Mr. (Mis)Understood, (Under)Appreciated

Huskie professor and one-time single dad Ronald Rohner (also head of the Rohner Center at the University of Connecticut) is best known for espousing research from his findings that dad's are misunderstood and underappreciated: "What we find surprising and new is that a father's love is turning out to be just as important as, and sometimes more important than, a mother's love."

Surprisingly, the world apparently needed an egghead anthropologist to let us know. Well, some of us anyway. David Shields, author of The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead, who has been trying to best his dad from early in his life to late very late, in his father Milton's is pretty well aware of the importance, even if he makes clear in his tale that he isn't so happy about it.

But as miserable as he is he's still more gleeful — and significantly better adjusted — than the anonymous man from Girona (Spain) who reportedly spent four months living with DODD ... dear old (decomposing) dad. Naturally, he was a quiet señor whose neighbor described him as, ""introverted, but normal and very attentive to his father."

** A father's in your life and always in your head ... for good and bad. **