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Father Figures: Changed My Life

By Mike Julianelle

“I was very young – too young. But I was excited anyway.

My dad wasn’t a great example and I didn’t have much of a relationship with him when I was growing up. I was determined to be a better father to my daughter than he was to me.

The moment she was born was the first time in my life I think I had a real feeling that I didn’t push down; I was overcome and speechless. The midwife asked me to announce it was a girl. I just stood there with my mouth hanging open. Somehow, through my tears, I cut the umbilical cord and she had my heart forever.

She doesn’t speak to me now because she’s mad. She’s 22 and knows she’s right about everything. And I’m pretty sure she gets that from me. But I’m proud of her and I love her and I’m still hers forever.

She changed my life.”

– Peter Ferrari

Want to share a story about fatherhood? Email fatherfigures@thedad.com

The 10 Best Comments of the Week 5/19

By Jimmy Applegath
Best Comments of the Week

Every week we pan for comedy gold in the comments section of our Facebook posts. If your comment cracks us up (or warms our hearts) we’ll showcase it here!

Here’s this week’s roundup of the 10 Best Comments of the Week:

1. Just Sayin’

2. Wiped Out

3. Nothin’ but Headaches

4. Too Much Effort

5. Interpreter

6. Carry on

7. Ferocious 

8. Early Bird

9. Amateurs

10. Dusty

Check out the previous edition of The Best Comments of the Week here.

Please Don’t Turn Your Kid’s Little League Game Into a WWE Battle Royal

By Mark Chalifoux
Parents Brawl at Little League Game
(Instagram/gototheloop)

It’s easy to be a bad sports dad. For starters, you could be the type that never shows up. Almost as bad, you could be the type of dad who gets too into it, spending the games heckling the other team, screaming instructions to your kid, then breaking down the everything they did wrong on the ride home. Or you could be one of those aggressive parents who signs their kid up for everything, charting Brayden around various fields and pools with the certainty that he’s going to get a college scholarship (he’s not). But it’s hard to be worse than fight club dad.

In a perfect world, youth sports parents wouldn’t scream at refs and kids, but is it really too much to ask for parents to refrain from fisticuffs? I can’t imagine what it does to a child when you have to commandeer his postgame Capri Sun to ice the welt on your face from a fourth-inning scrap. The latest of what feels like a regular stream of little league parent brawls happened earlier this month in Texas (big shock!).


As far as parent brawls go, I guess we should give credit to the mom who comes running out of nowhere with a bat. That had a real WWE feel to it and was almost enough to get me to completely 180 my feelings on youth sports brawls.

Steph v. Seth gets settled by a coin flip. The Western Conference Finals feature a pair of competing brothers for the first time in NBA history as Steph Curry and the Warriors take on Portland and Seth Curry. Their parents decide which gets to root for which team via coin flip, despite the fact that they both know Steph is way better and that the Warriors are going to cruise.


While Steph said it was jarring to see his mom decked out in Portland gear in game, we do have to give the Curry household credit for at least picking sides. Far too often, when this happens in college, a mom will go full Pinterest and wear some abhorrently crafted combo jersey.

That being said, don’t give Dell Curry too much credit, as he once tried to get State to pass on drafting Steph. He wanted his son to be taken one pick later by the New York Knicks, the laughingstock of major sports franchises.

Speaking of the NBA, May is when LeBron shines. Sure, James has been watching the playoffs from home, but he’s still taking over games. He went to see his son’s team play recently and security cleared out two rows for LeBron and his crew to watch the game in peace. However, it didn’t take long for the sports dad in LeBron to come out, as he took over the coaching duties.

Generally, I would strongly advocate against parents telling coaches what to do on the sidelines. But when that parent is one of the greatest basketball players of all time, it may wise to defer.

It was a big week for kids of famous sports dads, as Vlad Guerrero Jr. hit his first two career home runs.

Baseball’s most exciting rookie said he would give both balls and his bat to his dad.

Mo Salah’s daughter scoring a goal is the only way to end this. Salah is one of the greatest players in the world, and watching the crowd reacting to his daughter scoring is worth 30 seconds of your time. It’s nice to see she has some of her dad’s soccer instincts.

Reading to Your Kid Makes Them a Better Student and You a Better Dad

By Jordan Stratton
(Getty/Layland Masuda)

The next time your kid begs for one more story before bed, you might want to indulge them.

