Hey now, I got my dad a book on Teddy Roosevelt for Father’s Day. He’s for sure gonna read that!
ipomoea+8
My dad has been reading Hamilton since I got it for him at Christmas and he’s only 500 pages in.
OiSunshine+4
My brother and insisted our mother should read Jurassic Park (we were kids and it was in the cinema). She didn’t notice that the edition we had was misprinted and missing about a hundred pages in the middle.
theburnersmydestination+74
Despite my dad and I having a 75% overlap in the sort of media we like, he constantly acts like I recommend garbage to him all the time (I don’t). I cannot tell you the number of shows/books I have nearly forced him to watch/read, grumbling all the way, only for him to become obsessed with whatever it was. Then he forgets about how good that recommendation was when I have another one. Get it together, Dad. lol
ROC+38
SAME. Hey dad, remember how much you enjoyed watching Firefly, Veronica Mars, and Orphan Black? GIVE THE FALL A TRY.
GinnyQ9+8
Sigh. This is how my husband is. And he always brings up that time I made him watch Gosford Park with me (without having seen it previously — that was my mistake), and it was AWFUL. (Seriously, why did it win all the Oscars? It was so boooorrrrrinnnng!) He never lets me forget that ONE TIME, even though I’ve had so many successes since!
brigidkeely+24
My fave thing, the icing on the cake, is the aarp ad under the magazine cover. Although this issue looks great.
Roman+61
I got my dad Dad Magazine for father’s day! But when I spoke to him he clearly hadn’t read it, since he thought it was a real magazine. Or did it just appeal to his interests THAT WELL???
Katiezog+19
I am giving it to my father in person as a belated father’s day gift so I can explain the joke.
Roman+13
very wise. he was so impressed that it was a hundred years old I actually felt kind of bad about telling him. but i don’t understand how he picked up on that detail while not understanding the whole shtick — the ultimate dad myopia.
Jessargh+4
yes! I gave Dad Magazine to my dad for Father’s Day as well!. Has not read it! Probably never will! Does not know it’s not a real magazine! So it’s basically the perfect gift.
emmysuhweeks+41
TWINE!
knitting_pun+25
At first I was like, wow, is the text-based-adventure-game-making software really so prevalent that it’s a Dad Magazine topic?!
And then i remembered that twine is hardy string and it made a lot more sense.
emmysuhweeks+6
To be fair, it could refer to either or both.
tinypaperme+3
I may have just yelled “TWINE!” out loud in public, just for funsies.
stirringsofconsciousness+31
I got my dad an autographed copy of my friend’s fantasy novel (upon request!) and…have not sent it to him at all. Oops.
But my dad says that while Mother’s Day was founded on sentiment, Father’s Day was a commercial cash-in, so all childhood presents had to be handmade or no dice.
GinnyQ9+6
An autographed copy of a friend’s novel should count as handmade — by your friend, via you! It’s personalized and everything!
knut_knut+70
Oh god, my dad spent his father’s day talking about twine. Why do they love it so much?
Apfelmoose+41
Are cable ties the Tech Dad equivalent of twine? If so, my mother’s partner has that covered. I can always make his day by sending photos of how I have used cable ties to tame cables and/or hold furniture together.
knut_knut+18
That’s really cute! Maybe I should have bought my dad cable ties for father’s day. It’s nice to branch out and try something new.
theanagrace+10
You can get combo packs of cable ties and bungie cords that are packaged in cheap plastic cylinders with lids. (I mean, sure the plastic’s thin and the threads on the lid don’t always catch, but you can re-use that container to hold all /sorts/ of stuff. Like cable ties!)
irishbreakfasttime+69
I have a surprisingly distinct kid memory of taking a cable tie out of the car door well and going “what’s THIS?” [ziiiiip] and getting a lecture about wasting cable ties. And what was he planning to use them for? Handcuffs, in case he ever had to make a citizen’s arrest while out and about.
I think buying bulk cable ties and then worrying about wasting one qualifies as Peak Dad.
adoptraya+32
And what was he planning to use them for? Handcuffs, in case he ever had to make a citizen’s arrest while out and about.
irishbreakfasttime+9
Like, of ALL the PERFECTLY REASONABLE things you can use them for, that’s the one he went with.
