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If you catch me making a bad joke, making friends with a stranger, or enthusiastically sharing a crazy story about my latest adventure, those characteristics I learned from my dad, the self-proclaimed “Cool Cat Carranza.”
I wish I had inherited his coordination, too. Did you know Las Vegas Casinos will kick you out for 24 hours if you win too many big stuffed animals? My dad knows all about it because it happens to him every time. He was the only dad I’ve ever seen drop into a half pipe on a skateboard, and at 70 years old, he can still beat me in a 100-meter race.
When I visit him, there is a good chance he’ll bust out a hover board or a tractor; my dad loves toys. He will proudly tell you that he’s still just a kid who loves to have fun.
As a kid, my dad was known to be a little bit naughty and always smiling. He was the youngest boy in the family, and it was probably a good thing that he had 13 brothers and sisters to keep him in line. If you ask me his athletic abilities, probably come from decades of running away from his siblings and my Mama Rosa.
I never turn down my dad’s stories about his childhood. I might question their accuracy, but never their entertainment value.
He recently told me how he would jump on his cousin’s donkey and give it pellitos to make it run so he could cruise around town. It was all fun and games, he said, until once, the donkey got the urge to “befriend” a female donkey, and he was stuck on top of the commotion while the neighborhood kids pointed and laughed at him.
My dad came to this country at thirteen years old and although he was small for his age, he worked in the fields alongside older brothers and sisters. He didn’t like being covered in peach fuzz, and when the plane flew over and sprayed the orchards, his skin would burn, but still, he will tell you he was the fastest picker and how much he loved eating all the fruit, climbing ladders and pulling pranks.
He is the ultimate half-glass-full kind of guy. My whole life he has told me that everything is about attitude, and he has truly taken each step of his life with a healthy dose of positivity.
His outlook on life is impressive especially when you consider that at a very young age, he witnessed his own father killed. When this tragedy hit my family, they all had to leave their home and learn a whole new language and culture to survive.
It’s heartbreaking for me to think about what my dad endured and yet he still graduated high school as the valedictorian of his class and set school track records. He left the valley with a full ride at the University of Santa Barbara, where he earned his master’s in psychology and started his own business. This is where he met my grandma, Lucy Pino, but that’s a story for another time.
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His career always centered around helping people; he saw the best in every person, almost to a fault. Anyone begging on the street he would invite to eat; down on their luck, he’d lend them money.
Growing up my dad’s house was always full. Cousins who were in trouble were sent to live with us and be counseled by their Tío Javi; if anyone needed work, he would hire them. Some of my best memories were the three-day family parties with the whole family. Tíos and primos sleeping in every corner of the house, cooking, music and by the end of it my dad would have a plunger in hand unclogging the toilet.
My dad is the kind of dad who has to have the best parking spot, makes up his own lyrics to songs, will stop to check out a classic car and ask how much they want for it.
I never doubt if my dad is proud or loves me, and the older I get the more I appreciate what a privilege it is to be the daughter of Javier Carranza.
Te quiero mucho Cool Cat Carranza, eres el màs chingón!
