One day, a hard working man came home. He was nothing too special; he worked a nine to five job, had a mortgage on his house from when they bought it, a little bit of credit card debt from when he and his wife were younger, and a reasonable car payment on a nice little mid-size sedan for his family. And after an especially rough day, one where there had been a lot of little things that piled up, he just wanted to sit down and relax. He had gotten out the door on time, but there had been a lot of heavy rain that morning and it caused a huge crash that backed up traffic for miles, and that made him late for work. He got there as soon as he could, nervous that his boss might tear him a new one, but he was surprisingly calm. After all, he was rarely late, and when he was, he had a very good reason that was beyond his control.

Of course, that didn't mean he wouldn't have to stay late to make up for how he was late. And traffic was even worse coming home. Over all, the day could have been worse, but it wasn't as good as it could have been. His arm chair was the first thing on his mind as he stepped through the door.

But his thoughts were interrupted by his young son of just five years of age. The bright little boy looked up at his soggy father, who had just come home from work after another long day. Not really noticing how exhausted his father was, he looked up at him and asked him a question. "Daddy, what does it mean to be a father?"

The father looked down at his son in confusion. "You know what it means, son," he said. "It's when you're a man and you have a son or daughter of your own."
"Yeah, but our teacher in Sunday School said that there was something more about being a father, and that we should ask our daddies about it."

The father stood there for a moment, unsure at how to respond. He walked over to his armchair, setting his briefcase and jacket on the ground next to it as he sat down. His son followed and still looked up in anticipation to the answer of his question. The father thought the question over for a few more moments before looking back at his son. "Do you really want to know?" The boy simply nodded his head in excitement. "Alright then. Have a seat and I'll tell you."

While his son sat down on the floor in front of him, the man pulled the lever on his recliner and lifted his legs up so he could relax just a bit. "Alright. You want to know what a father is, I'll tell you. Imagine this. Imagine that you get up at seven o'clock each morning, and then after you take your shower and get dressed, you go to get some breakfast, but all you have is bland cereal, and you can't have any of the good stuff with sugar in it because the doctor says that if you eat too much of it, it will boost your cholesterol and make you sick. So, you pour yourself a bowl of the bland healthy cereal, but then you go to the fridge and there isn't any milk, but you don't have time to make and eat anything else, so you just start to eat the cereal dry."
"That's no fun," his son said from the floor. "It doesn't taste good, and you can't even have any milk? Blech. That's no fun. Is that what it means to be a father?"
"Yeah, you're right, it isn't any fun. Unfortunately, there's more to being a father than that. After you've eaten your dry nasty cereal, you get in your car with your cup of coffee and you get ready to go to work. You get on the freeway, and you think you'll get to work on time, but then you find out that there's a wreck on the freeway and it's backed up traffic a long way, so now you're stopped in the middle of the road and you can't get to work on time. Then, just when you think you're able to move forward again, you have to hit the brakes suddenly when the person in front of you slams their brakes and you almost hit them. You manage to not hit them, but you spilled your hot coffee all over your pants and it burns, but you still can't do anything about it because you're stopped in the middle of the road."
"Ouch. That doesn't sound very fun."
"No, it doesn't. But you finally get to work and get started even though you were late, and then you find out from your boss that because you were late you have to stay later to make sure that you don't lose any money. So, you stay late, working on a project that you don't like because it's not a good idea, but your boss says you have to unless you don't want to make any money. And then, when you finally get out of work, it's pouring rain outside, and the traffic is even worse than it was that morning, and you also have to find a way to pull off the road to get gas and then get back on the jammed road just so you can come home to have dinner, and do it all over again the next day."
"Wow... that sounds hard. So why do you do it?"

"Because at the end of each long hard day, when you come home, you get to see your son waiting for you to get home, just waiting for you to tell him about your day, even though it was really boring and it shouldn't be even remotely interesting to him, but he still asks you anyway. And then when you do get to sit down for dinner, your son is still asking questions, and you keep answering them until you're done because your just tired, then you know that you won't be getting to bed until later because you still have a lot of things you need to do to get ready for the next day, but you still hang out with your child until you take him upstairs, tuck him in, read him a story, and then wait another half an hour before he finally does fall asleep, and then when he finally does, you aren't upset at him for keeping you up because you were excited to be with him. That, son, is what it means to be a father."

The son sat there for a moment, pondering his father's words. Finally, he got up from his seat and walked out of the room. The father just kept seated and rested his eyes for a few minutes. When he woke up, it was from his son shaking his leg. When he looked down, the boy was holding a juice box and a pudding cup that hadn't been opened. He was holding them up to his father to take them, which he did. The boy had a gleam in his eyes as if he'd done the greatest thing in the world for him. "Thank you, son," he said. "Why'd you bring me this?"
"Because I like pudding and juice when I get home from school, because I think school is hard. But the story you told me sounds like being a father is a lot harder, so I brought you this to say thank you."

The man smiled and gladly opened up the chocolate pudding cup and started to eat it, grateful for his son's gift. Sure, it wasn't a cold beer and a sandwich, but it was the greatest gift that his son could get him, and that's what made it so great. All the "World's Greatest Dad" mugs in the world didn't cut it here. They were a dime a dozen, and everybody got them for Father's Day. But no father out there could say that after a bad day at work, their son brought them a juice box and a chocolate pudding because he wanted to do something nice for him. And that was the greatest gift he could receive.