Kat+38
My parents came up to help me pack for an upcoming move over the weekend, and my dad showed up with an entire bag of various types of twine. Why? Where did it come from? How did he manage to use most of it packing up my one bedroom apartment?
knut_knut+26
You can never have too much twine! My dad is also very into all the different kinds of knots he can tie with his twine.
theanagrace+13
My dad has multiple books about how to tie different knots.
roisindubh211+4
My dad was able to hand a friend of mine 10 rolls of packing tape to help him move house, because he just happened to have them to hand.
geekcrackteam+20
Dads and Horse Girls. the only people on the planet who can fix *anything* with twine.
Trust me, that shit is indestructible. Its why we obsessively hoard it.
raqueue+71
When Dads are together, they have conversations about twine. My Dad, father-in-law & husband once got into an extensive conversation about the merits of different types of twine.
irishbreakfasttime+63
This somehow put the mental image in my head of a bunch of twine connoisseurs comparing vintages and varieties. “Ah yes, a light-bodied, yet robust, twine. `05 was a great year.”
raqueue+21
BASICALLY HOW IT WENT DOWN
BakesAndRuns+58
My dad spends a lot of time trying to convince people that riding a recumbent bike makes him…smarter? than people riding upright bikes. “You’re sitting on a cushion on top of a pole, I’m sitting in a soft foam chair!” Oh dad.
snowqueene+14
Ok but he’s not wrong
JillPole+51
I was waiting for this to go up so I could post this! My pastor reached Peak Dad yesterday. He titled the sermon something like “Life Lessons from the World of Golf”. He then proceeded to carry a golf club for the majority of the time. It was pretty adorkable.
Crivens+20
I sent my dad the Dad Magazine for father’s day and he LOVED IT. Thanks Jaya and Matt! <3
wordnerdy+47
This is the most I have ever related to Dad Magazine: my dad is OBSESSED with Hilton Head, and he doesn’t even golf! He subscribes to their newspaper and tells me their weather EVERY DAY.
daisicles+17
WHYYYY.
I just went to Hilton Head for the first time earlier this month – it’s THE destination of choice for a certain demographic in my hometown – and I don’t understand what’s so enthralling about it if you don’t golf. It’s fine? But I have no idea why some of my extended family love it so much.
I also don’t understand how the island can support that many car dealerships, but that’s a whole other thing.
wordnerdy+9
We went every summer when I was a kid with my grandparents, who ARE golfers. My immediate family likes hanging out by a beach or a pool and not doing much, and thus are happy at pretty much any beach. The restaurants in HH are pretty good too. I’m not sure why my dad loves it so much though! Familiarity?
crosscanyon+4
Speaking as someone who went to Hilton Head every summer for at least a week for 20 years in a row…. I ran out of things to do there after year 5.
RLovesRocks+29
I was so tempted to get the book for my dad, but I was legit worried he’d think I was mocking him in a mean way and not highlighting what’s endearing. Instead I got him a nerdy card about the elements. On another note, my husband recently told me that he was considering actually paying for a Consumer Reports online subscription instead of just using my dad’s login because we are going to be replacing our stove and probably other stuff in the near future. We’ve got a baby due in late, late fall, so he’s way ahead of the game in establishing dad-ness! (I also have a weakness for Consumer Reports, so I would never condemn this use of our income.)
ipomoea+9
your library might have a subscription to the database!
RLovesRocks+3
I think you’re probably right about that, though I’m also fine spending money on something I probably use once a week (we’re slowly upgrading our house). It also amuses me that mooching off of my dad’s Consumer Reports account is probably the least adult way to adult.
momoulton+115
YOU GUYS. So, in 1929, Robert Graves wrote a memoir entitled “Good-Bye to All That“. It was sensational and bitter and cynical and very popular, and all about the death of an old way of life in England.
His father, Alfred Percival Graves, was less impressed. So HE wrote his OWN memoir, published in 1931 and entitled…. (wait for it)…. “To Return to All That.”
And this has been “Reading Dad Magazine with An Historian.”
irishbreakfasttime+35
My dad never read my book gifts, of course, but one time he visited me and requested a book rec to read while Mom and I went out. He asked if I had anything about trains. The only books I had about trains were book gifts from him that I never read (I have since bought The Enthusiast, but subways do not count as trains).
