Father's Day – Addendum

Before you call the ACLU and sue me for breach of political correctness, I want to assure you that my Father's Day entry was in no way intended to ignore or minimize the role of mothers. It was Father's Day, so I was talking about the dad side of the parental equation. Trust me, I know how important mothers are, and will expound upon the subject until the cows come home; but you'll have to wait until next Mother's Day for that. I can guarantee you that the topic will merit even more ink than Father's Day did.

Hmm. Do people even say those things, anymore? Having spent time on my Granddad's farm as a kid, I know what they mean about the cows coming home -- they show up at the barn in the evening so that the farmer dude can milk them, and thus relieve the udder pressure that builds up from standing around and eating grass all day. Of course, the expression "till the cows come home" is a tad weak in that they typically show up before the sun sets; perhaps "till the teenagers come home" is a better metaphor for interminable duration.

And having worked at a newspaper, I certainly understand how expressions about expenditure of ink represent the volume of verbiage applied to a particular topic. Perhaps out here in the blogosphere, we should use the expression "a boatload of keystrokes", or perhaps since our words appear on computer screens, "a megabucket of photons". Regardless, you can bet your bippy that I'll devote appropriate amounts of attention to the topic of motherhood in the future. Stay tuned.

(No, I'm not going to explain what a "bippy" is. Ask your parents.)

And as for details of my work with the newspaper, I shall also leave that for a future entry. If you're thinking "Clark Kent", or even "Lou Grant", think again. Let's put it this way: in the hierarchy of journalism, Jimmy Olsen is Laurence Olivier compared to my Ben Affleck.

Anyway, my point is that fathers have a difficult and important role to play, and that they sometimes do not get enough credit for it. We all dread that moment when the mom says "Ward, don't you think you'd better go have a talk with the Beaver", and there's nothing a mother will ever face that's as difficult as explaining why you told Junior that it was OK to get ketchup on his shirt when eating a hot dog at the ballgame. And though I haven't actually experienced them myself, I'm pretty sure that labor and childbirth are not anywhere near as challenging as dealing with midnight runs to the Kwik-E-Mart for pickles and ice cream for all those months.

But we'll explore those topics in depth later. For now, let's get out there and enjoy the weekend, shall we? Have a great day!