Marshall Brain's Father's Day Gift Guide

Photo courtesy Marshall Brain Marshall and a couple of the Brain kids

Father's Day is an officially sanctioned event in the United States. President Lyndon Johnson made it so by signing a presidential proclamation in 1966 declaring the third Sunday in June to be Father's Day.

You, as someone's son or daughter, can choose between three options when you pick your way of celebrating Father's Day:

1. You can give your dad a hug (or a call) and say, "Happy Father's Day." I would guess that as many as half of the fathers out there would prefer that you choose this over all the rest. If you want to slip a token into his hand that is good for a bucket of balls down at the driving range, that would be a nice touch.

2. You can give your dad a card. I think this is the probably the worst of the three options, because lots of guys just don't understand cards. Here's the thing -- let's say you give me a card. I open it, I read it, and then what? That's the problem: The obvious next thing to do is throw it in the trash. So you spend three bucks, you give me a card, and I throw it in the trash. What's the point? Go buy yourself something nice for $3 and give me the hug instead.

3. You can buy your father a nice Father's Day gift. This is the option that I would like to focus on today in this, Marshall Brain's Father's Day Gift Guide.

You know your dad. He is probably either an option #1 or an option #3 kind of guy. If he falls into the option #3 category, then this article is for you. The goal here is to help you to pick the perfect Father's Day present.