Today in Fatherhood: Illegal Fun

Thanks to the gurus at the Googleplex, we are alerted constantly to the highs and lows of fatherhood across the world. Actually, it’s mostly lows, because Google alerts often seems like the world’s most sophisticated Police Blotter. Let’s dig in to this week’s highlights:

• In Louisiana, a dad and his 12-year-old daughter decided to play a practical joke on fellow motorists. What says Happy 2010 more than cruising the interstate with your teenage daughter bound and gagged with duct tape? Apparently New York’s If You See Something, Say Something campaign made it down to the Bayou, because multiple motorists called in a kidnapping in progress. Dad was arrested, daughter cited and released.

• There was an equal lack of understanding for this creative dad from Georgia, who gave his young children homemade tattoos of a cross, using a guitar string as a needle, on their hands. “I mean, we didn’t even break the skin barely, OK?” the mom says in his defense. They, too, face charges, although it’s clear to us that they were just following the ancient faith of the tattoo-crazy Christian Copts in Egypt.

• From tats to tases: enterprising father Jorge Garcia of Deltona, Fla., was involved in a pre-dawn dustup with the cops, who were advancing on him with tasers drawn. What to do? He grabbed the infant in the seat next to him, held the baby in front of his chest, and reportedly told officers multiple times, “Tase the baby, Tase the baby”. If DadWagon had a dollar for each time we’ve said that around the house…

• This is a great season for sports, what with Boise State laying the wood on TCU, the Nets winning a couple games, and the entire continent eagerly awaiting the Scotties Tournament of Hearts Womens Curling Championship in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. So sports dads are getting a lot of attention. We salute the fatherly devotion of Heisman winner Mark Ingram’s dad, who was a fine NFL receiver in his day, but unfortunately is spending this bowl season in a jail in Queens after having skipped bail to watch his son play. Boxing champ Miguel Cotto’s dad, who helped convince the ref to stop the fight last year when PacMan Pacquaio was whupping Cotto, died this weekend after waiting two hours for an ambulance in Caguas, Puerto Rico. Then, there are the shaped-by-their-dad sports profiles: Texas football coach Mack Brown’s pop was apparently one tough sumbitch, while Eagles phenom DeSean Jackson’s late father was “all out, all the time”.

• Is it even worth mentioning the varied and cruel acts of violence carried out by dads around the world? A Pennsylvania dad attacked his 12-year-old son with a knife because of an ice cream spill, an Indian man immolated his daughters because their cell phones wouldn’t stop ringing. A Florida dad got drunk on New Year’s and let his 2-year-old fall into a firepit. Mom, luckily, pulled the boy out with only moderate burns. Perhaps a collective New Year’s Resolution for dads is in order: Stop killing (or trying to kill) your children. Is that too much to ask?