Ever watched the movie Grease? (Rhetorical question; you're breathing, of course you have.) It is loosely based on my parents. In high school my mom was cheerleading captain, got straight A's, and was (gasp) popular. My dad was a straight up punk who once took the family car and drove it down the California coast just because he could. They didn't know each other in high school or anything, but when they did eventually meet, marry, and procreate in their adulthood, a curious thing happened: James Dean and the head cheerleader somehow spawned four incredibly shameless dorks.
Hi, internet. I am one of those four dorks. The good news is, although we make no genetic sense, our parents love us just the same. And while my mom and I geek out together so often I can easily forget she is secretly one of The Cools, my dad, even in his impending old age, continues to out-cool his kids so often that it really isn't fair. So yeah—I could spend this Father's Day praising how he grew up to be this caring, sensitive, super wise and funny dude, but that's not really my thing. Instead I'm going to take this opportunity to whine about how his coolness is a straight-up inconvenience that is cramping (gramp-ing?) my Gen Y style.
Love you, Dad. But I can't deny all these struggles your radness has caused:
Your friends are more excited for his Twitter follow-back than your Twitter follow-in-the-first-place
My father is verified on Twitter. It goes against the laws of nature and everything I believe in, but my dad is apparently important enough to get tapped by the Twitter gods while I'm still languishing here in plain old regular Twitter user hell. Do you know how many times I've heard the words, "Oh my god, your dad followed me back on Twitter!" this week? More times than you've peed, for sure. He's already Twitter fluent enough to do that thing where instead of retweeting you, he quotes your tweet in a tweet of his own. Smooth move for someone who "didn't know anything about Twitter" a few months ago, DAD.
You can never story top him
I'm like, "Guys, I got this sick Groupon to try zip lining," and my dad's all, "I once commandeered a helicopter when the San Andreas Fault ripped a hole through the West Coast and plucked people out of the wreckage with biceps the size of my own face." (OK, so I borrowed that plot from the cinematic nightmare that is San Andreas, but you get my point.)
Your future kids will eventually figure it out
I'm not going to have any authority as a parent one day. They're going to meet my dad and have a new baseline for what "cool" is, and I'll be officially screwed. Timothy will never do the dishes again.
He secretly always knows when you're lying
Cool dads have been around the block. If you try to pull crap out from under your parents, sure, your mom is always going to know (duh) because of MomDar—but cool dads are definitely going to know, because any shenanigans you attempt to hide are ones that he has "been there, done that, bought the t-shirt from" a hundred times already.
Strangers try to suck up to you like whoa
When I was a little kid, I had this incredibly inflated ego. I thought I was getting free candy and VIP 5-year-old treatment from everyone at my dad's office because I was super precious or something. NOPE. Turns out everybody just wanted to get in with the cool guy, and filling me up with free Ho Hos was as efficient a route as any.
It's literally impossible to shop for him
I get it, I get it. Dads are hard to shop for. Imma let you finish, other kids, but my dad is the hardest dad to shop for of all time. It's not that he's particularly picky—he just has this very basic dad wardrobe that already oozes "cool," and nothing I add to it is going to help. He doesn't do novelty shirts and ducky ties like the rest of y'all's sell out dads. Confessions of a daughter who has bought her father the same pair of navy socks for his birthday 23 years in a row.
You accidentally grow up thinking you're cool, too
Sixth grade was a rude awakening, guys. A headgear-wearing, frizzy-haired, zit-tastic awakening of ridiculous proportions. While I have marinated in my uncoolness long enough now that it is becoming on me, back then I was more than a little stunned that nobody thought my Powerpuff Girls backpack was all the rage. I blame my dad for giving me unrealistic expectations about my genetics.
You're actually pleased when people say you look like him
Like, guys, I'm a full-grown woman in my lady prime or whatever. I should be deeply offended when someone says I look like a baby boomer. That's how out of control his cool level is. I'm pleased to resemble someone whose snores have probably accidentally opened portals to hell. Dammit, universe, why?
He doesn't even care that he's cool
Coolness is wasted on cool people. Do you know what my cool dad does on his cool weekends? He watches golf and walks Shih Tzus and hangs out with his uncool children. His cool is so lame that he transcended cool and brought it to a whole different dimension.
So here's to you, cool dads. Thanks for wiping our snot and pretending to act excited during our Taylor Swift concerts. We love you.
Images: AMC; Giphy(9)
