Article December 27, 1975 Issue

To Please My Father

RAE LAFAY M. COTTLE

Many of us are told from childhood that we must have goals. It does seem that growth and progress often come with setting, pursuing, and achieving goals. Pondering this one day, I asked myself what my goals really were.

Thinking back, I remembered goals I had set myself, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. An early, important one was to be the kind of person my dad expected me to be—no easy task, since he expected me to do everything a boy could and would do, and I happened to be a girl.

This demand brought about my first demonstration of dominion over the belief of limitation. I could dig worms, row a boat quietly and smoothly while Daddy cast for bass; I knew how to clean fish, shoot a rifle accurately, run an outboard, clean the gas line on my old Model A Ford, and a myriad of other things few girls were called upon or able to do.

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