Father's Day

It’s cool being a dad today. No one expects you to do anything so anything you do makes you look like Mother Theresa in boxers.

I loved driving around Oakland with Leroy, playing with him in the park, reading to him in the library and hanging with him in coffee shops. I got loads of “ooh, ahh!” looks, free snacks and coffee. “Be a dad and get stuff!” What a slogan.

Nothing beats changing a diaper in public if you’re a dad. There you are, swabbing poop off your son’s butt and people stare and nearly swoon over the sight. Since we’re still stuck in a social expectation that moms do all the work, dads get a handicap just for showing up.

The expectation is a pretty new thing. In a story I recall titled something like “The Short History of the Traditional Family”, the author noted that the experience of men leaving the home to travel far away to work is a consequence of the industrial age. Before the factories went up, most people like on farms and in small towns.

Dads simply didn’t have to go far to go to work. Farmers work at home, with the “office’ right outside the front door. Tradesmen, like blacksmiths or even professionals such as attorneys, kept offices at or near home. Dads could and often were instrumental in childrearing. Women often had to help bring in money too, in some way, so parenting had to be shared. Only when the industrial age arrived could many families afford to keep mom unemployed and at home.

For today’s dads who are working back toward the real “olden days”, not the crap we see on 1950’s and ‘60s teevee, it means a donation of latte or French fries as they work back to the real role of dads down through the ages. Don’t tell anyone that there’s nothing odd or unique about it. At four bucks a throw, a nice latte tastes best when it’s free.