World's Greatest Dad

I wasn’t sure exactly what I was looking for, but I knew that I could find something perfect. The cafeteria of the Courthouse Elementary School was filled with tables and those tables were filled with potential Christmas presents for my father. My budget was the $2.00 worth of change that I had scraped up scouring my bedroom.

I perused each table and finally had decided that I was probably going to get him that screwdriver set I saw on the second table. I knew he liked screwdrivers. He had a bunch of them and used them all the time. Of course back in the late 1970s I hadn’t grasped the concept that my father used screwdrivers because he needed to fix stuff, not because he liked using them. I also didn’t really realize that he had a lot of screwdrivers and did not likely need another cheap set purchased at the elementary school Christmas gift fair.

The last table in the group still had lots of stuff on it, but I was sure there was nothing better than those $2 screwdrivers… but then I saw it. I knew instantly that it was the best gift I could get for my father. It was a little statue about 3-4 inches tall that was made out of some unidentified material. It wasn’t wood, plastic, or metal. It must have been some sort of resin or something. It was a yellowish tan figure of a guy standing there with the clear label on the base, “World’s Greatest Dad.”

I wasn’t sure how such a prize was available to me in my little corner of the world and certainly was glad to see it was within my budget. It was the perfect Christmas gift for a guy I knew was, in fact, the World’s Greatest Dad. I knew he would love it.

This is my first Father’s Day without my Dad. He was a great Dad. Whether it is because of the advice that he gave, the example that he set, or the way he acted like a shitty little statue was the greatest gift he ever got, I miss him all the time.