The Perils of Father's Day Shopping

This is the June edition of the “Dueling Posts” broadcast between Suburban Island and Caustically Optimistic. Both authors discuss the same topic from their divergent points of view to give you a fuller view of the question at hand. If you would like to be a part of July’s Dueling Post drop either author an email or comment and we will include you in the process. Enjoy…

Buying a father’s day gift is a difficult task; it is the most difficult gift I have to buy all year. Father’s Day gift giving difficult comes in several flavors. Those flavors being: vanilla, chocolate, pistachio and mocha caramel pumpkin cappuccino (with sprinkles).

Buying a gift isn’t easy. This is not just the man who fathered me thirty years ago. This is the person who taught me to swim (by throwing me into the pool to see what would happen), taught me to ride my bike, my skateboard, and eventually how to drive a car. I am a terrible driver so I am loath to assign him credit for that one but someone is to blame. He is a good man; he is not perfect. He helped me with homework. He helped pay for college and my first new car. He stood by me when I was right and when I was wrong and taught me the value of suffering the consequences of my actions – and considering his station in life during my teenage years consequences were rarely assigned to me but when they were or should have been he was there to make sure I learned something.

So buying a gift is not as easy as picking something out. We are who we are because of our fathers and in appreciation of that someone made up father’s day to make money off our reverence for the men who raised us.

So what to get him?

Vanilla
My parents and sister have a lot of personality, this makes giving any of them a gift a difficult activity. On Father’s Day I cannot express what should be expressed through the regular cliché gifts. He does not wear a tie to work so that gift is inappropriate and considering that we are both color-blind I leave clothing selection to the Bean or our mother – not only for him but for myself as well. I would get him a polo shirt or something he could wear to work – and have one of the women pick it out – but the protest is, he has so many shirts already.

He doesn’t golf, he doesn’t fish and considering his poor health there are not a whole of athletic things he can do anymore so all of those gifts fly out the window, too. I could get him a coffee mug but as a teacher I am filled to the gills with mugs myself and would rather not pass that unwelcome gift on to someone else. It’s the thought that counts and a mug is essentially thoughtless.

Chocolate
Chocolate is fantastic but considering his type-three diabetes, he’d pass on the candy. Just as well other gift ideas run afoul with him. Last Christmas, I was getting Jeremy a gift card at sporting goods store and my father was with me. Jeremy has been my best friend ever since my parents convinced me that I should, perhaps, make friends and my father thought it was terrible, “disgusting,” that I would get someone who meant anything to me a gift card. It essentially stated that I didn’t know enough about my only best friend to get him an appropriate gift. I explained to him the virtues of gift cards, only to be rebuffed, and the only way he let me out of the store with the card was when I explained what the card was for – a gift I could not afford myself but everyone giving a little could get him a lot – and that I could not independently purchase the gift anyway.

I cannot get him a gift card. The closest I can get is sending my mother money (or a gift card) to make the purchase but even that is as impersonal as the gift card in his opinion. It’s difficult because the gift card is the quick and easy path; it exposes a lack of knowledge and a deficit in listening. On the other hand gift cards prevent returns and the person chooses their own gift and gets what they want without the hassle of returning the wrong gift or the inconvenience of living with a thoughtless, inappropriate or crappy gift.

I was going to get him a Home Depot card, the one card he approves of, but then that had “Mom’s Honey-Do List” written all over it and I had to pass on that one. I will be home in July, dear reader, and I do not want to hear about it and I do not want to help. I certainly will help and I am sure there will be more than one project for me to get my hands dirty on – but I am not going to be a part of the problem. I will be a part of the solution.

Pistachio
Short of there being pickle or lutefisk flavored ice cream (or pickle lutefisk, yum!), pistachio is his favorite flavor of ice cream. This category is named such because there are a lot of things he does like and does need in my price range. He is trained as a chef. He likes to garden. He does genius small projects around My Old Kentucky Home.

He buys them himself with complete disregard to the fact that I have to observe an arbitrary holiday by buying him something and try to do just that without spending a small fortune.

The difficulty becomes what gadget – for the kitchen, office, garden or garage – does the man need and after we have narrowed that down – will mom let him have and I can afford. Once we’ve done this we have to establish that he does not already have it. There have been times that we have been in Williams & Sonoma where I have taken something out of his hand and said, “we already got you that for Father’s Day” and then signaled to Chaos Bean that we had a winner.

Mocha Caramel Pumpkin Cappuccino (with sprinkles).
Some things are too good to be true. Some things are great by themselves and wonderful mixed with a select few other things but quite nasty if you go overboard. Quite often gifts in this category go overboard.

In the quest for the perfect gift we sometimes end up in Brookstone or another such store and get the poor man something overly fancy or cute, but useless. The man is the progenitor of Spritopias and Chaos Bean – that he has not been stoned to death in the street by the peasants is amazing, but he has his fill of overly fancy and cute but useless. Assign labels where you think they go.

In desperation we sometimes get something that looks cool in the store but once its home you realize he may never use it, mom will only get annoyed dusting it and if he can find the receipt he’s is taking it back and if he can’t he is donating it to Our Lady of Wholesale Catholic/Jewish Thrift Store. However, the need to get something over-rides any logic AlGoreRhythms in your brain causing you to buy something that violates the patent on “crap” and will only end up in a landfill after being cannibalized for its batteries.

So what am I going to get him? A gift card to the iTunes store. Mom is getting him an iPhone (when they come out) and he’ll need to get acclimated to iTunes so he can ‘pimp his phone’ so to speak.

Comments

[Yvonne]

You can never go wrong with gift cards.

I hope you are feeling better from your scary hike. There are too snakes in CT - you just have to know where to look! :-) The temperatures definitely are cooler here although the weather guessers are promising a warm-up.

[Suburban Island]

Gift buying is always fraught with dangers and the opportunities to choose unwisely arise everywhere.

[Margaret]

I am taking my dad out to dinner because he is hard(impossible?) to buy for also. The i-tunes card is great; can I get one too?

[Alex V]

This is why Amazon Wishlists should be mandatory.

[bettyalready]

I cried when I wrote it. My mom did not "get" it when I emailed her (she's not allowed to know my blog stuff). She said: "How cute." Thanks dudes. Really. Hey my cell is ...I'll email it to you

[bettyalready]

HA! I LOVE people putting perspective on things. I was thinking to myself if for some reason I had phtographers in my face, I would do everything to HIDE my children. It's a dangerous place to make your kid the poster child for a "cause."

[bettyalready]

I left a comment in my comment section...but you may not check there. I would love not to spell funny. I never used to and didn't understand why people did until I saw how people got to my diary thing. I don't overly care, I would like to be OFF the radar in that way...