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Monday, June 12, 2006
For Father’s Day, what do you really want?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Home Depot, Best Buy, Target and Hallmark seem to think they know exactly what every father in Lawrenceville really wants.
A new lawnmower. A card with cheesy poetry. A designer fragrance that comes with a free gift and a scent that will choke the whole family in the living room with that first squirt onto his forearm.
Don’t forget Golden Corral thinks this day should begin with loads of eggs and bacon, and pancakes and syrup, and biscuits with gravy in the color — brown or white — Dad most wants.
Rich’s-Macy’s would also like you to know they have the perfect pair of Father’s Day — ready, gift-wrapped men’s socks.
For years I bought golf balls made of chocolate. Real golf balls with tees. Ties. More ties. Shirts. More shirts. And socks. Junk I handpicked every Saturday before the third Sunday of June since about 1971.
All this would be followed by long waits at dinners out at nice restaurants and not-so-nice restaurants. Or 30-minute meals I cooked that came out nothing like Rachel Ray’s boob tube culinary projects.
Then one day these Father’s Day celebrations stopped.
Truth be told, I was a spoiled Daddy’s girl named after my father, Jack. This means my “terrible twos” lasted into my 30s. I terrorized my Dad with the wrong boyfriends and wasted violin and piano lessons that I quit after these hobbies exorcised heaps of cash from my Dad’s wallet. Oh yeah, and let’s not forget having Dad pay off every credit card I was offered the minute I arrived on a college campus and thought I was handed a free way to shop.
Then one day his perfect display of fatherhood stopped.
My spoiled bratness ended with my father’s first exploratory cancer surgery. At that moment I wanted to make every single day he lived like Father’s Day and I prayed this thought over and over enough to rival a Tibetan monk.
Instead all that happened was that my spoiled bratness had been surgically removed by the same surgeon who came to me in the waiting room that day and gave me a two-year timetable for how many more Father’s Days I’d actually shop.
Last fall we sold our parents’ house. What do I find? Some of those same Father’s Day ties, a few of those grandiose socks, and junky coffee mugs with “#1 Dad!” etched on the sides. Mementos of all the Father’s Days that were filled with gifts and dinners that were now lost.
We had buried my Dad on my 39th birthday. But that’s not as sad as knowing that he had kept all the junky Father’s Day gifts I gave him like they were exactly what he had always wanted.
Retailers would like you to believe their multimillion-dollar Father’s Day advertising campaigns are the true source of knowing what Dad wants. Maybe it is a flat screen. Or an iPod. Or breakfast at Golden Corral where Dad can stuff himself with 50 slices of bacon if he wants.
Or maybe you should just ask him what he really wants. Since Wal-Mart and Target and Circuit City only want you to surprise him with crap so they’ll have more customers this month.
“Surprise! New socks!”
Dear Lawrenceville Dads, for Father’s Day what do you REALLY want?
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