A recent study 

The study included 127 New York dads who participated in a program called Fathers Supporting Success in Preschoolers, which encouraged “shared reading” between father and child—simply put, it was regularly scheduled storytime with dad.

(Getty/Maskot)

According to a release from New York University, the dads who began the program immediately versus those who were waitlisted (aka, the control group) reported being less critical of their preschoolers and utilizing more positive parenting behaviors like praise and affection. Overall, the dads’ disciplinary methods became more effective and benefitted their child’s psychological growth.

“Ultimately, we believe that developing a program that is both focused on the parent and child, and one that is not deficit-driven or focused on improving problematic parenting but is focusing on skill development, would be appealing and engaging for fathers,” said Anil Chacko, associate professor of counseling psychology at NYU Steinhardt and the lead author of the study

So if your little guy or girl has never met a very hungry caterpillar, found out where those Wild Things are or heard about a certain little engine that could, it’s a great time to introduce them! You might benefit from it even more than they do.

Kind Man Invites Elderly Woman Eating Alone to Join His Table

By Devin Holdraker
(Facebook/Jamario Howard)

Everyone has a story.

Jamario Howard of Lincoln, Alabama recently shared that sentiment in a Facebook post that has now been shared across the web and garnered thousands of truly positive comments – oftentimes a rarity on social media.

Out to dinner with friends, Howard noticed an older woman sitting alone at a table while waiting for their meals.

“My exact thoughts was ‘dang I’d hate to have to eat alone,’” Howard wrote in the post, so he walked over and approached the woman, asking if he could sit.

After introducing themselves and speaking for a few moments, the woman shared that her husband had recently passed and that their 60th anniversary would have been the following day.

At that point, Howard writes “I instantly gave my condolences and asked her to come eat with us, which she was excited to do.”

Howard, along with his two friends JaMychol Baker and Tae Knight, shared the rest of their time at Brad’s Bar-B-Que getting to know the older woman, whose name was later confirmed is Eleanor.

“The point in this is always be kind and be nice to people. You never know what they are going through. This woman changed my outlook on life and how i look at other people,” he added.

Howard ended his post with a simple message we should all take to heart:

“Everyone has a story so do not judge! And people i can’t stress this enough. GO SEE YOUR MOM AND YOUR GRANDPARENTS. They miss you!!”

Perhaps one of the reasons such a simple gesture is spreading across the internet and evening newscasts is that random acts of kindness are truly rare these days.

Maybe it’s just that we all love to see heartwarming stories.

Whatever the reason may be, I’ll end with a comment that was echoed hundreds of times on Howards post:

“We need more of this!”

GoT Clue Has a Double-Sided Board so You Can Murder Everywhere

By Mike Julianelle
Game of Thrones Clue
(Amazon)

“Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made. Spaceballs-the T-shirt, Spaceballs-the Coloring Book, Spaceballs-the Lunch box, Spaceballs-the Breakfast Cereal, Spaceballs-the Flame Thrower.” – Yogurt, Spaceballs

Just prior to the premiere of the final season of Game of Thrones we caught wind of the GoT Monopoly Edition. And now, as HBO’s fantasy juggernaut Game of Thrones comes to a somewhat rocky end, there’s a new edition of Clue that lets you track a killer all over the seven kingdoms of Westeros.

If you’ve seen the show or read George R.R. Martin’s sprawling song of ice and fire, you know the kind of world we’re dealing with. Westeros is a large place, regardless of how easy it’s gotten to traverse over the last two seasons of the show, and in order to do it justice, board game makers USAopoly have devised a double-sided Clue board so as many locations as possible are represented.

The special edition costs $44 on Amazon and the board is elaborate enough to justify the price tag. As usual, the object of the game is to identify the killer, and in war-torn Westeros, there is no shortage of suspects.

GoT Clue features six weapons – among them a crossbow, a Dothraki scythe, and Bran’s (or, I guess, Arya’s?) fateful dagger, and twelve suspects, from Grey Worm and Missandei to Sansa, Littlefinger, and Jaime. Six of the characters are based in the Lannister’s stronghold of the Red Keep, and six are based in Mereen, where Daenerys spent much of her time.

Was it Jorah in the fighting pit with a battle axe? Was it Tyrion with the crossbow in Cersei’s bedchambers? Will someone use the coin of the Faceless Man to sneak into the Tower of the Hand? There countless fun combinations, and it will take a while before you’re able to recreate all your favorite Westeros-based murders.

