 wdevoe, Wed, July 1st, 2009 Father’s Day is a largely useless holiday. Along with Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day, it is a holiday that exists solely to market greeting cards and holiday-specific gifts under the guise that there should be a single day that should embody the sentiment we should express to the important people in our lives on every day of the year. In fact, I’m a big proponent of the Anti-Holiday-Day. Instead of having a single day during the year where we show our husbands/wives/fathers/mothers/kids/receptionists how much they’re appreciated, why don’t we do that all year except for one day— a day when we can disregard everyone around us. Think of how liberating the selfish indulgence would be. Judging by the conduct of the Capital District’s commuters, customer service representatives and cashiers, I don’t think I’m the first person to come up with the idea of a day where we think only about ourselves. The problem, I think, is that everyone seems to observe it on a different day. But, for now, we have a Father’s Day, and mine was as peculiar as my father is. After my kids showered me with gifts and praise as I had instructed them to do for weeks prior, my father and I spent the day together. Now, my father is entering a phase in his post-retirement life where he is either experiencing or wants people to believe he’s experiencing bouts of moderate dementia. Personally, I think he likes to do the Columbo act — playing dumb mostly to amuse himself. This was evident when we stopped at the grocery store after breakfast. As we make our way to the meat department, my father spies someone he knows, or thinks he does. A woman looks up and waves politely to him. “Oh, hello, Betty,” my father says. “My name is Mary Anne,” replies the woman. After some uncomfortable catching up, my father tries to give himself an out of the conversation: “Well, I should get back to shopping, it’s my turn to cook tonight.” “Is that so?” asks Betty, er, Mary Anne. “Yes,” my father replies. “My wife and I urinate.” Mary Anne screws up her face. “Most of us do.” “You and your husband take turns cooking?” “Oh, you mean alternate.” “Well, we fight a lot, too,” my father says and walks away. Later that day, as we are sitting on the porch, he either realizes or cops to the mistake he made. “I blame it all on higher education,” says my father, who grew up on a farm in Crescent. “Do you regret not going to college?” I ask. “No, I regret staying in high school for as long as I did. If it weren’t for higher learning, I wouldn’t be familiar enough with those big words to get them confused.” A little while later, the conversation turns to politics. As far as I know, my father has no political party affiliation. He has never told me if he does, and I have asked numerous times throughout my life. He votes in every local and national election and has not once divulged for whom he cast his vote. I know only two things about my father’s political leanings. The first: He hates all politicians, but hates some more than others. The second: He tolerates people who occupy our elected officials’ time with the trivial, petty and marginal even less than he tolerates politicians. As we sat on the porch, some bees began buzzing around us. “Don’t swat those, PETA will come after you just like they’re going after President Obama for swatting that fly,” I say. “Can you believe that? They actually said the president should have caught the fly and released it outside.” “That’s what we used to do on the farm,” my father says, to my surprise. “Catch them and then bring them outside to fly away.” “Really?” “Yeah, but they never could get off those sticky strips of paper.” Among the hundreds of letters, e-mails and phone calls I receive every month telling me how great I am, there will usually be a letter asking why I don’t write about my in-laws. It’s a valid question, and I think I can answer it poignantly enough by saying it’s because they’re crazy. Mad dog, foaming-at-the-mouth insane. They scare me. I will write solely about my father-in-law in this column, partly because it’s close to Father’s Day, but mostly because my mother-in-law once broke James Caan’s legs with a sledgehammer. Stephen King wrote a book about it. My father-in-law, Steve, likes to talk. A lot. Steve will strike up a conversation with you and sustain it until fatigue overwhelms him and he falls over in place. Hours later, he will awaken and resume talking at exactly the point he left off. It’s pretty amazing, really. He will do this anywhere, anytime, regardless of occasion. If you’re looking for someone to talk about the mating habits of a red-bellied lemur in the middle of your own wedding ceremony, he can do that. Want someone to stand outside the door and discuss national news while you’re in the bathroom? He’s your man. My father-in-law is the living embodiment of James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” He is long-winded, somewhat rambling, and it doesn’t matter if you’ve caught him in the beginning, middle or end, he will turn the page and continue as if you’ve been there all along. After five years of knowing him, I still have a hard time excusing my father-in-law so that I can get a word in edgewise. Whether this is because my own father instilled in me a respect for my elders and the wisdom they can possess, or it is because my father-in-law is 6-foot, 1-inch of muscle sculpted from repairing tractors and other farm equipment for many years, I do not know. I do know this: My father-in-law once cracked a walnut just by looking at it. So, far be it from me to tell him to stop talking. Despite his penchant for one-sided conversations, or because of it, I love the guy. I love him because among the many topics on which he can filibuster are his children. I married one of them, you see, and I don’t mind hearing about her all that much. So, maybe there is a case for Father’s Day, after all. Of all the useless things that exist in this world, Father’s Day is probably one of the least offensive things on the list, down there with rubber-band balls and humor columns. Pop Culture is America’s No. 1 resource for watch and small appliance repair, along with a little bit of parenting humor thrown in for good measure. It appears monthly in The Spotlight and can also be found at www.spotlightnews.com/blogs. CATEGORY: General Society
blog comments powered by Disqus  |
         |
