I’ve always interpreted it as,“You were never around when I was a kid, and NOW you want ot bond?”
Yeah. Is someone saying otherwise? What’s the question?
Kudos.
My interpretation is slightly different. I don’t think the son is pissed off at his father, I think he just grew up to be a self-centered bastard like his father. He’s not angry, he just doesn’t want to interrupt his routine.
Just looking for other’s interpretations.
No, I have always thought of the song as a statement about the cycle of life, the changes we go through and the regrets we have about the realities of life.
The young son who wishes for more time with his busy father becomes a busy teen, and then busy adult who has limited time for his older father, who now has more spare time due to being retired.
Rather than the son rejecting the father due to past treatment, I see it as an unintentional, and sad, reflection of the changing roles between parent and child.
Do you think the son is too busy for his own children?
“The new job’s a hassle and the kids have the flu.”
Notice he puts the job first and calls them “the kids,” not their names.
Kind of ruin the meter, wouldn’t it?
“The new job’s a hassle and Tiffany, Heather, Cody, Dylan, Dermot, Jacob, Jordan, Taylor, Brittany, Wesley, Rumer, Scout, Cassidy, Zoe, Chloe, Max, Hunter, Kendall, Caitlin, Noah, Sasha, Morgan, Kyra, Ian, Lauren, Qbert, and Phil have the flu”
I’m willing to bet, it being Harry Chapin, that the ending was meant to be a “You didn’t have time for me, and now I don’t have time for you. How do you like that, bucko?” type ziiiing, but it always just made me think that the kid in the story is a clueless selfish punk. Dad’s slaving away putting food on the table and putting a roof over the brat’s head and because dad doesn’t have time THAT MINUTE to take indulge junior, junior decides he’s being rejected and passive-aggressively takes it out on dad years later. Hint: adults. have. to. work. So, yeah, I think the author’s intent was exactly with what the OP suggested*, but it says more about the author than it does about normal parent/child relationships.
And yes, my dad was a salesman and was gone about 6 months of the year, usually including my birthday due to the nature of his sales season. And I never, even as a kid, thought my dad didn’t love me or was ignoring me. (Not that I was happy when he was gone for my birthday–but I got over it.
*This is the same sort of passive-aggressive crap that Chapin did in other songs. Think of WOLD (“Ok, honey, I see. I guess he’s better than me.” :rolleyes: ) or Taxi (“She said “Harry. Keep the change”/Well another man might have been angry/and another man might have been hurt/But another man never would have let her go/I stashed the bill in my shirt.”)
Both are great songs, well sung about characters that are such whiney losers that you just want to kick them in the nads and say “THAT’S what pain is, ya damn great sissy. Get OVER it all-fuckin’-ready”. It’s weird: I love Chapin’s music, I love his guitar playing…and I hate all the characters in all his ballads.
Not only that, if you lose the word ‘flu’ at the end of the line, you lose the rhyme with the next verse.
“Well, Bobby and Betty have the flu, and the new job’s a hassle
But it was sure nice talkin’ to you, dad. It’s been sure nice talkin’ to you.”
And Chapin is hardly Noel Coward or Lorenz Hart when it comes to clever lyrics. He’s a storyteller, not a lyricist. I doubt he’d have been able to rhyme “hassle” to anything that fit the next line.
Not only that but Dad belatedly realizes that was how he raised his son.
“And as I hung up the phone, it occurred to me; he’d grown up just like me. My boy was just like me”
Oh, let’s try!
“Dick and Jane have the flu and the new job’s a hassle / Maybe next week you can come by and wrassle.”
“Dick and Jane have the flu and the new job’s a hassle / And I don’t want to see you 'cause I think you’re an asshole.”
“Dick and Jane have the flu and the new job’s a hassle / Come by on Monday so we can watch Castle.” OK, so including the name of a TV show that wouldn’t premiere until decades after the song came out wouldn’t work, but maybe for an edgy remake!
Amy has chlamydia, and the new job’s a bitch
But this song will make me rich, dad
Your neglect will make me rich.
SSG § Schwartz
SSG Schwartz wins. Sorry Snooooopy. 
This is my view also. The son isn’t angry at the father and trying to pay him back. The son has become the father and he’s indifferent towards his family just like the father was.
Now “Father of Mine” by Everlear - that’s a song like what the OP is describing. That’s a son who is angry at his father’s neglect and is rejecting him.
This song use to bum me out and I could never figure out why, until my wife mentioned because it probably hit a nerve about my relationship with my dad. It’s not exactly the same, but my parents never married and I only visited my dad occasionally. Even less after my mom and I moved to another state (and even less after he died about 10 years ago :eek:).
But I always I thought the ending of the song meant that the kid thought there was nothing wrong with being neglected by his dad, and grew up to be distant from him. But I found it funny about the line “You see my new job’s a hassle and kids have the flu,” makes it sound like at least he’s not neglecting his kids. But then again it’s only one line from the song, so maybe he does.
Too late.
Son and father blow each other off for the same perfectly reasonable reasons – “There were planes to catch and bills to pay” – “But my job’s a hassle and the kids have the flu” – so maybe the meaning is that the fast pace of modern American life is bad for family ties. Since you can hardly opt out of the rat race without sinking into poverty, maybe the only message is, “Life sucks, buy a helmet.”
I’ve heard too many real life stories of people spending the majority of their time at work and then some event happens that makes the reevaluate their priorities and they find that they can spend more time with their families without going to the poor house. So I’ve always thought that the song was implying that the reasons given why the dad couldn’t spend time with the son were excuses and that if the dad wanted to make time for him, he could have.
I don’t think the kid’s being any more of a dink than the dad, frankly. I mean, the kid’s slaving away to keep food on the table and a roof over his sick children’s heads and because he doesn’t have time THAT MINUTE to indulge the old man, dude decides he’s being rejected. And you’d think he’d certainly understand better than anyone else that adults have to work.
I also think you’re missing a pretty important element in the song–it wasn’t so much that Dad couldn’t take time for the kid right that minute, but that he couldn’t say when or how he would have time. It’s a massive difference. My dad worked 10-12 hour days, and for several years he was out of town 90% of the time. And like you, I never thought he didn’t love me or was ignoring me. Because even though he almost never could drop everything to do stuff with me right that second, I knew that he would get to me as soon as he had everything that absolutely had to be done was done. Sometimes that meant he wound up doing the things he’d had planned late at night when he wanted to be sleeping, sometimes it meant those things just didn’t happen. It’s different from the song. A lot different.