Anyway, I gave him The Warmth of Other Suns and told him one of the guys in the book worked as a train porter, and I don’t think he got out of his reading chair the rest of the visit. I was weirdly proud.
momoulton+12
That’s brilliant! As someone who is very fond of trains, I found the train-related aspects of that book highly interesting.
cleoreads+85
Dad Magazine! Where will I tell my dad stories after July 1?
So, we went to a restaurant for Father’s Day. It was peak dad. All of us drove to the restaurant in my dad’s car. Dad saw the perfect spot in front of the restaurant and had to go around the block to get to it. So he drives in a complicated pattern around the block while muttering about one way streets, with my mom pointing out perfectly good parking spaces and my dad rejecting them because he already had THE perfect spot picked out. Thank goodness the spot was still there.
I asked him about his hobbies – he’s cut back on bridge and sailing so he can focus on woodworking. He’s making a set of beautiful but complicated napkin rings for my cousin’s wedding next month and he’s treating it like a full time job.
And then he about gave me a heart attack when he very seriously told Mr. Cleo and I that he had something important to tell us after my mom came back from the restroom. When she got back, he started by saying that their circumstances had changed (picture me trying not to panic) and ended by saying he wanted to pay off my outstanding college loans!!! I was honestly so glad no one was dying or getting divorced that I barely took in the actual offer.
TL;DR – Dads!!!
roisindubh211+10
My dad prefaces all questions about my finances with “I have a very personal question to ask you.”
mehitabelll+21
Oh my goodness the recumbent bicycle – my dad LOVES his. He’s 75 years old and wants to do the Death Ride marathon on that thing.
HGK+18
My Dad gifted me a big ball of twine a few years ago and it has come in handy a number of times. Dads!
chiaroscuromom+14
My dad taught my young son how to make a twine holder out of random PVC plumbing pieces, metal oddments, and pop rivets, lo these many years ago. It still hangs in the garage next to the door to the house.
Scotch_n_Stata+36
I look forward to this repository of fantastic dad stories every month, and will be very sad to lose it.
In personal dad-related news, I am going on a vacation with my dad in two weeks, and we have both been sending each other travel research for the past two months. Five years ago, we both had broken up with significant others (my dad divorced my stepmother, and I escaped an abusive boyfriend). We decided to go on vacation together for his 60th birthday, and we realized that we are remarkably vacation-compatible in my adult years. We both currently have new significant others, but we still plan a yearly vacation together, and the negotiation about the next vacation pretty much begins the day after the last is over.
All trips are the the product of joint preference maximization and delicate compromise. This year it is a cruise on the Baltic Sea. In perhaps a case of me exhibiting “peak dad” to my own dad, I notified him last week that I purchased a kindle version of Rick Steve’s handbook on Northern European cruise ports, and it was very helpful (my dad is obsessed with Rick Steve). I then tried to lend my dad the kindle book on his own kindle, and when I realized it was impossible, I researched how to form an Amazon “household” to share a kindle library. I thought of the fact that my dad would potentially be able to read my feminist romance novels, and the implications of forming a “household” with a parental figure whilst in my 30s, and then just couldn’t justify my dad having to repurchase a helpful vacation-related book. So I sent him instructions and have been checking up on him to see if he has joined my virtual household yet. My dad has taught me well.
coloredlights+14
What is it with dads and Rick Steves? Mine is also obsessed.
I’m going on vacation with both my parents later this summer. We all travel pretty well together, but my dad likes to make plans in advance and then change them at the last minute (which he insists he does not do), whereas I’d rather just make things up as I go along. SO FAR my dad has not hit the point of obsessive planning that makes me revert to an obstinate 17-year-old, but we have two months to go…
Lethologica+9
Yea, I say to you, in the virtual world, the children will be parents and the parents will be children.
beakbreath+66
Yesterday my dad and his stepdad spent the entirety of dinner discussing apples, and how they used to be better.
