My dad’s quite a card – it’s a shame I can’t find one

Jun 11 2008 by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post

ALL dads love the following: fishing, golfing, football and beer. This statement must be true, because the greeting card companies decree it so.

In the same way, all mums like flowers and pink things, all couples are utterly obsessed with lovestruck teddy bears, and the older you are the more you appreciate a witticism about how wrinkly you are getting.

Other greeting card truths include: allotments are owned by grandfathers in their eighties, not middle-class workaholics who see organic food as a status symbol; there is no better cure for a serious illness than a cartoon of a zebra sucking a thermometer; and you can’t go far wrong with a gurning baby.

But it’s four days to Father’s Day, so the cuddling bunnies, hospitalised hippos and bunches of marigolds have made way for shelves of boozing dads, angling dads, footy-mad dads, nine iron-wielding dads or, if he’s multi-talented (or thinks he is), the boozing, angling, footy-mad and nine iron-wielding dad.

If yours hasn’t got the TV permanently tuned to Sky Sports, or an account with the local pub, then your search for a card is doomed.

The hunt for one that simply states “Happy Father’s Day” is usually futile. Well, I have one (sorry for the spoiler if you’re reading this, Dad).

It was the last one in the shop and I bought it three weeks ago when I was actually looking for a birthday card for my sister that didn’t imply she’s obsessed with shopping, shoes or sex.

Smug? Maybe. But it’s only because this bi-annual quest – the “fishing, golfing, football and beer” rule also applies to dads’ birthdays – is unnecessarily stressful.

It’s the pigeonholing I object to. Sure, my Dad enjoys a pint of bitter and used to go fishing quite a lot. But that doesn’t sum up his personality any more than it does my feelings about him on the one day of the year I’m officially supposed to share them with him.

By giving him a card with a hook on it, am I referring to how he used to keep fishing flies in the band of his hat and would carefully explain to us why we shouldn’t touch it?

Am I saying: “Thanks for always offering an explanation rather than just telling us not to do something?” Am I referring to his patience or to memories of a happy childhood?

Surely even Freud couldn’t read all that into a simple line drawing.

We place the people we meet into stereotypes because it keeps things simple – offers us a starting point, a stock character to build upon as we learn more about them.

This makes sense, and I can see why the card companies operate in the same way because it’s cheaper to sell the same design to lots of people.

I can’t imagine a big demand for cards aimed at folk musicians with giant moustaches and a talent for making furniture and getting people to laugh, although this would say more about my Dad than a koala pushing a golf buggy.

Even more than the “hobby” cards, I hate the ones that crack a worn-out joke about how kids always borrow cash from their parents and spend their teenage years asking for lifts, even though both of those statements are usually true.

It’s tired, was never funny in the first place, and anyway the subject is probably one parents want to block out now their kids are safely shacked up elsewhere and they’re free to relive their youth.

But then I know I’ve done no better with my simple message. After all, what does “Happy Father’s Day” do to sum up how my Dad is eccentric and stalwart in equal measures and that both opposites put together are what makes him special.

There may well be something of the British stiff upper lip that makes me reach for the straightforward “Happy Father’s Day” message, rather than a couple of generic rhyming couplets: “To my fishing, golfing, footie-obsessed dad, when I ask for lifts and money, I make you mad. But I think you’re great so I’d just like to say, I love you, Dad – Happy Father’s Day.”

lauradavis@dailypost.co.uk