Apparently it’s Father’s Day today. And Konrad Werner would like to celebrate having a penis and being able to produce sperm too, even though conclusive evidence is still pending on the actual efficacy of his nippy little beggars.
Not knowing much about Father’s Day, I decided to look it up on the internet, but was frankly bored of this self-set task before I even began, and became distracted by the fact that today is also Ascension Day – the day on which Jesus ascended to heaven – ‘bodily’, if you please. For a reason I really cannot be bothered to look up, but probably having something to do with a protein-rich diet, tiny effigies and too much mead on a balmy Sunday afternoon, the Germans decided to make Father’s Day the same as the Christian Ascension. I would like to think that the key lies in the idea that Jesus’s body is a giant celestial seed ‘fertilizing’ heaven. For those of you interested in Italian Renaissance paintings, the mental image is unmistakable in, for example, Garofalo’s treatment of the subject circa 1520.
Another nice fact, which I found on the second website I glanced at during my tireless research, insouciantly asserts that “in the eastern German states, the day is often known as ‘Herrentag’ or ‘Männertag’, ” before adding, without so much as a by-your-leave, “while most fathers, in acknowledgment of the day’s origins [whatever the fuck they are] spend the day with their families, in many places, one sees groups of men parading through the streets in a hand-drawn cart”.
While LEO was hazy about the translation of Bollerwagen, and while I am really grateful to the East Germans for allowing us infertile specimens a share of the Father’s Day/Ascension fun, I kindly decline the implicit invitation. I just probably wouldn’t enjoy being wheeled about in a small carriage that much. Let the dads have the day off, let them pull their kids around in a Bollerwagen. I wish them all the joys of fatherhood.