Father's Day: Don't Buy Me a Power Tool, Buy Me a Better Relationship

Dad Alert: Father's Day is coming up on Sunday, June 19.

If you're looking to buy dad a new power tool, cologne, a new tie or a hardware store gift card this year, please save your money.

It's getting to the point where Father's Day is beginning to look a lot like Christmas. We're bombarded with "Father's Day Specials" that have more to do with sales volume than they do with making dad happy.

So this father's day, you don't need to buy me a new power tool, or cologne, a tie, or a hardware store gift card, all you need to do is buy me a better relationship.

Not Found at Any Store

Let me explain.

As I've gotten older, I've gotten better jobs. It's meant being able to pay for daycare, private school, a nicer house and our first new car.

But it also means more hours, more demands and focusing on work with my smartphone, resulting in more interruptions outside of work hours.

Like a slowly-turning vice grip, the hours I get to focus on family get slowly squeezed into smaller pieces.

With screen-time interruptions, those pieces get chopped into even smaller ones.

I've taken up more jobs around the house to keep the machinery of our daily lives running: more yard work, handyman projects, diaper changing, food prep, bill wrangling, house cleaning and the like.

When you factor in driving our kids to baseball practice, gymnastics, music lessons and play dates, you can add freelance chauffeur to the list of dad's duties.

While busywork means more activity, it means less time to be a dad. The thankless job of being a parent - you may know this as well - makes it easy to forget to do the most memorable "dad" things that  dad shared with me when I was young.

Dad Wisdom

Many years from now, when I look back at all the Father's Days I've had, I won't remember the power tools, the cologne, the tie or whatever I spent that gift card on.

Instead, I'd like to remember how we spent our time together: lost hours hiking in parks, teaching how to fly fish and tie lures, playing a round of golf early in the morning, playing catch, or talking about life, the universe and everything while working on a carpentry project.

Like every day, Father's Day comes and goes. And like every day, once it's gone you never get that time back.

But for one day, instead of buying me a power tool, buy me the time to forge a better relationship - one that helps me share the wisdom of being a dad.

Scott Anderson is the Milwaukee Regional Editor for Patch.com and the father of an 8-year-old son and a 4-year-old daughter. Someday he hopes he doesn't have to listen to the Frozen soundtrack on long car trips, but for now, it's okay.