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June / July 2006 Contest Results |
Dadhood
And The Things I Wish I Knew
By
Brian Thompson, Florida
Fatherhood: Is
there another profession in the world where you’re woke up at 5 in the
morning with the question: “So, you want to change the baby’s diaper or
clean-up the dog vomit on the living room rug?”
Now that’s living!
How do you
answer that? How do you choose? And obviously the diaper is in
“interesting shape” if it’s offered as part of the bargain. This is a
deal with the Devil, and there will be no winner.
“I’ll take dog vomit,” I answer, and so begins another morning as “New
Dad #103562.”
Dads get asked
questions in the morning like this: “Have you checked in on her yet?”
“Yes, I just
did,” I say.
“And she’s
breathing and stuff?”
What exactly is
the “stuff?” That’s never specified, and I, of course, lie. “She’s
breathing and definitely ‘stuff.’”
But I don’t know
what I’m talking about. Is there something I’m missing — the “stuff?”
Will she be 17 and while examining her ears a doctor will ask, “So, Mr.
Thompson, it seems you forgot to do some ‘stuff’ when your daughter was
a baby, and now she doesn’t have a spleen.”
What! Nobody TOLD me about the stuff!
It’s tough
questions, as well as other things, like trying to figure out what get
for my wife’s first Mother’s Day.
As if there’s
not enough pressure to make it important and special without people
coming up and telling me, “Woah! First Mother’s Day. Don’t screw that one
up. I know a guy who’s still homeless from that one.”
Part of what I
bought my wife was a beautiful orchid, which I hid in the car the day
before Mother’s Day. And this was a wise idea, for I later realized that
when you leave an orchid — a plant that doesn’t like it when the
temperature gets above 90 degrees — inside a black Jeep with the windows
up and the temperature hot enough to bake a pizza and turn beach sand
into glass, your orchid won’t do so well. I went to get the orchid in
the morning and the beautiful flowers were drooping down, gasping as
they clung on for dear life. The leaves looked like a banana peel that
had been left in the street for days.
Happy Mother’s
Day! Enjoy your dead plant. (I’m trying to nurse it back to health, and
I think by next Mother’s Day it should be fine. Then I can hide it in
the Jeep and surprise her all over again.)
Part of what
dads are supposed to do is carry the child around, especially when moms
get tired and have been doing it all day. Dads are supposed to be big
and strong, but have you seen me? I weigh 155 pounds and look like a
pixie stick that hasn’t eaten in three weeks. My child weighs 18 pounds
at 5 months. My spinal chord is bending like a paper clip.
How do dads do
it? I think back to Disney World and watching fathers — some who were
later carried out on a stretcher after breaking in half — who carried 3-
and 4-year-old children around the whole day. There they would be in the
line to “It’s a Small World,” the kid bouncing up and down in the
father’s arms while muscles bulged in his shoulders. His face turned
purple and strange creaking sounds I could never figure out until this
day emanated from bones and joints on his body.
“OK, I’m going
to put you down now,” he would try, only to be rebuffed by the child who
would simply say, “If you do, I’ll marry a gang leader and get a tattoo
of a part of the male anatomy I’d rather not mention.”
Not long after, the paramedics came to haul him off on the stretcher.
Boy, fatherhood.
What a whacky profession it is. I just wish it came with a lifetime
supply of ibuprofen, a gift suggestion list and HAZMAT suit.
http://www.nutshellcity.com
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