MyEvilTwin_Twin+4
What! We live in a golden age of apple varieties! (although personally, like Mallory, I view apples as a garbage food)
godzillas_pizza+6
Okay, myeviltwin_twin, A of all, you’re a heathen, and B of all, apples DID used to be better! My gramma grew up on an apple orchard in a city still known for its apple orchards, and they were objectively better back then! Of course, because of hipsters, many of the old varietals are being saved and coming back, but still. Her family had a variety that produced BLACK apples! They were so hard and bitter you literally had to wait for them to fall to the ground and lay there for a while before they could be harvested. Naturally, they were for cider. Anyhow, I definitely have had this conversation before. But with my gramma and her brother (who is a Dad dad, so this counts)
Lynn+18
I called my Dad yesterday and, my goodness it could not be more peak dad if it tried: – the conversation opened with his disclosure that he was shifting positions because “apparently I have sciatica now.”
– Saturday it so happened that my parents attended a wedding at which one of my childhood best friends and her family were also guests, so there were several positive comments on her children and how small Dad always forgets she is (we spent much of our childhood/adolescence at the same height until I hit a late growth spurt and passed her by about six inches)
-My parents went to Cabo with all of their friends two weeks ago — commentary included that it got very chilly on the beach at night and a detailed description of the food they had at the best restaurant they went to “which was 20th on Trip Advisor, but I don’t know how there were 19 restaurants better than that”
-He was *of course* watching the US Open Golf throughout the entire conversation so there was occasional running commentary (this was about the point at which the eventual winner had something weird happen involving the TV tower so it was pulling focus a bit more than normal).
kilks401+11
My Dad asked me to get him Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century! I did tell him recently that I would not be offended if he never reads it, because that is a loooooong book.
SarahHelenaCosima+27
My dad has some dementia (not Alzheimer’s) that affects his memory. When I called him yesterday and we talked about vegetables, like you do, I mentioned that people used to cook vegetables, then it was trendy to steam them, and now everybody’s roasting them. He pulled the phone away from his face and told my mom, “Help me remember these three words: cooking, steaming, roasting. I’ll tell you about it later.” I worry that my mother will now think that she is supposed to buy beets and sequentially cook, then steam, then roast them.
ipomoea+9
I offered to go visit my dad on Saturday for Father’s Day, but he told me he’d rather come to my house so he doesn’t have to pick up before the kids come over. He brought me cinnamon-apple bread, then he and my husband (also a dad) had a long discussion of the Democratic party and why Debbie Wasserman-Schultz needs to go, why Trump is going to fail miserably, and why our governors never do anything (dad’s favorite was Dan Evans in the early 80s as he explained for ten minutes).
raqueue+25
Dad stories: my Dad got his first smart phone yesterday and spent 20 minutes complaining that he couldn’t figure out how to dial.
He’s a computer programmer.
RLovesRocks+3
My father-in-law, who is a retired computer engineer, also doesn’t understand his flip phone’s voicemail or texting.
Beakses+3
My programmer dad saw no need for a smart phone until he realized he could use it for star positions and tracking satellites. We recently got him hooked on podcasts. Baby steps.
mspym+11
I like the thought of all the dads at Dad Mag going off to work on their swing. Good job Dads.
chai_party+3
Oh, I got my father a Pogo Possum 50th Anniversary Edition hardback a couple of years ago: I was convinced he would read it because he says that Pogo Possum was ‘a major influence’ on his comedy style during his growing-up years in the 50s and 60s (as it was on mine in the hallowed 2000s). We LOVE Pogo: even to the capitalization of words for emphasis and the strange speech patterns. But I don’t know if he ever read it! *snif*
cleoreads+2
OMG – I need to get that for my dad! He passed on his love for Pogo to me and my brother – he’d read us Pogo bedtime stories. The political references went over my head but I loved the silliness. My brother and I still quote Pogo to each other.
RLovesRocks+7
Dad updates: I recently got an all electric car but haven’t upgraded the outlets in my garage (which we’re going to have done professionally because while I understand circuitry in theory, high amperages terrify me). I spent most of my entire father’s day conversation talking to my dad about this (other topics included the solar panels I’m hoping to someday get and tankless water heaters with maybe 30 seconds of update on my pregnancy). Today he has sent me no less than 5 pictures he took of the circuit breakers at my parents’ house to step me through what will probably happen when we get the new circuit added. He also took a picture from some book (home improvement maybe?) with a chapter titled “Understanding Electricity.” The picture is of a table that shows different wire gauges with their respective “ampacity” and voltage. He hadn’t been able to remember the specific gauge on the phone, but now I know.
cleoreads+1
I love this!
