Don Farmer: On Dad's day, he still has to pay

A funny thing about Father’s Day — more collect calls are made on this day — this coming Sunday this year — than on any other day of the year.

Not the most calls, just the most collect calls, as in, “This is the operator. You have a collect call from Joe Blow. Will you accept the charges?” That kind of collect call. And maybe this kind:

“Hey Dad, happy Father’s Day, can I speak to Mom?”

The famous Web site Snopes.com, the corrector of myths and debunker of legends, says moms get a lot more calls on Mother’s Day than dads do on their day, and a lot fewer of the calls to mom are collect.

Snopes.com quotes a spokesman for AT&T, Dave Johnson: “Father’s Day is our biggest day for collect calls, not just the biggest holiday, but the biggest day of the year.” He says the phone chats usually are longer, too. “The difference between Father’s Day and Mother’s Day and a typical Sunday is that calls on the holidays tend to be three to four minutes longer,” said Johnson. “A typical long distance call is eight minutes long. Mother’s Day and Father’s Day calls average 11 minutes.

So why is it that offspring feel OK about hanging the call charges on the male parent?

My wife thinks it’s because people think of their mothers as the nurturing, feel-good, warm-and-fuzzy parent. Dads are just supposed to work hard and take care of stuff, like paying for phone calls.

A male friend told me it’s because kids know dad will pay. “They know the old man’s just grateful for the call, happy with his kid’s attention for a few minutes,” he said.

Maybe we don’t all have the Father’s Day thing down pat yet, partly because it’s a fairly recent holiday.

The concept is old, stemming from a way to honor a Civil War veteran who reared his children after their mother died. The first local Father’s Day reportedly was in 1910 in Spokane, Wash.

It existed unofficially until 1972, when President Nixon declared it to be observed every year on the third Sunday in June. That presidential act didn’t get nearly as much publicity as some of Nixon’s other antics, but Father’s Day survives, even in the shadow of Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day.

Some related facts, again from Snopes.com:

-- Father’s Day is the fourth-largest card-sending occasion. Hallmark says 95 million cards will go to dads this year.

-- The overall busiest day for calls is the Monday after Thanksgiving.

-- Some people do call mom collect. Snopes says Mother’s Day is the second busiest day for collect calls. Valentine’s Day is the third busiest for collect calls, with sweethearts calling their valentines and reversing the charges.

People who watch such sociological trends think that the cell phone revolution is making the calling-dad-collect thing obsolete.

Greeting cards may never go out of style, however, even if they can cost as much as a lot of phone minutes. It’s a lot easier to tease old dad about his senior citizenship by mail than by phone. And with a card, at least dad knows he doesn’t have to pay the postage.

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E-mail Don Farmer at don@donfarmer.com