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Friday, June 17, 2011

A Pause Trophy

Is Father’s Day a true embraced day for fathers or an adopted day for major companies to prey on the failing wallets of sons and daughters for the sake of making a profit by advertising that you show your appreciation for the man who brought you into the world by giving him a mushy four dollar card and a BBQ grill?  I know for some people, it’s a sad day to flaunt a prized father’s presence when there is no such presence.  When those company profiteers were sitting in their marketing think tanks, jotting down ideas over salads and sushi, did they take that into consideration or did they wax over it like it was nothing.  Pass the imitation crab California rolls and food colored horse radish, I mean, wasabi, please. Gotta make it home before Tip-off. 

Maybe we all fool ourselves and pretend we have great fathers by buying into the saga of Father’s Day and pressuring ourselves into believing we have to give something expensive or something at all just to prove we’re keeping up with the Joneses.  Why can’t there be a Loser Sperm Donor Day or Pompous Prick Day so we can truly say what’s been bottled up inside for years?  I dare a company to veer off the beaten path and develop cards with actual character. 

Cards like: “Dear Dad, thanks for being a loser.  I appreciated sitting in school year after year when everyone else was working their asses off making a card for their beloved fathers and creating poetry with wonderful adjectives that illustrated what they’d learned in life due to their presence.  I was the pitied one who sat at my desk and had to make a stupid card for my uncle or made up a name just so I wouldn’t be the loser fatherless kid that my friends made fun of.  Oh well, so I’m a loser.  Maybe your presence did do something in my life.  Thanks Dad.”  Put a picture of a caricatured kid crying at his desk on the front of the card and give it a matching black envelope and, hey, I’d pay five bucks for that.  Might even purchase one of the little dolls on the table next to the card display that you can burn in effigy.  Make it a faceless doll that you can paint yourself and the deal just keeps getting sweeter.

What about making a section for those kids who were abused and have the cards share a sentiment like, “No words can describe you, Dad.  So, I’ll just leave you bruised and broken.  Does that sound familiar?”  Or, “Hey, Dad, I wonder if you still think about how nice it was to have a daughter that you could teach how to love you like your wife never could.  Does your cell mate nurse the wounds you get from the yard or have you learned to hide them like I did?”  Throw in a free voodoo doll with anatomically correct parts on it or sell a dartboard with a place for his picture on the bullseye and a set of Velcro body parts that you can stick anywhere you want on the dartboard to get extra points along with those cards, and yeah, I’m sold.  I’d even allow free advertising on my Facebook or blog page for the samples.

I keep reiterating in my blogs how irony sucks.  Father’s Day is another reminder of it.  I’m an English major and the apostrophe seems to be a mark of punctuation on which strives many a debate.  Should it come before the ‘S’ to make it personal just for your dad, after the ‘S’ to include every father, or leave it out altogether and treat it like a red-headed step-child, I mean a title, so that no one is offended.  I think you know where I’m headed with this.  It’s the same for most celebrated days: Presidents Day, Veterans Day, Mothers day.  Talk about dysfunctional relationships, invite a handful of English professors together, throw in apostrophe usage for debate, bring popcorn, and you'll want to cover your ears for what might seem like a dueling family that’s on Jerry Springer. 

Now, I’ll defend any mark of punctuation and give you a reason for its unlimited usage on any day of the week it’s requested.  An apostrophe depicts possession.  In my eyes, it works for any word except father.  I would leave it out altogether so that it didn’t mean the father belonged to me.  Just slide that ‘S’ right up against the ‘R’ and castrate the apostrophe in that respected moniker.  Then again, it’s my own bent on irony.  I’ll leave it up to you.      

1 comment:

  1. Personally, I've never needed a card, or some kind of present for being a father. My children were my responsibility. Loving them and doing my best for them reward enough. Just having my sons call me on that day is more than enough.

    My own (so called) father fit into the loser category. After the divorce he did not support me in any way, and pretty much vanished so that he could live his life to the fullest.

    Fortunately for me, I did find a father. Although he did not bring me into this world, he made damn sure I could survive in it. He is the one who I give my Father's Day kudos to. Not many men who would raise a stranger's kid as their own but he did... and that is what really makes a Father. ;)

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