The Elitist Semicolon
I may have just yelled "TWINE!" out loud in public, just for funsies.
cleo
OMG – I need to get that for my dad! He passed on his love for Pogo to me and my brother – he'd read us Pogo bedtime stories. The political references went over my head but I loved the silliness. My brother and I still quote Pogo to each other.
Trixr
I think it's close, although Tech Dads are also obsessed by running real network cabling in the walls of their houses, rather than relying on "slow", "unreliable" wifi for the family's internet.
_Canary
I am extremely confused about what sort of event that baby is dressed for. Overalls and a bow tie? What madness is this?
Image via 
<3
Hey now, I got my dad a book on Teddy Roosevelt for Father’s Day. He’s for sure gonna read that!
My dad has been reading Hamilton since I got it for him at Christmas and he’s only 500 pages in.
My brother and insisted our mother should read Jurassic Park (we were kids and it was in the cinema). She didn’t notice that the edition we had was misprinted and missing about a hundred pages in the middle.
Despite my dad and I having a 75% overlap in the sort of media we like, he constantly acts like I recommend garbage to him all the time (I don’t). I cannot tell you the number of shows/books I have nearly forced him to watch/read, grumbling all the way, only for him to become obsessed with whatever it was. Then he forgets about how good that recommendation was when I have another one. Get it together, Dad. lol
SAME. Hey dad, remember how much you enjoyed watching Firefly, Veronica Mars, and Orphan Black? GIVE THE FALL A TRY.
Sigh. This is how my husband is. And he always brings up that time I made him watch Gosford Park with me (without having seen it previously — that was my mistake), and it was AWFUL. (Seriously, why did it win all the Oscars? It was so boooorrrrrinnnng!) He never lets me forget that ONE TIME, even though I’ve had so many successes since!
My fave thing, the icing on the cake, is the aarp ad under the magazine cover. Although this issue looks great.
I got my dad Dad Magazine for father’s day! But when I spoke to him he clearly hadn’t read it, since he thought it was a real magazine. Or did it just appeal to his interests THAT WELL???
I am giving it to my father in person as a belated father’s day gift so I can explain the joke.
very wise. he was so impressed that it was a hundred years old I actually felt kind of bad about telling him. but i don’t understand how he picked up on that detail while not understanding the whole shtick — the ultimate dad myopia.
yes! I gave Dad Magazine to my dad for Father’s Day as well!. Has not read it! Probably never will! Does not know it’s not a real magazine! So it’s basically the perfect gift.
TWINE!
At first I was like, wow, is the text-based-adventure-game-making software really so prevalent that it’s a Dad Magazine topic?!
And then i remembered that twine is hardy string and it made a lot more sense.
To be fair, it could refer to either or both.
I may have just yelled “TWINE!” out loud in public, just for funsies.
I got my dad an autographed copy of my friend’s fantasy novel (upon request!) and…have not sent it to him at all. Oops.
But my dad says that while Mother’s Day was founded on sentiment, Father’s Day was a commercial cash-in, so all childhood presents had to be handmade or no dice.
An autographed copy of a friend’s novel should count as handmade — by your friend, via you! It’s personalized and everything!
Oh god, my dad spent his father’s day talking about twine. Why do they love it so much?
Are cable ties the Tech Dad equivalent of twine? If so, my mother’s partner has that covered. I can always make his day by sending photos of how I have used cable ties to tame cables and/or hold furniture together.
That’s really cute! Maybe I should have bought my dad cable ties for father’s day. It’s nice to branch out and try something new.
You can get combo packs of cable ties and bungie cords that are packaged in cheap plastic cylinders with lids. (I mean, sure the plastic’s thin and the threads on the lid don’t always catch, but you can re-use that container to hold all /sorts/ of stuff. Like cable ties!)
I have a surprisingly distinct kid memory of taking a cable tie out of the car door well and going “what’s THIS?” [ziiiiip] and getting a lecture about wasting cable ties. And what was he planning to use them for? Handcuffs, in case he ever had to make a citizen’s arrest while out and about.
