridiculously, Bush-like wrong. Soon I would hear him talking on the phone almost three times a day. As AC Transit formed partnerships with companies relating to fuel cells, my dad made all sorts of interesting friends from different parts of the country. For instance, Rajesh Sabha, an Indian fellow who worked for the Mexican government, and Ianvon Donkenschniken who was in the lab when the first fuel cell was invented. With his obsession with fuel cells came longer and longer nights at the office until he never returned home before ten-thirty on weeknights. He’s an amazing man because he can continuously mimic fasting on Yom Kippur by only eating one meal a day. When I’m home alone with him on weekends, it makes for interesting eating habits.

            “Hey dad, it’s 5:30 in the afternoon…and…well, I was just wondering if I might be able have…lunch.” I gave him a hopeful look. He was playing ‘Transit Lord’ at www.busesarecool.com.

            “Nate, you crack me up with your humor. We’ll be having dinner soon and you don’t want to spoil your appetite.”

            “But I haven’t eaten for eighteen hours!”

“Have some cheese and crackers if you’re hungry.”

“But mom doesn’t stock up the house with food anymore because she knows that we’ll eat it, and if we do then she’ll have to go back to the super market, stock up again, and spend more money.”

            “She’s got a point. It’s winter Nate, heat is expensive.”

Perhaps due to all the stress from his job, my dad was stricken with quite an obscure eye problem. After doing a bit of research, he determined that it was an ancient genetic disorder passed down all the way from Zilpah, servant to Leah, and an original member of one of the twelve tribes of Israel. At random intervals between twenty and thirty seconds his eyes would shut. When he tried to open them, it was impossible for about three seconds.

And he still insisted on driving.

“HONNNNNNNNNK!”

“WATCH OUT DAD!”

“It’s alright, Nate. I can see.”

“Then why are your eyes closed!?”

It was a Saturday and he was driving me to Best Buy. As usual my dad was trying to make the best time possible, and that involved racing at speeds nonexistent in our system of counting. We were going fast, and when his eyes shut, we would slowly drift out of our lane until they reopened and he would speedily adjust the wheel barely in time to save us from yet another near-death experience. At least it wasn’t a two-lane road, those were the worst, I thought. Especially that time in the Swiss alps when he passed a 50-foot long moving van while his eyes were shut by switching into the other lane of traffic and speeding up to sixty, then swerving in front of it right as we were about to be hit be an oncoming oil truck. Yeah, at least it wasn’t that bad.

“Nate, as you may have been able to tell, I’ve been spending a bit of time at the office recently.” My dad was going to lecture me.

“I think that 16 hours is more that just ‘a bit,’” I replied.

“Maybe. But I haven’t had time to ask you about school, and if we’re going to buy a new DVD player, I wanted to make sure that you’re keeping up.”

“I am.”

“Well then, tell me about one of your teacher’s classes. How about Mr., what’s his name? Mr. B…i…e…u…y…o…”

“You mean Mr. Bye?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

“Well, we’ve been writing short stories.”

“Excuse me?” My dad looked upset.

“Short stories,” I said. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Aren’t you in Academic Choice? You’re supposed to be writing essays in Academic Choice. You’re supposed to be learning to think critically and intuitively so that can go to college and be prepared to compete in a globalizing world. You’re not supposed to be writing fairy-tale stories.” I’m glad I hadn’t told him the topic of the humor story I was planning to write. He pulled the car up to Best Buy and parked it. “Nate, I actually wanted to tell you that I’ve been working really hard at the office on this fuel cell technology. It’s going pretty well, and we’re having a giant world premiere of our fuel cell buses next month.”

“A world Premiere? I thought that the fuel cell was just a phase.”

“A what?”

“Never mind. I’ll be sure to be there, Dad. Thanks for telling me.”

I was there the next month, and I couldn’t believe what I saw. Maybe my dad did have a little bit of brain power, maybe I shouldn’t have been so skeptical about him. A ton of press and a lot of important people were there, but most importantly, the hundreds of friends my dad had made while working on this project all stood nearby. Like one of my dad’s closest partners Rajesh told me, “He might be nuts, but he’s just enthusiastic, and he gets the job done.”

[NOTE: My dad is dramatized for effect. He’s actually a pretty normal guy.]