Your parents taught you how to tie your shoes. They helped you with your homework until you were way too old for help. They wrote your papers when you were too lazy to write them yourself. They babied you and pampered you and spoiled you rotten. They are your parents, so you love them for all of it.
And when you are a daddy’s girl, you get a special kind of coddling. Your dad would do anything for you. Except for talking about that bad boy you have a crush on. That talk is for mom.
18-year-old Meg Sullivan and her dad, Tom from Tacoma, Washington have a special bond. Meg’s parents are divorced but that hasn’t changed her relationship with her dad one bit. The two are extremely close and Tom loves to baby Meg.
Tom has been making Meg’s school lunch since kindergarten. His lunches are filled with a lot of love and he even peels her oranges for her. He still does. Even last year when she was 17 years old he peeled them. I wish he would peel my oranges. Don’t you hate when the rind gets under your nails?
Meg and the rest of the family would often tease him about his lunch-packing habits. Tom didn’t care and kept making her lunch and kept peeling her oranges. He made her lunch all the way up until Meg’s last day of high school.
Meg teased him too, but Tom kept peeling. In a recent interview the Buzzfeed, Meg explained, “He ignored us and kept peeling them, and then yesterday when I got to school on my last day of high school, I pulled out my lunch and found two unpeeled oranges and a printout."
When she opened the printout, she thought it was going to be a letter congratulating her on her last day of school, but it wasn’t. It was a wikiHow explanation for peeling an orange. There was also a handwritten note from her dad that said, “It’s time baby girl.” Someone please hand me a tissue.
“When I opened it I couldn’t help but smile,” she said.
When she got home from her last day of school, her dad asked her if she was able to figure out how to peel it on her own. Her response? She told him that she could figure it out, but only with the help of the directions.
I’m sure that was exactly what Tom needed to hear. Parent’s love to feel needed, especially when their kids are about to leave the nest.
“I’m his last kiddo leaving for college this year, and you can tell he’s really really sad about it,” Sullivan said.
"He has always gone above and beyond and is easily the cutest and most caring man I’ll ever know,” she continued. “It’s gonna break my heart to leave him for college, no doubt.”
It’s going to break his heart too, believe me.
When Meg tweeted the photo of the orange and the note, it immediately went viral. The tweet currently has more than 105,000 retweets and more than 483,000 likes.
“I keep yelling downstairs to him how many likes we’re at, and he laughs about it.” Sullivan said.
Meg keeps updating her dad on how many likes they have received over the past few days, and Tom doesn’t get it. “He doesn’t really get Twitter, so yesterday when I told him I had 300 likes he was like, ‘Is that a lot?!'”
Oh, dad!
The post made some people very emotional. It made their hearts melt and it made them miss their own dad. Meg and her dad were surprised that so many people were sad for them.
Her dad just meant to be cute, but that is what made the Twittersphere even more emotional. He is way too damn cute and everyone loves a dad joke! And this gesture was sentimental and sweet and heartbreaking.
Sullivan said that her favorite reactions have been from people who say things like “you’re a senior in high school and you don’t know how to peel an orange? Like yes, I know how to peel an orange thank you very much hahaha.” she said.
You may know how to peel an range on your own but don’t tell your dad that. Do you remember what I said about wanting to be needed? Okay, everyone call your dad now.