I think buying bulk cable ties and then worrying about wasting one qualifies as Peak Dad.
And what was he planning to use them for? Handcuffs, in case he ever had to make a citizen’s arrest while out and about.
Like, of ALL the PERFECTLY REASONABLE things you can use them for, that’s the one he went with.
My parents came up to help me pack for an upcoming move over the weekend, and my dad showed up with an entire bag of various types of twine. Why? Where did it come from? How did he manage to use most of it packing up my one bedroom apartment?
You can never have too much twine! My dad is also very into all the different kinds of knots he can tie with his twine.
My dad has multiple books about how to tie different knots.
My dad was able to hand a friend of mine 10 rolls of packing tape to help him move house, because he just happened to have them to hand.
Dads and Horse Girls. the only people on the planet who can fix *anything* with twine.
Trust me, that shit is indestructible. Its why we obsessively hoard it.
When Dads are together, they have conversations about twine. My Dad, father-in-law & husband once got into an extensive conversation about the merits of different types of twine.
This somehow put the mental image in my head of a bunch of twine connoisseurs comparing vintages and varieties. “Ah yes, a light-bodied, yet robust, twine. `05 was a great year.”
BASICALLY HOW IT WENT DOWN
My dad spends a lot of time trying to convince people that riding a recumbent bike makes him…smarter? than people riding upright bikes. “You’re sitting on a cushion on top of a pole, I’m sitting in a soft foam chair!” Oh dad.
Ok but he’s not wrong
I was waiting for this to go up so I could post this! My pastor reached Peak Dad yesterday. He titled the sermon something like “Life Lessons from the World of Golf”. He then proceeded to carry a golf club for the majority of the time. It was pretty adorkable.
I sent my dad the Dad Magazine for father’s day and he LOVED IT. Thanks Jaya and Matt!
<3
This is the most I have ever related to Dad Magazine: my dad is OBSESSED with Hilton Head, and he doesn’t even golf! He subscribes to their newspaper and tells me their weather EVERY DAY.
WHYYYY.
I just went to Hilton Head for the first time earlier this month – it’s THE destination of choice for a certain demographic in my hometown – and I don’t understand what’s so enthralling about it if you don’t golf. It’s fine? But I have no idea why some of my extended family love it so much.
I also don’t understand how the island can support that many car dealerships, but that’s a whole other thing.
We went every summer when I was a kid with my grandparents, who ARE golfers. My immediate family likes hanging out by a beach or a pool and not doing much, and thus are happy at pretty much any beach. The restaurants in HH are pretty good too. I’m not sure why my dad loves it so much though! Familiarity?
Speaking as someone who went to Hilton Head every summer for at least a week for 20 years in a row…. I ran out of things to do there after year 5.
I was so tempted to get the book for my dad, but I was legit worried he’d think I was mocking him in a mean way and not highlighting what’s endearing. Instead I got him a nerdy card about the elements.
On another note, my husband recently told me that he was considering actually paying for a Consumer Reports online subscription instead of just using my dad’s login because we are going to be replacing our stove and probably other stuff in the near future. We’ve got a baby due in late, late fall, so he’s way ahead of the game in establishing dad-ness! (I also have a weakness for Consumer Reports, so I would never condemn this use of our income.)
your library might have a subscription to the database!
I think you’re probably right about that, though I’m also fine spending money on something I probably use once a week (we’re slowly upgrading our house). It also amuses me that mooching off of my dad’s Consumer Reports account is probably the least adult way to adult.
YOU GUYS. So, in 1929, Robert Graves wrote a memoir entitled “Good-Bye to All That“. It was sensational and bitter and cynical and very popular, and all about the death of an old way of life in England.
His father, Alfred Percival Graves, was less impressed. So HE wrote his OWN memoir, published in 1931 and entitled…. (wait for it)…. “To Return to All That.”
And this has been “Reading Dad Magazine with An Historian.”
My dad never read my book gifts, of course, but one time he visited me and requested a book rec to read while Mom and I went out. He asked if I had anything about trains. The only books I had about trains were book gifts from him that I never read (I have since bought The Enthusiast, but subways do not count as trains).
Anyway, I gave him The Warmth of Other Suns and told him one of the guys in the book worked as a train porter, and I don’t think he got out of his reading chair the rest of the visit. I was weirdly proud.
