About Distracted Daddy
Distracted Daddy is a working father with a two-year-old daughter, a focused wife and a flatulent pug. When he’s not distracted he blogs about poop, parenting and other things at distracteddaddy.com.
Shop Like A Dad
the fatherlode: dad goes holiday shopping canada
(Dec.01.11)
Santa Claus spends 364 days a year overseeing his Lilliputian army of elves as they prepare for Christmas. Thanks to those elves Santa Claus finishes his shopping early. Santa Claus also doesn’t have any kids.
If Santa had kids, stockings wouldn’t be hung by the chimney with care on Christmas Eve. Santa would be out frantically shopping with the other dads at the mall. Dads are the reason why malls have extended holiday hours and extra sales staff.
Now that I’m a dad, I’m fully embracing the panic of fatherhood holiday shopping.
It’s already December and I have not even thought about my holiday shopping. Why would I? There are still weeks and weeks to go. Why spend those yuletide days slowly searching for the right gift, when I could be sipping eggnog fireside?
There’s no need to drag shopping out. I’m not making a list. I’m not checking it twice. I’m rushing to the mall. I’m fighting the hordes. I’m getting my shopping done in one fell swoop.
Fighting the hordes at the mall is as much a fatherhood rite of passage as embarrassing your child in front of her friends. This season, I plan to loosely reenact the Arnold Schwarzenegger holiday classic Jingle All the Way.
Besides my daughter is still so young that she would be equally excited to receive this year’s hottest toy (I don’t know what it is, a Cabbage Patch Doll?) as she would to receive a plain cardboard box. (Plain cardboard boxes were the hot holiday toys of 1934).
My daughter has yet to make a list for Santa. She’s not even aware of who this vaguely Hispanic-named man is. During my one-day shopping marathon, I don’t have to worry about engaging in fisticuffs to find that elusive special toy. She’s too young to resent me for the Christmas where I didn’t buy her the pony she pined after.
She’ll be happy to play with a toy of my choosing. She won’t even mind the ham-fisted wrapping paper job with its uneven corners and overuse of scotch tape.
And if she doesn’t like the present, it was from Santa.
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