【Gary Eberhart Archives】

Dads can Gary Eberhart Archivesget away with a lot of wacky stuff basically because they're dads, even if it's at your expense.

Imagine your dad handing you a card for your birthday... and it has a few alterations.

Comedian Katherine Ryan has experienced this bluntly honest dad-phenomenon every year for the last 26 years. For her birthday, her dad would hand her cards with actual lines he crossed out that he felt didn't apply to her.

On Tuesday, Ryan posted photos of her latest birthday card to her Twitter as an example.

"Childlike wonder"? Not important. "Unfailing commitment"? Not applicable. Remove it.

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Ryan recalls the weird birthday tradition starting right around her seventh or eighth birthday party.

"He'd found a Ninja Turtles card or something that I liked but it said 'BOY' and he crossed that out," Ryan said via Twitter DM. "Things progressed from there, and it's sort of a running joke now."

Since the initial line crossing, her dad stepped it up and even added things to cards, like turning "Happy 6th Birthday" into "16th." But the latest card she posted can't even compare to the one she received 13 years ago.

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No holiday was left untouched by her dad's unique sense of celebration.

"He also gave us cash each Christmas and instructed us to buy presents, wrap them, and not open them until Christmas morning," Ryan said. But eventually, she and her sister found a way to outsmart him.

"We started buying new toys & clothes, wrapping old toys and clothes, then opening those at [Christmas] so that we didn't have to wait."

It wasn't just Ryan's dad who was doing these kinds of things for birthdays and holidays. Her mom also had a few clever tricks up her sleeve.

"If I was ungrateful, my mother would buy goats for a village in my name," she said. A nice gesture for a community in need, but maybe the point was missed when you're "16 and a brat," as Ryan jokingly put it.

For her, it's "all good fun at the holidays." But really, it sounds like it's time for card companies to just start getting to the point.