That’s brilliant! As someone who is very fond of trains, I found the train-related aspects of that book highly interesting.
Dad Magazine! Where will I tell my dad stories after July 1?
So, we went to a restaurant for Father’s Day. It was peak dad. All of us drove to the restaurant in my dad’s car. Dad saw the perfect spot in front of the restaurant and had to go around the block to get to it. So he drives in a complicated pattern around the block while muttering about one way streets, with my mom pointing out perfectly good parking spaces and my dad rejecting them because he already had THE perfect spot picked out. Thank goodness the spot was still there.
I asked him about his hobbies – he’s cut back on bridge and sailing so he can focus on woodworking. He’s making a set of beautiful but complicated napkin rings for my cousin’s wedding next month and he’s treating it like a full time job.
And then he about gave me a heart attack when he very seriously told Mr. Cleo and I that he had something important to tell us after my mom came back from the restroom. When she got back, he started by saying that their circumstances had changed (picture me trying not to panic) and ended by saying he wanted to pay off my outstanding college loans!!! I was honestly so glad no one was dying or getting divorced that I barely took in the actual offer.
TL;DR – Dads!!!
My dad prefaces all questions about my finances with “I have a very personal question to ask you.”
Oh my goodness the recumbent bicycle – my dad LOVES his. He’s 75 years old and wants to do the Death Ride marathon on that thing.
My Dad gifted me a big ball of twine a few years ago and it has come in handy a number of times. Dads!
My dad taught my young son how to make a twine holder out of random PVC plumbing pieces, metal oddments, and pop rivets, lo these many years ago. It still hangs in the garage next to the door to the house.
I look forward to this repository of fantastic dad stories every month, and will be very sad to lose it.
In personal dad-related news, I am going on a vacation with my dad in two weeks, and we have both been sending each other travel research for the past two months. Five years ago, we both had broken up with significant others (my dad divorced my stepmother, and I escaped an abusive boyfriend). We decided to go on vacation together for his 60th birthday, and we realized that we are remarkably vacation-compatible in my adult years. We both currently have new significant others, but we still plan a yearly vacation together, and the negotiation about the next vacation pretty much begins the day after the last is over.
All trips are the the product of joint preference maximization and delicate compromise. This year it is a cruise on the Baltic Sea. In perhaps a case of me exhibiting “peak dad” to my own dad, I notified him last week that I purchased a kindle version of Rick Steve’s handbook on Northern European cruise ports, and it was very helpful (my dad is obsessed with Rick Steve). I then tried to lend my dad the kindle book on his own kindle, and when I realized it was impossible, I researched how to form an Amazon “household” to share a kindle library. I thought of the fact that my dad would potentially be able to read my feminist romance novels, and the implications of forming a “household” with a parental figure whilst in my 30s, and then just couldn’t justify my dad having to repurchase a helpful vacation-related book. So I sent him instructions and have been checking up on him to see if he has joined my virtual household yet. My dad has taught me well.
What is it with dads and Rick Steves? Mine is also obsessed.
I’m going on vacation with both my parents later this summer. We all travel pretty well together, but my dad likes to make plans in advance and then change them at the last minute (which he insists he does not do), whereas I’d rather just make things up as I go along. SO FAR my dad has not hit the point of obsessive planning that makes me revert to an obstinate 17-year-old, but we have two months to go…
Yea, I say to you, in the virtual world, the children will be parents and the parents will be children.
Yesterday my dad and his stepdad spent the entirety of dinner discussing apples, and how they used to be better.
What! We live in a golden age of apple varieties! (although personally, like Mallory, I view apples as a garbage food)
Okay, myeviltwin_twin, A of all, you’re a heathen, and B of all, apples DID used to be better! My gramma grew up on an apple orchard in a city still known for its apple orchards, and they were objectively better back then! Of course, because of hipsters, many of the old varietals are being saved and coming back, but still. Her family had a variety that produced BLACK apples! They were so hard and bitter you literally had to wait for them to fall to the ground and lay there for a while before they could be harvested. Naturally, they were for cider.
