Dad, How Do I?: Practical "Dadvice" for Everyday Tasks and Successful Living

By Rob Kenney

From the host of the YouTube channel that went viral—Dad, How Do I?—comes a book that’s part memoir/part inspiration/part DIY. 

Rob Kenney’s father left him and his seven siblings when he was fourteen years old, and the youngest had to fend for themselves. He wished that he had someone who could teach him the basics—how to tie a tie, jump-start a car, unclog a drain, use tools properly—as well as succeed in life. But he and his siblings had to figure these things out on their own. 

Now a father himself, Rob decided that he would help people out by providing how-to tips as well as advice—and even throw in some bad dad jokes. He started a YouTube channel for anyone looking for fatherly advice, and in the course of three months, gained a following of nearly 2.5 million subscribers, with millions of views for his how-to and inspirational videos. 

In this book, Rob shares his story of overcoming a difficult childhood with the strength of faith and family, and offers inspiration and hope. In addition, he provides 50 practical DYI instructions (30 of which will be unique to the book), illustrated with helpful line drawings. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9780063075030

Rob Kenney

Rob Kenney is married with two adult children (and they still talk). He lives in Seattle, Washington.

Book preview

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my family.

To my immediate family, for all you have taught me over the years: my wife, Annelli; my children, Kyle and Kristine; and my son-in-law, Ryan.

To my brothers and sisters, for filling voids that needed to be filled.

To my mom and dad, for the quality traits that you instilled in my siblings. It took me a while to forgive you, but now I can appreciate the good that you did give me.

To my Internet kids, for your kindness, encouragement, and support.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Part I: Dadvice

1. Open Your Life to Awesome Goodness

2. Mail That Postcard

3. Keep Your Brains from Falling Out

4. Bust That Logjam

5. Remove the Stickers

6. Jump into the Pool

7. Hold with an Open Hand

8. Live Your Wild and Precious Life

Part II: How-Tos

Personal Finance

Bills

1. How to Organize Your Bills

2. How to Pay Your Bills

Banking

3. How to Open a Bank Account

4. How to Write a Check

5. How to Reconcile Your Checkbook

6. How to Open a Credit Card Account

Savings

7. How to Budget

8. How to Get Out of Debt

9. How to Get Out of the Rat Race

Investing

10. How to Invest

11. How to Invest for Retirement

12. How to Invest for College

Insurance

13. How, Why, and When to Get Insurance

14. How to Choose Life Insurance

Credit and Taxes

15. How to Build Credit

16. How to Get a Loan

17. How to Do Your Taxes

The Big Decisions

18. How to Choose a College

19. How to Rent an Apartment

20. How to Furnish an Apartment

21. How to Buy a House

Home

Tools

22. How to Build a Tool Kit

23. How to Use a Tape Measure

24. How to Use a Cordless Drill

25. How to Use a Circular Saw

26. How to Use a Fire Extinguisher

Repairs

27. How to Unclog a Toilet

28. How to Repair a Hole in the Wall

The Basics

29. How to Polish Your Shoes

30. How to Use an Iron

31. How to Wash Clothes

32. How to Dry Clothes

Food

33. How to Shop for Groceries

34. How to Fry an Egg

35. How to Bake

Outside Your Home

36. How to Mow Your Lawn

37. How to Change a Propane Tank on a Barbecue

38. How to Build a Cedar Fence

Laying Out the Fence and Setting the Posts

Mixing and Pouring the Cement

Attaching the Fence Rails

Attaching Fencing to the Rails

Your Car

39. How to Get a Driver’s License

40. How to Buy a Vehicle

41. How to Look under the Hood

Self-Improvement

42. How to Start a Conversation (and Keep It Going)

43. How to Be Loving

44. How to Be a Good Friend

45. How to Be a Good Parent

Work Life

Getting a Job

46. How to Write a Résumé

47. How to Interview for a Job

At Work

48. How to Be Productive

49. How to Prioritize

50. How to Give a Speech

Bonus Section

1. How to Read the Bible

Old Testament

New Testament

2. How to Remember

3. How Addresses Work

4. How to Determine Your Net Worth

5. How to Double Your Money

Know the Rule of 72

6. How to Negotiate

7. How to Travel

Booking Travel

Airport Protocol

International Travel

8. How to Make Christmas Cookies

Acknowledgments

Notes

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Part I

Dadvice

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DAD JOKE

The brownie told the vanilla wafer he was crazy.

I’m not crazy, the wafer said. I’m just a little cookie.

---

1.

Open Your Life to Awesome Goodness

Hey, kids!

