A Father’s Day Story
#25 of 52 Fictions: A Story a Week for 2026
We all knew that Dad was not very good at some things. He could not multiply or divide numbers in his head; he could not seem to park a car between two lines; anything he tried to cook would burn, turn soggy, or spill. Most of all, he got lost. Infamously, he had gotten lost driving to the hospital for my birth.
Everyone in the family joked about these things. Mom said she wouldn’t trust Dad to count the eggs or to cook a bowl of cereal. Grandma said that she was surprised that Dad had found his way out of the womb. I thought it was funny that Dad seemed almost to take pride in these deficiencies. Grinning, he said he didn’t believe in math. He said he could make a bowl of cereal just fine, as long as you didn’t want milk in it. He said he never got lost on his way to a nap.
Anyway, I’m trying to tell you a story about Father’s Day. I think I was seven when Dad announced that we would go out to a movie on Father’s Day, the two of us, like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I didn’t know who those people were, but they sounded cool. We set out under the hot June sun, Dad at the wheel, myself in the backseat, tugging at a seatbelt that was never comfortable. I knew about how long it took to drive to the movies, and after a while I knew that we had been driving for a lot longer than that. Nothing in the window looked familiar. Anxiety had begun to move around in my throat like a baby bird trying to get out of its nest when I said, “Dad, where are we?”
“Oh,” Dad said, “Not sure. We’re lost.” Seeing the my face in the mirror, he added, “Don’t fear! I get lost all the time. I’m the master of getting lost.”
We stopped at a gas station, and Dad bought for himself a bag of Doritos and for me a box of Junior Mints like I usually got at the movies. We pulled up to a park, and we followed some trails, threw sticks into a kind of swamp, and fed wet Doritos to some ducks. When another man with a little girl passed by, Dad waved and shouted, “Happy Father’s Day!” To me he said, “There’s another dad who’s lost.” Then Dad took a nap under a tree while I ate Junior Mints. I wanted to know how we would get home. “We’re lost,” Dad said, “but I haven’t forgotten the way we came.”
The next year on Father’s Day, we set out to play putt-putt, then got lost in a series of winding suburban streets, and we ended up at the airport watching the planes roar up and down. The following year, we set out for go-karts. I was excited for go-karts, but by this time I knew what was what. Dad somehow got stuck on an endless access road beside the highway. At the stoplights, he pointed out a man driving his children, and he waved, honked, called out, “Happy Father’s Day!” When he spotted another man with his kids, he did it again. He assured me that these dads were lost, too. He stopped at a lake, and we went swimming in our underpants, then sat making towers of mud beside the water, and I examined the freckles and wiry hairs on Dad’s big belly. He gestured to a road of streaming cars on the other side of the lake. “Look at them. They think they know where they’re going. What a joke. The difference between them and us is we know that we’re lost, that anything could happen, that we could end up anywhere at any time.” Then he rinsed himself off in the lake, found a patch of grass, and took a nap.
Anyway, this is all to say that for a small period of a years in my youth, I had the understanding that Father’s Day was a day when fathers went out with their sons and daughters to wander in cheerful confusion and a celebration of lostness, calling to one another, “Happy Father’s Day!”
Then time moved on, and innocence was reduced. Dad’s jokes and meanderings started to hit a little differently, and fatherhood and Father’s Day began to take on more shades and layers. But I have never completely given up my disdain for anyone who thinks that they really know where they’re going. And when my daughter and I head out on Father’s Day, I tell her, after a few miles, “Oops! I forgot my phone.”
Personal Note: Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers out there, and especially to you, Dad!
Background and implorements: I’m on a mission to write and post a story a week for 2026. Check out this article about the project in Westword!
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This story is by Nick Arvin. Check out the previous stories. The fabulous illustrations for these stories are by Erin Schoepke/Lunascape Photograpy. See more of her images here. Follow her on Instagram.
No AI was used in creating this story or the illustration.
Nicely done!
Wonderful! Thanks for the lovely story and morning chuckle, Nick!