adminexcuse not to be within spitting distance.
“Sorry honey, I can’t be with you at the funeral. I am busy with the auditors at work and here is fuel and the bank card for your convenience,” he always says with great success.
But on certain occasions he comes second best.
When caught flat-footed, he is dragged along to the shops, church and funerals while resplendent in a suit at the expense of hanging out with friends.
Not that there is anything wrong with the wife’s looks, frame and dressing.
She is one hell of a beautiful woman who has a bit of everything in equal measure from a good leg to a good frame and a well endowed back side.
Nancy is a bullet. Mbama zvayo yemukadzi.
Simba just does not want his former classmates and other associates to know that he is married.
Wait until the woman is wronged and you will see him in his rightful colours defending his territory.
But the junior accountant is not alone in this predicament. His tale is consistent with that of almost every male under the sun. Very few men want to be identified with their wives although they love them right to the bone.
And the Father’s Day the world celebrates tomorrow brings an interesting dimension to the whole love puzzle. Will the celebrations be a success given that most men want to stray from home at the slightest convenience?
Imi baba manyanya, kurova mai,
Imi baba manyanya, kutuka mai,
Munoti isu vana, tofara sei?
Kana amai vachingochema, pamberi pedu,
Tozeza baba, tozeza baba chidhakwa, sang superstar Oliver Mtukudzi in the song “Tozeza baba” which highlights the love-hate relationship between children and their fathers.
Insofar as life is concerned, a mother is viewed as a saint and presented as a victim of men’s stone-heartedness.
Kuda kuzviti baba kubika sadza nemutsvairo chaiko.
Father’s Day is a celebration honouring fathers and celebrating fatherhood, paternal bonds, and the influence of fathers in society. Many countries celebrate it on the third Sunday of June, but it is also celebrated widely on other days. Father’s Day was created to complement Mother’s Day, a celebration that honours mothers and motherhood.
Father’s Day was inaugurated in the United States in the early 20th century to complement Mother’s Day in celebrating fatherhood and male parenting.
After the success obtained by Anna Jarvis with the promotion of Mother’s Day in the US, some wanted to create similar holidays for other family members, and Father’s Day was the choice most likely to succeed.
There were other persons in the US who independently thought of “Father’s Day”, but the credit for the modern holiday is often given to Sonora Dodd, who was the driving force behind its establishment.
Father’s Day was founded in Spokane, Washington at the YMCA in 1910 by Sonora Smart Dodd, who was born in Arkansas. Its first celebration was in the Spokane YMCA on June 19, 1910.
Her father, the Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart, was a single parent who raised his six children there. After hearing a sermon about Jarvis’ Mother’s Day in 1909, she told her pastor that fathers should have a similar holiday honouring them.
Although she initially suggested June 5, her father’s birthday, the pastors did not have enough time to prepare their sermons, and the celebration was deferred to the third Sunday of June. It did not have much success initially. In the 1920s, Dodd stopped promoting the celebration because she was studying in the Art Institute of Chicago, and it faded into relative obscurity, even in Spokane.
In the 1930s Dodd returned to Spokane and started promoting the celebration again, raising awareness at a national level. She had the help of those trade groups that would benefit most from the holiday, for example the manufacturers of ties, tobacco pipes, and any traditional present to fathers.
Since 1938 she had the help of the Father’s Day Council, founded by the New York Associated Men’s Wear Retailers to consolidate and systematise the commercial promotion.
Americans resisted the holiday during a few decades, perceiving it as just an attempt by merchants to replicate the commercial success of Mother’s Day, and newspapers frequently featured cynical and sarcastic attacks and jokes.
But the trade groups did not give up: they kept promoting it and even incorporated the jokes into their adverts, and they eventually succeeded.
By the mid 1980s the Father’s Council wrote that “( . . . ) (Father’s Day) has become a ‘Second Christmas’ for all the men’s gift-oriented industries.”
A Bill to accord national recognition of the holiday was introduced in Congress in 1913. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson went to Spokane to speak in a Father’s Day celebration and wanted to make it official, but Congress resisted, fearing that it would become commercialised.
US President Calvin Coolidge recommended in 1924 that the day be observed by the nation, but stopped short of issuing a national proclamation. Two earlier attempts to formally recognise the holiday had been defeated by Congress.
In 1957, Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith wrote a proposal accusing Congress of ignoring fathers for 40 years while honouring mothers, thus “(singling) out just one of our two parents”.
In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honoring fathers, designating the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day.
Six years later, the day was made a permanent national holiday when President Richard Nixon signed it into law in 1972. In addition to Father’s Day, International Men’s Day is celebrated in many countries on November 19 for men and boys who are not fathers.
Gentle reader, though now recognised in most foreign lands, can the same be replicated here where very few people are on talking terms with their biological fathers.
Most children raised by single mothers and those with both parents view fathers with an air of mistrust.
They do not see them as responsible.
The idea is just vulgar in the ears of many.
Most children have an issue or two against their fathers and expecting honour in such circumstances is like seeking orange juice from lemons.
Countless men deny paternity, leaving the burden of raising children in the hands of women.
With this in mind, very few fathers deserve honour.
Inotambika mughetto.
Online Reporter