Fifteen warning signs that you’re an old-school father
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The fathers of today, I’m sure, practice a more evolved version of fatherhood than seen in previous generations. But have some traits of traditional Australian fatherhood survived into 2022 – atavistic features that have proved surprisingly resilient?
Here, to mark Father’s Day, is a list of 15 warning signs. You may be more of an old-style Australian dad than you thought.
- Every time you want to call out the name of a family member, you run through the full list, including the dog and goldfish, mangling just the first syllable of each name, before finally landing on the correct person.
- Upon reaching a regional centre, you find it necessary to read out all the signs as you drive up the main street, including “Station Hotel”, “Centro Newsagency”, “oh, this is interesting, they have a Pet Barn” and then “oh, there’s the Maccas, it’s quite a large one”. There is no sign so enormously dull it does not demand to be read out loud to your passengers.
- You pretend you are watching the Disney musical because your child likes watching it.
- You pretend you are not going to the party because you “just couldn’t get a babysitter”, and not because you are always comatose by 9pm.
- There is no hobby or field of study so bizarre that, should your child express a passion for it, you will not also develop an interest. Croquet, Soviet-era coins, guinea-pig breeding, French Saxophone players, dinosaurs of the late Triassic period: five seconds after your child has expressed an interest, you’ll find yourself becoming strangely fascinated. Then they move on, leaving you forever stuck with a frankly weird hobby.
- You have made-up words covering most common items, even though it would be much simpler to use the actual name. Hence (in my case): Flexifella (banking card); Flexifella (public transport card); Flexifella (health fund card); Flexifella (credit card); Flexifella (barbecue tongs) – and so on. This, of course, is a measure of how brilliant and busy we are.
- You believe that a holiday car trip should include a break, but the break should be educational. For example, the bane of many a child’s life: the State’s Third Largest Tree. Then, after four or five visits to the Tree, how about The Museum of Fencing Wire, The Collection of Old Ploughs or The Oyster Experience? Confession: I once forced my children to spend an hour viewing a marble masterpiece in Gundagai. I assume it made them better people.
- You find yourself becoming a specialist in Dad Jokes – defined as “a joke that is not funny in the first place and which becomes less funny via endless repetition.” And so, driving past the local cemetery, the words come unbidden from your mouth: “It’s the dead centre of town – people are dying to get in there.” Oh, and every meal should end with you patting your tummy and saying “I’m so glad we ate then because I’m not a bit hungry now.” Remember, this is the way we teach our children that their fathers are real people, with flaws and limitations. For instance: they think they’re funny, but they’re not.
- Because your mind is on higher things, you will mangle the names of your favourite TV shows to the annoyance of other family members. In my case, it’s “Last Tango in Halifax”, a lovely drama starring Nicola Walker and Derek Jacobi, which I render, variously, as Last Train to Candleford, Last Disco in Merseyside and Last Footy Match in Sunderland. The iterations are so bizarre that others in the family, trying to provide an example of my incapacity, find the task impossible.
- When playing games with your child – soccer, Scrabble, chasings – you always let them win. This continues until they are eight years old. You then desperately, but vainly, spend the next 70 years with the aim of occasionally defeating them.
- You define “cleaning up” as eating the left-over sausage on their plate. You define “helping fund the netball team” as eating a second sausage sandwich from the club canteen. You define “school fundraising” as buying a box of chocolates the size of your own head. It’s not for nothing the “dad bod” comes with curves.
- You know every song by the Wiggles.
- Your car contains so much spilt fruit juice that the upholstery is growing penicillin.
- You yearn for your children to reach adulthood, not because you want to see their choice of career or partner but because you’ll have the chance to quiz them about their car. In particular: have they checked the oil, have they noticed the low tyre pressure, and, since they intend to drive to Brisbane, would they care to have an hour-long discussion about which is the better route: inland or coastal?
- Oh, and you know there is no bliss as good as this.
Happy Father’s Day.
Read more by Richard Glover
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