Dads Through The Decades
We’ve been thinking about dads. While no two dads are exactly alike, our memories of them – what they looked like, what we watched together, the music they played in the car – are a product of their time.
With that in mind, we embarked on our Dads Through The Decades project, asking you to share your memories of your Dad in the decade of your youth.
Those stories (combined with a few of our own) are helping us to create some fantastic paper doll style illustrations of ‘Dad’ stretching back from the ‘00s to the ‘50s – just in time for Father’s Day.
Meet ’00s Dad
‘00s Dad was a pretty ambitious man when it came to fatherhood goals.
He wanted to raise independent children who had high self-esteem and a sense of their individuality.
He tried whenever he could to lead by example and show you that it was great to express yourself.
‘00s Dad proudly wore his Ed Hardy t-shirts around town to let the world know that he was cool.
He had more than a couple of pairs of Crocs (but like everyone else, soon stopped wearing them for anything other than doing the gardening).
He didn’t bat an eyelid at your growing collection of Von Dutch trucker hats, or your quest to match the skinniest jeans with the biggest high top trainers you could find.
‘00s Dad even went so far as to buy some skate trainers and have a few goes on Tony Hawk. Though he almost certainly called a ‘manual’ a ‘wheelie’. Close but not quite, ‘00s Dad.
‘00s Dad had absolutely no idea what a MySpace page was, but he loved seeing you flex your creative muscle curating just the right background art and taking the perfect ‘MySpace angle’ photo for your profile.
‘00s Dad also wanted you to be safe, and he worried about the old fashioned dangers of the outside world and the brave new dawn of household internet (not to mention the arrival of smartphones).
He winced every single time he saw you head out with your Razor scooter. And was always on hand to put plasters on your cuts (but never said he told you so when you hit some dodgy paving).
The threat of Y2K melting the family computer kept him awake at night (not that he’d admit that from January 1st of the new millennium, of course). He was the keeper of dial-up password and tried in vain to limit the amount of time you spent chatting on MSM with (but not actually seeing) your friends.
Luckily, he wasn’t so tech savvy that he could crack the ‘code’ you invented with your siblings and friends simply by writing in Windings. And, to this day, you are fairly sure that he doesn’t really know what ‘ROFL’, ‘LOL’ and ‘YOLO’ mean, no matter how often he puts them at the end of his messages.
He did his bit to help you create ever more elaborate costumes to wear to the release of each new Harry Potter book. And he stood outside in the cold at midnight with you so that you could be one of the first muggles in your town to get your hands on a copy.
00’s Dad laughed at Pete in ‘Outnumbered’ because he knew exactly how he felt. He shed an almost secret tear during Finding Nemo and definitely got carried away more than once singing along to the High School Musical soundtrack in the car.
Thanks ’00s Dad! Who knew you could hit those high notes!