When Is Father's Day?

"When is Father's Day?", my little one asked me just before I put her to bed tonight. "I've no idea. I never celebrate it," I replied. "But everyday is kids' day." On that we agreed, and so to bed, as Zebedee would say.

Several lady friends have told me that the trouble with men (we always have trouble) is that we keep things bottled up. I tell them that this is hogwash. It's that men don't necessarily talk about their problems the way women do. "Let your frustrations out," they say, nevertheless. "I do," I retort, "But not by yelling at people or going on an ice cream eating binge." Agreed or not, we move on.

Yesterday was on of those days when I let it all out, and the poor victim was a woman. Her sin? She treated me like a father. Put another way, she treated me the way many women treat fathers when mothers are present. She ignored me when discussing my child. "On no she di-n-t?" Oh yes, she did. Imagine that I had brought my child to the dentist's office. Let her say her name; she does not miss any of the forenames, and makes clear how to pronounce the first of them correctly. I answered the initial questions. I got my five year old to sign a form--a first--and with lovely legible writing. Kept my child amused with some reading books, albeit while I had an ear to the cricket on the coverage playing on the TV. Then in walks her mother and the fun begins.

"Let's look over the form," says the receptionist, as she sits next to my wife, turning her back to me. Blah-blah-blah. "And this is Daddy here?" Well, I took a deep breath as I heard a six being blasted over the boundary by a South African player. "Yes," I said. "The same one who brought in the child without her mother and who now seems to have become invisible." My point was made and from then on, all the interaction changed as "Mummy" and "Daddy" appeared as new separate but relevant entities. Wonderful.

The lady called me this morning to check how my daughter had been since visiting the dentist. "Your wife gave me your number," she said. "I understand that she is travelling." I told her that all was well, and that no trauma seemed to have occurred after the visit. But, I took the opportunity to explain myself. I let her know that one of the problems that Dads have is that women especially seem to think that it's mothers who care for children. She explained that she had just had a father who was unable and unwilling to fill out the forms, saying, "It's my wife who deals with the children." I quipped that I was sure that if my wife had taken our car (almost like a child in some families) to the garage for a check up and I then arrived later, and the mechanic had immediately started to ask me questions about the car, she would have railed and gotten a bit nasty with a few "You men are all the same!"

Now that this is off my chest, perhaps I will accept the offer to do a radio program discussing stay-at-home Dads. I hope that it will be a call-in and that I get a good crop of questions on which I can chew.