Ultimate (Fictional) Fathering Championship

Into the octagonal ring stride the two competitors. From the land of TV comedy/drama strolls bumbling then humbling "Eight is Enough's" Dick Van Patten. Emerging out of the ice fog of "reality TV" is beleaguered, ostensibly laid back Jon Gosselin of "Jon and Kate plus 8."

Patten played the married then widowed then married newspaper reporter father of eight children from 1997 to 1981. Gosselin, who told a recent interviewer that in one of the surprises to fatherhood he had lost his job shortly before his wife gave birth to sextuplets (adding to the twins they already had), is now "employed" as host to a production crew three days a week who shoot him acting like a dad; co-author of a new book, Multiple Blessings; and co-producer of a website peddling Gosselin-branded stuff.

It is much easier to debate the numerous cultural issues and clashes highlighted in the two shows than it is to debate "who is the better dad." And it is impossible to imagine there being much entertainment if they really were to slug it out, given their shared Pillsbury Doughboy(dad) shapes. The real excitement for the couch potato living on the edge (of naptime) is, "if they were real" or "in real life" would Dick (who did have two sons in real life) or Jon be the better dad?

So, who wins?

Six Times the Sympathy

Can you feel sympathetic for the man so lacking in [maybe everything] that he scammed a local church for a few thousand dollars with the story that he and his wife were the hard up parents of critically-ill sextuplets who were being kept in hiding because of a family member's insanity? Well, if you can, focus those tears on the childless Kris Everson, 35, who was just sentenced to three years in prison, having violated his probation. His wife, Sarah Everson, 46, is now on the lam.

Or would you rather feel there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I over Eric Jarvis, 32, as he tries to make it through the next weeks (he's now at week 18) with wife Sarah and her pregnancy?

** Six is never a lucky number. **

Progress. Hah.

This week's objet d'eBay, a postcard sized tintype of a father and daughter, is from a different never-again-to-be-seen-nor-heard day. One well-dressed dad, a quiet, loving daughter. And quiet time together enough to pose.

Having driven, hiked with, kayaked, entertained, medicated, adjudicated, pushed together and separated Things One and Two for the last few days, I can only marvel at this suggestion of serenity. (And no doubt, the wife/mother hovers just out of camera range to change the daughter and serve the father's needs as well.)

Still, my (and probably your) present and future troubles pale compared to those descending permanently on dadland's newest Sisyphus, Calgary "happy dad" J.P. Jepp, new father of identical quadruplet girls and two-year-old Simon. The complexity of his future so boggles the mind, it almost wipes out concern for the short-term challenges facing Manhattan, Kan., (non-biological) father of 16 newborns Rich Vargo.

Polio was cureless and internet porn downloads starring others' daughters unthinkable, but all the father days suggested by that image are worth a ponder or two on one of summer's final lazy, Sundays.

** A wise man pondered, "After I had my first child I wondered what I did with all my free time when I didn't have a kid; and after my second I asked what I did with the free time granted by having only one."