It's Fodders' Day

Oh, joy. Another goddamned tie.

My father is a rock… and a rocket scientist (okay, technically an aerospace engineer, but still). Unfortunately, he is in a minority: Divine Daddies. I’ve never known another father who started his career as an Apollo engineer at N.A.S.A., managed to obtain and to hold a very well respected civil position at the air force base, PLUS earned his Eagles in The National Guard, jogged six miles each evening, worked in the yard, diddled around in his workshop, AND still had time to throw the baseball or Frisbee ® with me every single day after he got home from work, where he instructed his secretary ALWAYS to interrupt whatever he was doing if my brother or I called, no matter what. Now, THAT’S a frickin’ dad!

Other dads I’ve known: fucking sperm donors. Made a deposit and that’s about it. I know there is a lot of grousing on the part of dads who are “forced” to pay child support. One dad in my past wrote “blood money” on the damned child support check. That made the judge really happy. One of the reasons that fathers are often these days considered fodder, which means “people considered as readily available and of little value,” is because of boorish behavior like that. I could tell you other bad dad stories that would straighten your short-and-curlies. But I won’t. Instead I will bitch about the spelling of the holiday intended to honor all papas.

It’s FATHERS’ Day, dammit. Not FATHER’S Day. Do you see the difference? If you don’t, then you are probably one of the masses spelling it wrong.  If you spell it the second way, then you are claiming that the holiday is a celebration of only one father, and it sure as hell better be mine. The correct way to make the plural possessive so that you are showering praise on two or more begetters is to place the apostrophe after the s. 

Guess what? Congress spelled it wrong in their 1913 bill to establish Fathers’ Day, and again in its 2008 commendation of the founder of the holiday, (technically) Sonora Dodd, who spelled it RIGHT when she petitioned the government to make the day an official holiday, but who should have slapped her pappy for giving her such a sucky name. Still. Leave it to the United States’ government to promote incorrect punctuation. 

I believe it should be a capital offense to spell Fathers’ Day or any other plural holiday incorrectly, and that all those marijuana pushers should be cleared out of jail to make plenty of room for the grammar abusers, including all the Congressmen who voted in favor and didn’t fix the spelling when they had the chance. Alas. I am not in charge. Happy Fathers’ Day anyway.