By: Carlisle Myers (and Matt Myers)
As we all bask in the glow of the holiday season, giving and receiving gifts and generally enjoying all the holiday cheer, I have noticed many questions surrounding my most challenging endeavor: the gift for Matt Myers, my dad.
Anyone who’s met my dad has been received pretty openly; he’s not a guy who doesn’t talk, but he’s not a chatty guy, either.
One of my friends told me he looks like he belongs on the show Heartland, a western drama about cowboys and horses.
I have been so blessed to have a chill dad who’s actually (sometimes) willing to talk to me, so naturally, I bribed him into making a gift list with me in exchange for not bothering him for a whole week.
I decided to choose three pretty generic gifts that I thought any dad would enjoy, and I forced my dad to sit down and review them with me.
The first one I chose is a gamer chair, and upon asking him if he knew what a gamer chair is, I was shocked to hear that the answer was yes.
“Doesn’t it have a whole lot of stuff to go with it, like where your hands would go to say ‘type’ or whatever?” said my dad.
I had to tell him that “no, it’s just a chair with extra padding, because gamers sit in them all day.”
He expressed his approval, telling me that he “always, always enjoys [his] comfort in [his] chairs, and it sounds like a gamer chair would be exactly what any dad would need.”
We looked on Amazon to find the gamer chair with the best reviews, and it looks like the best gamer chair is this one for $140.
My dad also added that any dad would be “blessed” to have the “luxury comfort” of a gamer chair.
Bluetooth headphones were next on my list.
I have teased him on the giant ones he has before, and after asking him if AirPods could be the better choice, he was adamant that they don’t have the noise cancellation he so cherishes.
Even after presenting him with proof that AirPod Pros do, in fact, have the noise cancellation, he still remains loyal to his Bose headphones.
“I don’t think [the headphones] are cool, I think they’re functional,” he said. “See, when you’re a dad, particularly when you’re a dad who’s, like, over 45, cool doesn’t matter. It’s all about functionality, and my Bose headphones do the job they’re supposed to do.”
Matt’s choice headphones can be found here; they aren’t cheap, but he says it’s completely worth it.
Coffee was our third choice; coffee is a staple for lots of early morning dads, and is likely a safe bet for an emotionless dad.
“I usually use whatever your mom buys at the grocery store,” he told me.
“However, I think the world needs nothing more than Dunkin Donuts coffee. It has the taste of early morning, and it’s highly caffeinated, which leads you to the second coffee, and the third, and so on.”
Upon asking him if he would buy a sustainably grown coffee, like my favorite Stumptown Coffee, he said only if it “tasted like Dunkin.”
His Dunkin Donuts coffee is here for $6; however, my favorite fair trade coffees such as Stumptown are Kicking Horse Coffee and Emma Chamberlain’s holiday blend.
Although these gifts are pretty “universal,” as my dad put it, he stressed the gamble of presenting an indifferent father with these gifts.
“No gift has a guarantee, a 100% success rate. Just like in business, there’s no guarantee. These ones are probably your best bet.”
