Let’s look on the positive side of fatherhood. For starters, fathers rarely get labor cramps while their wives are giving birth. Furthermore, fathers don’t have to wear dorky “paternity” clothes – our bellies usually only get that big after many years of beer consumption that meets the guidelines of the U.S. Brewmaster General. So, in conclusion, God was extremely clever to design people this way.
While you might not think so, fatherhood does have its dark side. To a teenager, for example, nothing is more embarrassing than having to be seen with your father in public. Especially if he’s wearing a red-plaid “woodchopper’s” hat.
When I became a certain age when girls stopped being annoying, I started to see the wisdom of changing your T-shirt at least once between Labor Day and Christmas. I looked around for male role models to shape my newfound sense of fashion, and there was my dad. He looked like he was wearing a small dog on his head.
For some reason, middle-aged men in Minnesota during the 1960s thought highly of woodchopper hats. They certainly were functional. When it was cold my dad would fold down the fur-lined ear flaps and secure them against the wind with a tie beneath the chin. Of course, he looked like a hideous Baby Huey. But he did not care.
I cared. On really cold days (that’s a least –30), when he picked me up from school after basketball practice, I prayed he would not be wearing a woodchopper’s hat. All the cute girls also stayed after school to make banners for the gym and whatever they did down in the Home Ec room in those days. After we showered and took turns spreading Deep Heat muscle gel inside each other’s underwear, we joined the girls waiting by the front door for our parents to pick us all up.
I used to pray (I did a lot of praying back then) that my dad would forget and show up late, after everyone else had gone. But, damn, if he wasn’t punctual. He’d ride up in our green Chevy station wagon wearing that small dog on his head, beaming and waving at me while I just tried to make myself invisible.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the really cute girls looking back and forth from my dad’s head to me, and back again. I was certain they were thinking: “Hmmm, George will probably wear one of those when he grows up, too. You know, that one-eyed kid named Johnny isn’t so bad looking after all….”
I spent many of my high school years blaming my dad for ruining any chance I might of had for success in the dating department. The fact that he used to pick me up from summer beach parties in Bermuda shorts, plaid shirts and black socks in his sandals didn’t help. Neither did the comb-over.
Tragically, my mother eventually discovered the effect of my father’s dressing habits on my friends and played an evil twist on the old “father will discipline you when he gets home” routine. She would threaten to send him to get me.
Mom: Dinner is at 6 p.m. sharp. I want you in the house and washed by 6 p.m. Do you understand me?
Me: But, Mom ….
Mom: I’ll send your father. Is that what you want, young man?
Fortunately, I did not inherit the bad fashion gene and eventually came to regard my father as a lovable old elf who had long ago become oblivious to people laughing at his clothes. And, that whole episode later proved valuable to me, as I became the father of my own children. I had saved several of my dad’s woodchopper’s hats and, when certain threats seemed appropriate, only had to dangle them while looking over the tops of my reading glasses.
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