Which Don Are You?

don_knottsAfter I bellyached about whether the fact that I am not a SAHD meant I technically had the same dad-title as the noted lousy father Don Draper, commenter Ken Guerin wrote in with his own Grito de Yara:

If I tell someone that I am a Dad, I couldn’t care less if they picture Don Draper, Don Knotts, Don Corleone, Don Juan, etc.

Perhaps I am just too hopped up on caffeine, but this strikes me as an exciting ontological breakthrough. Perhaps all levels of fatherhood, or even manhood, can be categorized by the simple question: Which Don are You?

OK, Don Juan and Don Corleone are not Dons in the first-name sense, because they are honorifics. But I think they should still count. And maybe even the Don-Don from Family Guy’s Star Wars remake (that is, a whiny, freezing Don Knotts on the body of a Tauntaun) should count as well.

But there are so many more Dons (though I’m not counting University of San Francisco athletes). I, for example, felt a lot like Don Rickles this morning as I reported for an unwanted second week of jury duty: pink-faced and spewing invective. Other, more manly dads could choose inked-up Don Ed Hardy. Someone has got to be linen-suited Don Johnson. Or mumbling bigot Don Imus. Oscar nominee Don Cheadle is up for grabs. Whoever you are experiencing, whoever you are being, a Don has been through it all before.

Are there any Dons I’m missing? Which Don are you? Write in an answer, even if your name is, well, something like Ken.

Published by Nathan

Nathan Thornburgh is a contributing writer and former senior editor at TIME Magazine who has also written for the New York Times, newyorker.com and, of course, the Phnom Penh Post. He suspects that he is messing up his kids, but just isn’t sure exactly how.

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