Right off the bat, you might be wondering what makes me a credible person when it comes to encouraging you or giving fatherly advice. Well, I’ve learned a thing or two about trying to figure out life on my own. I don’t know everything, and I’m still sorting out the finer points of life like everybody else. But I’m happy to share what I’ve learned, particularly since a lot of it was learned the hard way.

I come from a big Catholic family, eight kids in all—three girls, five boys. I really love my family, and on my fiftieth birthday we all got together to celebrate. I recognized in each person a positive character trait that I’d seen most strongly in them throughout the years and that had inspired and helped me along the way. In fact, each chapter in the first part of this book is based around attributes I learned from my siblings.

I’m the second to youngest. All my older siblings were born in Kansas, and they describe the earliest times in our family’s life as really good. My parents started out so well. Dad worked for Boeing in Wichita and enjoyed his job. He loved photography as a hobby. Mom was smart and had taught school before she and Dad were married. She loved playing the piano. The earliest photos show an all-American family at its best. Everybody’s smiling. Everybody’s happy. Mom and Dad bought a small hobby farm south of Wichita, because that was a dream of Mom’s—raising her kids in the Kansas sunshine.

Then Dad’s job as an aeronautical engineer dried up, vanishing with a handshake and pink slip from the boss. Dad looked for work in Wichita, but nothing could be found. The family needed to move. But where? Mom was one of twelve siblings, and the bulk of her extended family lived near Wichita. She had always envisioned her own family settling down in that area, her kids playing with their cousins. Finally Dad found a great job working for the space program—in New Orleans.

Although excitement and relief filled the family, Mom wasn’t keen on moving. She tried, however, to make the best of things. I was born in 1964, about a year after they moved to New Orleans, and my birth announcement, which Mom created by hand, read: Our Little Space Project. She was putting on a brave face. Just like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Mom always desired in her heart to return to Kansas. There’s no place like home, and home for her was never in New Orleans, no matter how hard Mom tried.

Dad was a good worker and soon spotted another big opportunity. The Boeing 747 program was underway in Everett, Washington. They made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. We moved to Bellevue, south of Everett, where Mom and Dad bought a house for under $30,000. Dad loved his new job and stayed involved with us kids. Mom did the best she could, but the stress and adjustments of the two cross-country moves were taking a bigger toll on her than she communicated to us. For years, a big pile of boxes, still packed, sat in our basement—untouched. Mom was never convinced we were staying.

In the early years of my life, I remember my dad taking us fishing and camping, and we used to play football almost every Sunday afternoon at the field at the nearby school. I was five or six then. On Sunday mornings we’d go to Mass, then head home and eat a quick lunch. We’d watch the game on TV during football season. I’m a Steelers fan today, but back then I loved the Packers since my dad loved the Packers. Quarterback Bart Starr was our favorite player. My brother Don’s favorite team was always the Cowboys. He liked Roger Staubach, and there was a big rivalry in those days between the Packers and the Cowboys. Whenever those two teams played, Don would be on one side of the room, cheering for his team. Dad and I would be on the other, cheering for ours. I don’t remember who everybody else in our family cheered for, but I remember that for years all we ever thought about was football. I have a vivid recollection of me, Don, and our older brother Joe, ages five, seven, and nine, respectively. We became our favorite players most Sunday mornings after Mass was finished. As we left the church building, we wove in and out of the other parishioners, cutting and faking, pretending we were aiming for the end zone. That’s just how focused on football we were. We were oblivious to how that must have looked to the people we were dodging.

Generally, Sundays were good days. Once lunch was finished and the game was over on TV, we’d head up to the field at the school. There’d be maybe an hour or two of daylight left in the cool Pacific Northwest autumn afternoon. We’d divide up into teams. Dad could throw pretty well and would play quarterback for both teams, alternating sides depending on which team was playing offense.

However, over the next few years, things began to sour between my parents. Mom struggled with anxiety and turned to alcohol. She saw a therapist, but he brushed off her concerns, saying, Oh, Barbara, just buy yourself a new hat. This was the 1970s, so there wasn’t nearly the amount of mental health resources available as today. As I look back on those days from an adult’s perspective, my heart goes out to my mom. She really had no support system in her life, and she did the best that she knew how.

Eventually, Mom and Dad separated. I was twelve or thirteen years old. Dad gained custody of us, but I’m not sure he really wanted us. He had become involved with another woman, who also worked at Boeing. On the weekend, he would load us kids up with groceries, then drive an hour up the freeway to Everett and stay there for the rest of the week. He would return the next weekend, stock us up again, then head back to Everett for another week with her. This pattern went on for a year or so, week after week after week. We were all alone.

