Yesterday, my wife came running over to me with her YouTube app open on her phone and said, “You’ve got to see this!  It’s a Cheerios commercial and it’s… well, here, just watch.”

Having no idea what to expect, I watched – and was stunned.  My mind reeled.  I gasped.

Cheerios has made a commercial (this one, in fact) about a dad that is not an incompetent goofball; a dad that doesn’t say and/or do things so wildly idiotic that no thinking human being could possibly relate to him; a dad that isn’t a lazy, spineless, helpless, hopeless waste of space on the couch.

He is… wait for it… a dad with his crap together.

Not only that, but he is fully invested in being a dad and – get this – is completely capable of caring for his kids.  The Mom doesn’t need to bail him out once.  None of the kids pull one over on him.  Not once does he fall down and get his head stuck in something.

Is he superhuman?  Is he a demigod?

NO!  He is just a normal Dad.

He is a Dad like billions of Dads the world over.  He cares about his kids, is skilled at seeing to their needs, is 100% invested in his family, and he loves it.

Perhaps the most shocking thing about this commercial is that someone at an ad agency is apparently as fed up with the way that dads are portrayed in commercials as I am.  Is this commercial a sign that we are heading into a new age of pop culture enlightenment?  Is this the dawn of an era in which a commercial dad can be more than the butt of the joke?

Probably not.

But hey – at least somebody got it right once.

(Now, if that person could just talk to the people that make sitcoms.)