A Surprisingly Good Father’s Day (or Hey Dude, Where’s My Car?)

If you would have told me this morning that today would end up being the best Father’s Day ever I probably would have laughed in your face or worse… The day was not going as planned.


First, our plans to sleep in (which for us is getting up at 7 instead of 5) were thwarted by “psycho cat” getting up on the roof outside our bedroom and insisting on being let in through the window. That was around 4AM. Then around 5:45 Suki (our small dog) jumped up on the bed and started licking our faces to the sound of Joe (the rooster) crowing outside. So my husband and I gave up, got up, kissed good morning with a laugh and made our usual rounds caring for the animals. It was clear that Maggy (our big dog) was in need of one of the long hikes that she and I do so I went off with her and planned to start our Father’s Day meal when we got back from church. After a peaceful hike on our favorite trail, I came home to find my husband on the front porch with the paper and a pretty sour look on his face…uh oh…

Apparently our eldest came home sans car. Without the car he took to his friend’s sleep over the night before, my husband’s car. That’s right; he came home on Father’s Day morning without his father’s car.

To make a long story short, while at a sleep over my son (in a fit of poor judgment) said “Sure” when a friend asked if he could borrow the car due to an “emergency” (which turned out to be…not so much). Unbeknownst to our son, said friend actually doesn’t have a license. So when he got pulled over for a routine check, the car was towed.

Needless to say, we were not pleased. Our son was very contrite…very. He clearly understood that he had made a huge error in judgment (he’s a trusting kid and that can, unfortunately, work against you sometimes) and had let us down. I’m proud to say that the first things we said to him were words of comfort, support and forgiveness. Your teenager knows when they’ve massively screwed up. What they may not know is that it’s not the end of the world, you forgive them and you still love them – even though they are in big trouble with you ;). I think our son was also genuinely surprised when we showed care and concern for the other boy involved and wanted to reach out to him. So after talking to our son, we set about making phone calls and figuring out what it would cost to go get our car out of the “hoosegow”.

I started cooking and baking (which are good things to do when you just want to scream and go back to bed) and we got on with our regularly scheduled programming. Then a funny thing happened. We received a phone call from “the friend’s” Dad who wanted to come over and pay for the retrieval of our car. Shortly after this nice man and concerned father was making fast friends with my husband in the backyard. After apologies and handshakes, they were chuckling about the irony of this Father’s Day for both of them. When our son saw his Dad out there, he said, “Mom, I’m going to go out too.” He went out and shook hands and took responsibility for lending the car when he shouldn’t have. And I just watched them out the kitchen window. There they were. Two great Dads showing their sons what it means to take responsibility, to be a good neighbor, to be a good man, to lead by example, to be…a great Dad.