When I was thirteen, my dad came home, called us all together, and announced that he was finished with fatherhood. It stunned me. I’m done raising kids was his exact phrase. I didn’t know that was an option for a parent. (Hint: It’s not!) This was coldhearted rejection, and I was devastated. I had no stability, no sense of what was normal. The four oldest kids were out of the home by then, the four younger ones, including myself, were still at home and needed somewhere to live. Mom had slipped more into her addictions and wasn’t able to take us by then. Dad told my older siblings they needed to take in the younger ones. Otherwise, he said, we’d be split up and farmed out to foster homes.

It wasn’t easy for the older kids to assume responsibility for the younger kids. Joe and Don, two of the younger ones, were seventeen and sixteen, still in high school. They pooled resources and got their own apartment. Dad chipped in to help, as ordered in the divorce decree. My brother Rick, who was twenty-three, had recently gotten out of the military and was newly married. I went to live with him and his wife in their 280-square-foot trailer. The living quarters were tight, but at least I had someplace to stay.

Those were my teenage years, full of confusion, anger, and sorrow. My method of coping was to become the best kid I could be. I tried never to rock the boat. It wasn’t easy to live with Rick and his wife in such tight quarters. (I am sure it wasn’t easy for them, either!) But maybe, I thought, if I could just keep my nose clean and be perfect, they’d let me stay.

Trying to be flawless isn’t a sustainable way of living. Yet in spite of things, a genuinely good and noble vow formed in my own soul during those years. Great pain had filled my young life—and I felt that rawness with all my being. So I vowed that when I grew up and got married and had kids, I would never cause such pain in my children’s lives. At least not if I could help it. Oh sure, I knew I would make mistakes as a dad, but I would never leave my children like my dad had left us. I would never not be there for my kids. Never.

Sadly, I learned my story wasn’t all that unique. At my school, I knew plenty of other kids without fathers. Those kids struggled with their own stories of pain and rejection, too. So as the years went on, my vow deepened and broadened. Someday, some way, when I grew up, I would help anybody who needed a dad. Whenever they needed direction, I would be the type of dad who offered support, who helped them along their way.

Because guidance is exactly what so many of us need. I know I needed a ton of it when I was growing up.

WE ALL NEED GUIDANCE

Here’s what I mean. As a kid, I dreamed of growing up to play football. Making it all the way to the NFL was my big goal. I was a good athlete in high school. Big framed. Good hands. By the time I graduated, I was 6 feet 3 inches tall and weighed 215 pounds. I was a varsity starter and played tight end. My ticket to the pros was to play college ball first—and that meant going to a four-year university. At least that’s what I figured.

Since nobody was there to guide me.

See, before I could even try out my plan of going to college, I needed to make some money to support myself. As a high school senior, I got a job where I pumped gas and washed cars. After graduation, I started working at an office supply company. The wages were okay, so I stayed at the company for three years. The longer I stayed, the more my dream slowly slipped away.

Then my mom died. Suddenly. Painfully. She had definitely not been living her dream in her last years of life. It was a wake-up call for me. I had grown resentful, and I knew I wasn’t always that kind to her. I honestly was just trying to cope, and I didn’t make time for my mom. Looking back, I regret that I was unable to reconcile with her before she died. That was January 1986. At the memorial service, I talked to some of my brothers and sisters about our mom’s life while simultaneously taking a hard look at the road I was on. I decided that if I was ever going to pursue my dream, I needed to head in that direction as soon as possible.

By the spring of 1986, I had enrolled as a freshman at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, about a hundred miles east of Seattle. It was a small university, but it still had a powerhouse football program. I was a walk-on to the football team, which meant I wasn’t recruited beforehand or offered any athletic scholarships. I simply signed up for classes, tried out for the team, and made it. I was a wide receiver for the CWU Wildcats!

Since I wasn’t recruited and just showed up for spring ball, I was at a huge disadvantage. The coaches had already put in a lot of time convincing players to come there, so those players were given every opportunity to succeed. I did everything I could to take advantage of the playing time I was given, but it was still extremely tough to compete against the recruited players. As the season progressed, I didn’t get much game time, no matter how hard I tried. My hope was to be discovered by an NFL scout and get a tryout with the pros. I knew it was a long shot, and so far I was struggling to get my feet on the field. Game after game, I sat and watched, mainly warming the bench. I was a wide receiver with good hands, but the limited playing time I was getting wouldn’t be nearly enough to get noticed.

Imagine my surprise when late in the season a friend pulled me aside and explained how my plan already had a flaw. If I had gone to community college first, I could have earned my associate’s degree in two years and then transferred to a four-year university with two years of game time under my belt. He explained that incoming athletes can get tons more time on the field at a community college level, and that those colleges