Letters to the Editor
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So tired
of the poor hapless dumbass man trope. How the hell many men out there met their wives this way?:
Well, there is fatherhood in a nutshell. A big misunderstanding. We were young swashbuckling guys riding around in cool cars on a hot summer night and we pulled into the A&W for a root beer and these girls walked over in their little white summer dresses and the next thing we knew we had a house and a lawn and a teenager glowering at us and muttering something about us not understanding him.
I thought this was going to be a piece about the many great fathers out there. Instead it's another piece of bloated nostalgia for a never-reality combined with the most irritating and insulting (to men and women alike) gender stereotypes we have. Marriage is something that just happens to guys! The poor bastards just wake up to this without ever choosing it!
Well, any dad that views his marriage(s) and kids as an unnerving accident is an asshole, and that's why his family isn't making a fuss about him. My dad, like many others out there, never acted as though we were just something he stepped in. And that's why Father's Day at our house was rather more festive than Arbor Day.