5 Truly Unforgettable Father's Day Gifts To Remember For Next Year
Well, we’ve officially wrapped up Father’s Day. Phone calls, or texts, or nothing, depending on the emotional bandwidth of your specific Father, have been sent out. Ties and slippers have been purchased and bequeathed. Hairy-chested beach photos from the 70s have been posted on Instagram Stories. Steaks have been grilled with different dad’s “special techniques.” After all, fathers can go somewhat unappreciated throughout the year, and it’s always good to have a holiday to reflect on all the firm back pats and grunts they’ve supported you with through the years.
Hopefully, whatever gift you gave your father was well-received. But it’s never too early to start thinking about next year, and a gift that will truly stay with him for the rest of his life. Sure, he’ll appreciate some nice calf-height compression socks, but you may want to go above and beyond around this point the next time around the sun. With that in mind, here are some ideas for next year’s Father’s Day on things that you can give dear Papa that he’ll never, ever forget.
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A HUGE CARDBOARD CUT-OUT OF YOU GIVING HIM A THUMBS UP
Though many of us might still be living with our parents thanks to the absolute nightmare of a housing market and declining relative wages over the past decade, if you’re not, chances are the big lug misses you! Sure, he can look through old photo albums and sit in your childhood bedroom and reminisce, but what if there was an omnipresent, almost threatening presence of you there to yank his heartstrings every time he walks into the living room.
Sure, a gigantic cardboard cut-out isn’t the most convenient item to find a place for, and it runs contrary to pretty much any interior design decision a rational human mind would make, but that’s precisely why it’s so impactful. After all, it’s a sentimental gift from the most important person in the world to him, so throwing it away is immediately out of the picture. You know what IS in the picture? You. Any picture taken in the living room, forever.
A DEMONSTRATION OF PHYSICAL DOMINANCE
Your father has likely raised you ever since you were nothing but a twinkle in his bedroom eyes. He’s seen you grow from a helpless infant, trying your very best to stick your finger in an electrical socket, to a clumsy toddler, to a very bad young soccer player. Sometimes, it can be hard for a father to see you as an adult, to realize just how much you’ve grown thanks to his care and encouragement. There’s one way to make that point stick, forever.
And that’s a good old-fashioned asskicking. With the passage of time, the tables have turned irreversibly. Now, you are the strong one, and he is not the physical specimen he used to be. Pop your papa in a tight headlock, and force him to call YOU dad. This irreparable change in power dynamic can refresh what may have become a stale relationship.
GET HIM PUT ON THE NO-FLY LIST
Dads have trouble with social media. That’s a given! Which means his online presence is likely next to nothing, which means there’s nothing stopping you from creating a robust, false online persona for your father. Once created, you can talk about pretty much whatever you want on there, even including manifesto-style posting that’s sure to get your Dad blacklisted from every airport in the country.
Every time your Dad thinks about taking a vacation, or even just traveling to visit family or an old friend, he’ll remember his dear child, everything you’ve been through together. Everything you then threw away in an mean-spirited prank in order to prevent him from traveling by anything but Greyhound Bus.
SOMETHING HAUNTED
This one gives you a little more leeway to choose something based on your specific Dad, and his interests. Whether it’s the beautiful knife of a dead trapper, the china set of an old family ravaged by polio, or the golf club of a man that got eaten by a water trap alligator, all that’s required is that there is a strong, unhappy spirit forever tethered to this world by it. What’s great about a gift like this is that regardless of physical size, it will have a massive, psychological presence in the home that reminds him of you during his sleepless nights.
Your dad not superstitious? No problem! Even somebody who doesn’t believe in other realms beyond this one will start to have doubt creep in once they are in possession of a haunted object. After all, it’s famously difficult to prove the existence of ghosts or spirits, but it’s also incredibly difficult to DISPROVE their existence. Whatever room your parents decide to tuck away this cursed trinket in, that room will forever be linked to two things for them: their beloved child, thinking of them, wherever they are, and every random creak or cold draft from then on.
ANTS
What better way to demonstrate the overwhelming love you have for your father than an overwhelming population of ants, released directly into your childhood home. I’m not sure exactly where you buy ants in bulks, but there’s gotta be some weird online pet store that can help you out there. Parents often say that even after their children move out, they can still feel their presence in the home. You can provide a physical representation of that presence, all over the floor and in the cupboards.
Even if, in what would be honestly a pretty rude repudiation of such an unique and thoughtful gift, your parents hire exterminators to clear these little crawlers out of their abode, the gift will still live on forever in their memory of the Week Of The Ants, when they took over their home completely. That’s if they can even get them all. Alternatively, if the ants persist, you can buy them a gift card to an exterminator the NEXT year. Now that’s 2 gifts taken care of, and you’ll live on as both demon and savior to them forever.
