Does your dad stink?

As we approach March and June, brands start shoving their wares into our virtual faces.  Whatever they’re selling, it’d make “a great gift” for Mother’s or Father’s Day.

The weirdest one of these, for me, was a recent email from a company that makes heavy-duty deodorant.  (Full disclosure: I bought a stick for myself last year. I was getting married and I wanted a heatwave-and-hot-flush contingency plan).

“GET 10% OFF AN EXTREME ANTI-PERSPIRANT FOR DAD!” screamed the email header.  I couldn’t help wondering who’d take advantage of that offer, or what they’d write on the gift card if they did.  “Father’s Day is the perfect time to tell you… how embarrassed I’ve always been by how you sweat like the proverbial pig. We both know I’ve lost childhood friends over it, and don’t get me started on those smelly patches you leave on all the chairs.” 

Maybe something like that.

If there’s a time for searing honesty in families, Mother’s and Father’s Days aren’t it.

For starters, card manufacturers think everyone’s parents are exactly the same.  Mum: twee, self-sacrificing, does all the housework, loves flowers.  Dad: burps, farts, loves football/golf/cricket (delete as applicable), is a bit thick, gives lifts.

Thing is, everyone’s parents aren’t exactly the same, because as the famous first line of Anna Karenina goes: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”  As such, I’ve wasted several hours of my one wild and precious life trying to find the perfect parental card.  Ideally, it would:

• not gush about how amazing they are
• not include any ‘oh-my-gosh-aren’t-we-a-happy-family!’ jokes
• not have sporting implements or bunches of flowers on the front
• imply a sense of love without boldly stating it, because… well, it’s complicated

I’m talking in the past sense about Mother’s Day cards, because I haven’t bought one of those since 1996.  Before then, the pressure to find just the right card was insane.  If I got it wrong there’d be tantrums.  If I got it right (from Mum’s perspective, at least), I’d end Mother’s Day feeling sad and empty and strange; like a piece of my soul had been eroded.

Today my personal theory is this.  The weirder and more complicated the parental relationship, the harder it is to find a Mother’s or Father’s Day card that fits.

Years back, I went Father’s Day shopping with a friend.  As we trawled the shops together, she kept lamenting that there were no cards that said things like, “Dad, I do love you – I think – but you drive me mad and I don’t always like you.”

(You, like me, might be rubbing your hands together in glee.  There’s an obvious gap in the market, just waiting to be filled.  But let’s face it: even if cards like those existed, who’d actually send one?)

Trinny and Susannah (remember them?) said that if you don’t like someone but are obliged to get them a present anyway, buy them something that’s either hideous or won’t suit them.

Maybe that’s the logic behind the strange “great for Mother’s/Father’s Day” gift ads we see every year.  Sometimes, it might seem like only an extreme anti-perspirant will do.