Anyhow, I definitely have had this conversation before. But with my gramma and her brother (who is a Dad dad, so this counts)
I called my Dad yesterday and, my goodness it could not be more peak dad if it tried:
– the conversation opened with his disclosure that he was shifting positions because “apparently I have sciatica now.”
– Saturday it so happened that my parents attended a wedding at which one of my childhood best friends and her family were also guests, so there were several positive comments on her children and how small Dad always forgets she is (we spent much of our childhood/adolescence at the same height until I hit a late growth spurt and passed her by about six inches)
-My parents went to Cabo with all of their friends two weeks ago — commentary included that it got very chilly on the beach at night and a detailed description of the food they had at the best restaurant they went to “which was 20th on Trip Advisor, but I don’t know how there were 19 restaurants better than that”
-He was *of course* watching the US Open Golf throughout the entire conversation so there was occasional running commentary (this was about the point at which the eventual winner had something weird happen involving the TV tower so it was pulling focus a bit more than normal).
My Dad asked me to get him Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century! I did tell him recently that I would not be offended if he never reads it, because that is a loooooong book.
My dad has some dementia (not Alzheimer’s) that affects his memory. When I called him yesterday and we talked about vegetables, like you do, I mentioned that people used to cook vegetables, then it was trendy to steam them, and now everybody’s roasting them. He pulled the phone away from his face and told my mom, “Help me remember these three words: cooking, steaming, roasting. I’ll tell you about it later.”
I worry that my mother will now think that she is supposed to buy beets and sequentially cook, then steam, then roast them.
I offered to go visit my dad on Saturday for Father’s Day, but he told me he’d rather come to my house so he doesn’t have to pick up before the kids come over. He brought me cinnamon-apple bread, then he and my husband (also a dad) had a long discussion of the Democratic party and why Debbie Wasserman-Schultz needs to go, why Trump is going to fail miserably, and why our governors never do anything (dad’s favorite was Dan Evans in the early 80s as he explained for ten minutes).
Dad stories: my Dad got his first smart phone yesterday and spent 20 minutes complaining that he couldn’t figure out how to dial.
He’s a computer programmer.
My father-in-law, who is a retired computer engineer, also doesn’t understand his flip phone’s voicemail or texting.
My programmer dad saw no need for a smart phone until he realized he could use it for star positions and tracking satellites. We recently got him hooked on podcasts. Baby steps.
I like the thought of all the dads at Dad Mag going off to work on their swing. Good job Dads.
Oh, I got my father a Pogo Possum 50th Anniversary Edition hardback a couple of years ago: I was convinced he would read it because he says that Pogo Possum was ‘a major influence’ on his comedy style during his growing-up years in the 50s and 60s (as it was on mine in the hallowed 2000s). We LOVE Pogo: even to the capitalization of words for emphasis and the strange speech patterns. But I don’t know if he ever read it! *snif*
OMG – I need to get that for my dad! He passed on his love for Pogo to me and my brother – he’d read us Pogo bedtime stories. The political references went over my head but I loved the silliness. My brother and I still quote Pogo to each other.
Dad updates: I recently got an all electric car but haven’t upgraded the outlets in my garage (which we’re going to have done professionally because while I understand circuitry in theory, high amperages terrify me). I spent most of my entire father’s day conversation talking to my dad about this (other topics included the solar panels I’m hoping to someday get and tankless water heaters with maybe 30 seconds of update on my pregnancy). Today he has sent me no less than 5 pictures he took of the circuit breakers at my parents’ house to step me through what will probably happen when we get the new circuit added. He also took a picture from some book (home improvement maybe?) with a chapter titled “Understanding Electricity.” The picture is of a table that shows different wire gauges with their respective “ampacity” and voltage. He hadn’t been able to remember the specific gauge on the phone, but now I know.
I love this!
I may have just yelled "TWINE!" out loud in public, just for funsies.
OMG – I need to get that for my dad! He passed on his love for Pogo to me and my brother – he'd read us Pogo bedtime stories. The political references went over my head but I loved the silliness. My brother and I still quote Pogo to each other.
I think it's close, although Tech Dads are also obsessed by running real network cabling in the walls of their houses, rather than relying on "slow", "unreliable" wifi for the family's internet.
I am extremely confused about what sort of event that baby is dressed for. Overalls and a bow tie? What madness is this?