About the only thing GoT Clue is missing is a dragon character, but I guess it’s not really fair if everyone is dead.

Just a heads up, if you buy stuff using the provided links, The Dad may collect a small commission.

Janitor Out-Applauds Everyone at University Graduation Ceremony

By Jordan Stratton
(YouTube/TCU;WFAA)

It’s graduation season once again, and you know what that means: Families blatantly disregarding administrators’ requests to hold their applause until the end of the ceremony.

Not that this is really a problem—each graduate should be celebrated for his or her hard work, and a certain janitor at TCU is making sure they are.

During the commencement ceremony, 68-year-old Andrew Thomas, a retired city employee who now picks up shifts here and there to assist at TCU events, was seen cheering loudly for every single student who crossed the stage. An attendee commented that “no one in the whole stadium was clapping more than him.”

(Reddit/Bbiron01)

When asked why he was being the world’s greatest cheerleader, Andrew responded:

“Hey man, lot of these kids ain’t got nobody to support them. I never had anyone to support me, so I’m gonna make sure all these kids got somebody to support them and what they’ve done, even if it’s just me.”

Thomas told WFAA that, while working the event, he was struck by the memory of his daughter graduating from college in 2015. She talked about all the kids who didn’t have supportive families—the ones who overcame the odds all by themselves.

(WFAA)

“Even an elite school like TCU, we don’t know all these kids’ stories,” Thomas said. “All these young people. We don’t know what motivated them, we don’t know who they’ve got to support them, we just don’t know.”

Thomas is a shining example of how we don’t need to know someone’s entire story in order to celebrate who they are.

“I’m grateful for them,” Thomas said. “And I know they deserve everything they’ve got. They worked hard for it.”

Dad Buys Kid Toy Mower to Teach Valuable Skill of Avoiding Family

By The Dad
(Getty/sbuden)

FILBERT, MI — Local dad Alex McCarty purchased his son a toy push mower this week, claiming it would instill in him a strong work ethic and teach him the value of some goddamn peace around here.

The Teeny Tots My First Lawnmower, complete with pull cord and popping beads, is a good primer for any future chores, McCarthy says, particularly ones that afford you the luxury drowning out your irritating family with an opaquely loud mower engine for an hour.

“It makes me proud, seeing him come outside to mimic the same daddy-work I partake in to avoid him and the others, even for a couple minutes,” he adds. “They’re never too young to learn such practical life skills.”

Included with the plastic mower is a removable gas can and tethered cap, which will allow his son to pretend like he’s filling up the tank and not savoring those sweet, fleeting moments of solitude he’ll some day take for granted.

Other recent purchases by McCarthy include a potty training toilet, which he hopes will teach his son all he needs to know about hiding.

This Just In…is The Dad Faking News. Despite being completely plausible to parents, it’s satire and intended for entertainment purposes only. For more stories like this one click here.

Grumpy Cat, the Internet’s First Viral Cat Megastar, Is Dead

By Mike Julianelle
Grumpy Cat is Dead
(Twitter/RealGrumpyCat)

Cats have a reputation for being jerks. It’s part of their charm. And in the social media era, no cat was a better representative for the peculiar charisma an angry feline has than viral megastar Grumpy Cat.

It is with a grumpy heart that Grumpy’s owners announced her death this morning, at only 7 years old.


Grumpy Cat, whose real name was Tardar Sauce, was the first cat to take social media by storm, after the owner’s brother shared a photo of the cat, in which her resting bitch face was revealed to the world, on Reddit.

The image took off immediately, with its Imgur photo receiving 1,030,000 views in just 48 hours, and launching countless memes feature the cat’s eternally unhappy face. To combat claims that the cat’s face was a Photoshop-based creation, Tardar’s owners, Tabatha, Bryan, and Chyrstal Bundeson, posted a video to YouTube. The videos quickly blew up as well, attracting millions of viewers.

At the time of her passing, Grumpy Cat had over 1.5 million Twitter followers, 2.4 million Instagram fans, and 8.5 million people following her page on Facebook. Eventually, Grumpy Cat became a merchandising behemoth, serving as the spokescat for Friskies and claiming her own style of Skechers.

Tardar passed due to complications from a urinary tract infection, a common ailment in cats, but her internet fame, and status as a viral pioneer ensures that she won’t soon be forgotten.

Somewhere, Keyboard Cat is playing her off with a sad song.