Happy Father’s Day, You Degenerate Old Farm Animal

Mother’s Day was easy. No problem. Flowers, phone call, and card that communicated a general sense of filial appreciation… it was all pretty simple. The vast machinery of the holiday industry was humming smoothly, working around the clock to ensure that my mother would, come May 12th, be able to bask for a moment in the idea that childbirth may not have been a bitter cosmic joke.

Father’s Day is a little harder.

Like a lot of people, I’ve had my not-so-great moments with ol’ Dad. But it’s OK now. Time passes. Who has time to rehash things like the time I failed Grade 7 science and he openly wondered if I was retarded? Or the time that I, through a conspicuous failure of will in the lineup for “Dragon Fire,” turned Canada’s Wonderland into a nightmarish acid-trip vision of his bloodline’s eventual failure? That was a long time ago. We’re old now. He’s really old. Everyone just wants things to be good at this point, because we’re too tired for anything else.

Unfortunately for both of us, though, the Father’s Day industry does not have much to say to people who want things to be all good. Let’s ignore, for a second, the fact that I now live in Kosovo (long story), and my local card options consis of not-famous-outside-of-greater-Tirana cartoon dogs saying words like “Gëzuar ditën e babait”—the difficulties posed by life in the Balkans are kind of beside the point here. Because even in Canada, you’re pretty fucked.

I don’t want, for instance, to purchase a card which features an even-older-than-him man being asked for money. It’s not impossible that I might have a few outstanding IOUs from like 2006 going on, but I’d really prefer not to remind him of all that. Not for Father’s Day. I’d rather keep it light.

Keeping it light, however, poses a whole new set of challenges. Because while every card store in Canada features a “Humourous” sub-section of cards for every possible event (you can wish someone a speedy recovery from chemotherapy, for instance, with the gang from “Peanuts”), the collection of humourous sentiments available to one’s father is strangely limited.

There’s actually pretty much only one such sentiment, actually, and it goes as follows: “Happy Father’s Day. You have the physical grace of a dying elephant seal and are flatulent to the point where we suspect intestinal failure.”

This can, of course, be expressed in a slight variety of ways. We live in a late-capitalist society, and though we have given up our demands for privacy, autonomy, and democracy, our collective desire for options remains persistent: have it your way. The customer is always right. So the “you fart a lot” thing can be combined with other, related ideas, like that he is lazy, clogs the john, watches too much television, and has a fetishistic relationship with the sole domestic object that remains under his control.

I know that people are different; roles are different; fatherhood and motherhood are two separate-if-related biophysical phenomena—but if I gave my Mom a card that even implied any of these things, she would cry for two months and then develop a speech tic wherein she only referred to me as her “biological son.”

Even if you don’t like your dad at all, there’s nothing really right about any of these card-choices. If you don’t like your father, the odds are that you don’t feel that way because he eats too many Doritos sometimes and gets the farts—that’s why your Mom doesn’t like him. You don’t like him because he came to your band’s show one time and said “so this is what you’re doing with your life.”

You don’t like him because he split at 48, shacked up with a dental hygienist named Tammi, and purchased a 1991 Firebird T-Top—so it’s not like the remote-control thing is even the jab that you’re looking for.

If there is anything you wish to communicate to your father beyond accusations of fecal incontinence, strange paeans to his channel-selecting skills, or cringe-worthy poetry that leaves both of you unable to even look at each other for a month, the greeting card industry is not going to be of any help to you.

But that’s OK.

You’re probably too lazy to go out and get your father a card anyway, so why not just send him this article? More about Dads:

Hey Ron: What Should I Get My Dad for Father's Day

I Don't Know Who My Father Is But I Have Dry Earwax