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Moms get thanked at every awards show. Called out in every post-game interview. “Mama I made it!” But you know who else deserves some credit every once in a while? Your dad.
P.S. – A big shout out to our very own Jesse Stone, who couldn’t respond to this miniprompt because he’s on Megadad duty and dealing with 3 super sick kids. Talk about underrated dads!
1) Dads are underrated because they are human stress balls.
Submitted by Nandini Singh
Where’s the phone? As I scramble to pull up the keypad, my index finger hovers over the screen.
Who to call, who to call…
While my head filters through my options, my fingers have already dialed my Dad. Not my Mom—my Dad.
Obviously, my Mom (like most Moms) is supportive and ready to spring into action whenever I need her. That’s what she does. Classic Mom with her emotional first aid kit, well equipped with:
- Hugs for heartache
- Words of affirmation for insecurity
- Tough love for repetitive bullshit
- Clarity for overthinking
- Tentative solutions for confusion
- Exercise and water for everything else
All tried and true remedies for a child’s every need. Typically, she is the first person I think of calling. However, these remedies don’t always sustain. When all the medicine has been had, but the dull pain manages to creep back in, that’s when I consult Dr. Dad. Unlike my Mom’s, his first aid kit contains one item: a stress ball. That’s it. A malleable, adjustable, ball. You know the one: the one that you can squeeze until your heart’s content, releasing all of your anger, frustration, elation, and sadness, but it never manages to dent or break. It endures all.
That’s just how he is. He lets me vent and spill all of my frustrations and fears. The ones that have no solutions. The ones I feel like I can’t fix by myself. The ones I don’t want him to fix. He just sits there and listens to it all. And when all is said and done, what does he do? He laughs. He finds it comical that my fear would toy with my brain so much so that I’ve forgotten that the fear belongs to me. It is in my control. I’ve created the tornado that I’m so desperately trying to get out of. He re-injects me with a grounding sense of personhood. He let’s me take a breath and realize I’m human. I’m imperfect, and that’s just what the doctor ordered.
So to all of the stress balls out there—thank you for enduring all.
2) Dads are underrated because they tolerate our constant annoyances.
Submitted by Justin Wright
No matter what kind of relationship you had with your father growing up, the man undoubtedly had to deal with a whole lot of shit, and a great majority of that shit was probably a direct result of something you did or wanted. If you were a good kid, hey nice work. But even at your best, you were and probably continue to be a significant, never-ending burden to your father. I was, and I definitely am. And I’m sure he loved it since he didn’t throw me out the car window as a child. But a sneaky good Dad Skill is to be very deft in handling the constant annoyances and indignities that children have caused them to suffer. We should learn from our dads.
Quick little list of shit you pulled to jog your memory:
- Bitched about your food, or more specifically something on your food, which was either expertly crafted by the love of his life or purchased with money earned by working every day for years during the prime of his life.
- Asked him to drive you somewhere, spilled something.
- Fought loud, inarticulate arguments that have little basis of reality or in the art of rhetoric with your sibling about something that was supposed to be kind of nice.
- Touched the walls.
To this day I have no idea how my father does it, because Lordy me I would not have the patience. Dads can handle shit, and only by being the undeserving benefactors of their competence can we learn how to be fully functional adults, and I dare say good people. His reward for not leaving me in a parking lot is that I love him for it and will deal with him when he’s old. With any luck, I’ll do half as good a job as he did.
3) Dads are underrated because they took us to ballgames.
Submitted by Erin Vail
You can’t TOUCH moms because they literally give life, make sure you don’t die, and listen to you whine about how you can’t use an allen wrench. But dads are pretty cool, too. When I was little, my dad took my sister and me to Orioles games. Sometimes, my Uncle Glen and our friends Julia and Maddy joined us (sorry, Torie, you weren’t born yet). We’d get quesadillas beforehand, head into Camden Yards, and settle in for a ball game. My dad always got a bag of peanuts, then got me some ice cream in a baseball helmet, maybe a pennant, and together we’d enjoy America’s *favorite sport (*besides basketball, football, and NASCAR). Bonding over sports while eating junk food is a classic Dad trope, is something super special, and is definitely underrated.
4) Dads are underrated because they’re unafraid of love.
Submitted by Scott Snowman
From commercials and sitcoms that show fathers as bumbling idiots to the trope that men who take care of their kids are “babysitting,” dads are constantly getting the short end of the stick. And heaven forbid Dad try to take time off from a career to focus on his family. Men are not supposed to nurture, support, or apparently even care about their kids in America.
That’s why I’m so glad to have a father who breaks the mold: someone who knows better than to buy into the bullshit and someone who had no problem with being there for me. Through all my ups and downs, backs and forths, and trips across the country, he’s always been only a phone call away if I needed him. Someone who came to my high school plays, someone who wasn’t afraid to give me just enough room to grow and learn as I stumbled through college, and someone who answered all my never-ending questions growing up. And most of all, the type of someone who wouldn’t hesitate to remind me of the power of love when it’s needed most—when the darkness and hurt seem so wide and deep.
June 12, 2016. In response to the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting.
Thanks for being more than just a man, Dad. Thanks for being my dad.
5) Dads are underrated because they taught us Zoom, Schwartz, Profigliano.
Submitted by Kelaine Conochan
It wasn’t a sleepover, but we stayed up super late one night at the kitchen table. We pulled up extra mismatching chairs from the dining room so that all of us could fit around it—my best friends Amy and Megan, my sister Jillian, my dad, Amy’s dad, and me. Four girls and two dads. The same two dads who coached our softball team to multiple championships within Freehold Township Recreation. Two dads who favored athleticism over skill, sportsmanship over ruthlessness, and fun over yelling.
But this night wasn’t about sports. This night was about a legendary game, perhaps the invention of my dad and his schoolyard buddies, called Zoom, Schwartz, Profigliano. Essentially, a multi-player game of eye contact, fake outs, logic, and intimidation. Learned on the fly, you quickly learn that you can’t Zoom a Zoomer. That Schwartz will get you out of a jam. That Profigliano is the most fun word in the English (but obviously Italian) language.
They let us stay up past our bedtime. They let us drink soda and eat garbage snacks. They let us engage in silly nonsense, which is fundamentally what childhood should be. As dads go, Mr. K and my dad are two of the best. And even so, they’re both underrated.
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