Happy Fathers’ Day
Today is Fathers’ Day in Shalampax. In many places, Fathers’ Day receives considerably less attention than Mothers’ Day. This is nowhere truer than in Shalampax.
The reason for this lack of interest in Fathers’ Day here boils down to a question of paternity.
Fully 23.7 percent of Shalampaxians do not know who their biological father is. Furthermore, their mothers don’t know either. It is estimated that a further 40 to 50 percent of Shalampaxians think their father is someone other than who he is. Because of the sensitive nature of the question, it is believed that the studies that produced these numbers may underestimated them significantly.
In a recent survey, it was found that, of the mothers who don’t know the paternity of their children, 27 percent of them could narrow it down to two to four men. A further 24 percent were able to say with some confidence that it was one of five to ten men whom they could identify. Another 19 percent were not able to narrow their children’s paternity down to fewer than eleven men.
The remaining 30 percent of women who could not identify the paternity of their children were not able to recall anything about their sexual encounters or partners. The excessive consumption of alcohol required to “convince me to have sex with such ugly bastards” was the most often cited reason for these bouts of amnesia.
As a result of the questionable paternity of most Shalampaxians, Fathers’ Day seems pointless to us.
Besides, most biological and adoptive fathers here spend all of their time in the pub. They can rarely recall the names of their children, let alone be bothered to spend any time with them. As a result, celebrating Fathers’ Day is not only pointless in Shalampax, it would also be painful for most children.
Happy Fathers’ Day!
It is surprising that anyone, mother or child, has a clue about the identity of the father. I’m assuming the fathers were as drunk as the mothers at the moment of conception.
Hallmark must be very annoyed with the low volume of card sales in Shalampax on Father’s Day.
@David: Hallmark hasn’t yet discovered Shalampax. Were it in a position to know such things, Hallmark would be pleased about that because it has saved the company considerable marketing dollars that would have been wasted as we rarely care enough about our “loved ones” to give them greeting cards. As you have figured out, that is particularly true on Fathers’ Day.