This past week I saw a new Geico insurance ad that was pretty funny.  The children in the ad asked for a puppy but the dad tried to save money and bought them a possum instead.  Needless to say the kids weren’t very pleased and the dad looks pretty silly.

Have you ever noticed how often dads are portrayed as totally incompetent in television advertisements?  Remember the Capital One ad in which dad is such a dufus that he takes his family on a ski trip to Colorado in the middle of the summer?  He tries to ski down a slope with no snow and the vacation is a disaster.

My son Rusty calls them, “The stupid dad ads” and there are a lot of them.   Such as the cell phone company ad that showed a dumb dad frantically searching for his daughter among the cars parked on Lover’s Lane.  He’s desperately calling her name and peeking into cars because he’s forgotten she was spending the night with one of her girlfriends.  And of course he’s purchased the wrong phone company and therefore can’t call her since he has no service in that area.

You never see mothers or women ridiculed as so idiotic – that’s not politically correct.  But dads are often portrayed in the media as goofy and inept.  We’ve spiraled down a long way from “Father knows best” to Homer Simpson.

The Bible commands, ‘Honor your father and mother.”  Proverbs 4:1 reads, “Listen, my sons, to a father’s instruction; pay attention and gain understanding.”  God intended dads to be respected, trusted and the source of security and learning in the home.

This Father’s Day make sure to say thanks to your dad for some of the things he did right.  If he provided your basic needs, sacrificed money and time for you, forgave your mistakes and bailed you out of trouble on numerous occasions, then be grateful.  Maybe he had a hard time verbalizing his love for you but he said it in a thousand other ways, then find a way to say thanks.  He must have done a fairly decent job or how else could you have turned out so wonderful?

A couple of years ago an executive at The Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York told me about a discussion he had with Bob Feller. In his younger years Bob Feller had been an all-star pitcher for the Cleveland Indians but he was then kind of a crusty older man.  The executive asked him, “If you could go back and relive a moment of your baseball career what moment would you choose?”

Here was a guy who had pitched no hitters and played big major league games in front of thousands of fans.  Feller responded, ‘I guess if I could go back and replay one moment I’d like to play catch with my dad again.”

So would I.