What sitcoms and commercials have taught me...
It’s Father’s Day again, so I'd like to take this time to show you what television, movies, commercials and stores have taught me about fathers.
As I wander through fine department stores like Marshall’s, reminders of the season have sprouted up like fungus. Golf paraphernalia, very little of it actually pertaining to the game of golf itself, is a big one. You know, like a golf ball with a clock shoved into it. Dad's are never very good at golf, but at least they are interested in it in principle. Personal organizers are also big, I’ve noticed. The implication being that his life is such a swirling cacophony of mismanagement, he needs a technological stopgap to bail him out. “Fusion” products are also big as a Father’s Day gimmick, combining several interests into one terrifically tacky object. Can’t decide what to get dad? Get him a personal organizer with a golf ball clock welded to it, with side holsters for cologne, a tie rack, and a singing bass, all grafted to a briefcase wrapped in fake golf green, which when opened plays the theme to Sports Center.
This gives me the impression that dads are a strange species with a narrow set of stimuli. They are wild creatures to be corralled and tamed with crappy merchandise that combines two or more Dad Oriented Objects (DOO), like a compass stuck inside a plain brown shoe. If your household owns a dad, there are some things the American Father’s Day Guild and the media at large would like you to know about your dad.
1) Dads are idiots.
If you’ve ever seen dads in commercials, you don’t need to be educated on this. They break everything they touch, and obliterate anything they attempt to fix. Their zeal for power tools is directly proportional to their ineptitude with them. If a dad exists in the same house with a chainsaw for any period of time, it is a guarantee the dad will require prosthesis in the future. Dads are constantly baffled by problems which their wives can solve with a self-important smirk in less than a second. Dads routinely get conned out of treats and money by children who are too stupid to know that you don't eat soup with a fork. Dads frequently make huge sandwiches and have them stolen by animals.
2) Dads are ugly as hell.
First of all, all dads are bald or balding. Second, they are all fat, or getting fatter, or both. Third, even if those things weren’t the case, dads would resemble a species of troll anyway. If you crossed Yoda with the comic book guy from the Simpsons you would have an approximation of a dad on one of his well-groomed days. It doesn’t matter how hot his wife is, a dad will always be repulsive. This is a mystery of the universe that only wives can explain, and even they’re secretly scratching their heads on it. You may think you’ve seen a handsome dad somewhere before, maybe on TV. You are wrong, that guy is not a dad. He’s a knockout Casanova who, quite nonchalantly, happens to have children. His kids aren’t really a “big deal” to him, and he certainly doesn’t let them cramp his style. He may not have even really intended to spawn the children. They could merely be a byproduct of his awesome libido sprawling in waves through the cosmic void, germinating yearning uteri. And he would never be caught dead being given a tie with a sports almanac embedded in it. A true dad would, by virtue of point number 1. And he would also be hog’s ass-ugly by point number 2.
3) Dads are loveable only insofar as retarded people are loveable.
If TV has taught me anything, most family members are only inclined to hug the dad out of pity. This is not an act of cruelty on the family’s part. It is simply the only option they have. Consider other reasons you might give someone a hug. Perhaps they have accomplished something noteworthy, and deserve some congratulation. A true dad has never accomplished anything, nor enjoyed any success ever, therefore such congratulation is impossible. All a wife can do is come downstairs in the middle of the night to find her husband has disassembled the entire plumbing system, and has soldered every last pipe to the engine of the car. When he turns to the wife, shrugging in resignation over the task as if wondering aloud “Where did I take a wrong turn?” her heart just melts, and she gives that adorable bastard a big hug. Massive folly is the bread and butter of a dad’s day-to-day intake of affection, and luckily for him, it’s also his primary activity.
4) The only reason anyone puts up with dad’s crap is because by some miracle he makes more money than anyone in the family.
On the family economic ladder, dads are basically rich. Nobody in the family is quite sure how he obtains such a decent salary, but it’s an arrangement they have to deal with. Nobody knows what he does at work that could be so valuable. All they know is he puts on a tie and a hat, leaves for a while, and comes back with money. This leads to speculation that there is actually some universe out there in which the dad is actually competent, as if in his element. This is false. He is as bad a bungler at work as he is at home. The difference is, “the boss” is always even stupider than the dad, thus incapable of seeing the dad’s vast bungling through the haze of his own. The dad is not used to dealing with people who are dumber than himself, and this is very frustrating, hence he will always complain bitterly about “the boss” (this, by the way, leads to a variety of exotic “anti-boss” themed Father’s Day gifts). The dad welcomes the time he gets out of work, when he can stop feeling frustrated by his stupid boss and begin feeling emasculated by his wife, kids, and dog, all of which are much smarter than him. There are few moments of respite in between when he gets to fraternize with his peers, fellow dads, about dad things, like how much he hopes his family will get him that cool electric razor that fires golf tees like a nail gun. Of course as the primary breadwinner he could just buy one himself, but this never occurs to him. See 1.
I hope I as a conduit of the media have enriched your understanding of fathers and fatherhood. Before we go, here are some frequently requested answers (FRAs).
If a dad ever goes camping, he will ALWAYS encounter a bear. The bear will do one or more of the following:
- Destroy the tent
- Use guile to swindle the dad out of all the food
- Chase the dad up a tree
Dads are willing to, and ultimately will, compromise on everything they want through a campaign of relentless emasculation and humiliation by his family, with one exception: beer. All dads love beer. Trying to take a dad’s beer is like trying to take a lot of flashbulb pictures of an imprisoned King Kong.
Dads love fishing, mainly as an excuse to get away from the family, but never catch any fish. They would theoretically catch more fish if you could somehow combine a fishing pole with a personal organizer.
Dads only like sports because they involve no women, children, or pets. If a dog were allowed to play football, it would instantly outsmart all the dads on the field and score ten touchdowns (See Airbud, Airbud - Golden Receiver, and Airbud Spikes Back).
Come back almost a year from now when I'll be giving you TV's interpretation of moms!