Every year, the big Evanston street fair lands on Father’s
Day weekend. I love that our town throws
a giant party filled with bird people, geriatric belly dancers and henna tattoo
artists for all the dads. And we upper middle class dads came out in force, dressed
in our definitely not cargo shorts, our best Star Wars shirts and Vans slip on shoes.
The bravest among us dared to wear the straw hat from last year’s trip to
Mexico.
Custer’s Fair (named after the street famous for no other
reason than it’s where the fair is) runs right by Diana’s store, so she needs
me to man the Wine Goddess booth. There is no better way to spend Father’s Day
weekend than miscounting change and explaining over and over that no, there are
no free samples like the fudge booth. I actually love it. I get a front row
seat to a parade of people who seemed to be conceived from a mind meld of
George Lucas and John Waters.
At the end of my shift, my brother arrived with Elijah and
Luca. Steve had the look of someone who was spending his Father’s Day weekend
watching his brother’s kids. Luca proudly asked me if I wanted to see the gift
he just bought. I held out my hand, and in it he placed a “#1 Dad” button.
I made it. All that hard work. All the late nights. All the
yelling finally paid off. Number one. I was the top dad in the world. I mean,
they don’t just give out that button to anyone. I wonder if Luca needed to give
some kind of presentation. Was there a committee? How did I beat out that dad
who brings the baseball pitching machine to the park? There must have been some
pretty dark stuff in his closet besides that pitching machine.
I ended Father’s Day with that most fatherly of activities:
having a catch with the boys. Where I threw a baseball right into Luca’s groin.
Thankfully, there are no give backs with #1 Dad pins.
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