Me: [BANGBANGBANGBANG!!!!] CC! Get out of my bathroom right now!!
CC: But, Dad… I really have to go, and TC’s in our bathroom!
Me: I’m late for work, and I have to get in there and get ready! Get out! Now!!
TR: … you blink and…
Me: … but I’m late to wor-
TR: … you blink and…!
Me: [sigh]… CC? Sweetie? I’m sorry. Take as long as you need…
Be careful of the words you blog, for tomorrow, you may have to live by them…
Overheard in my House
“Daaaaaaaaaad! She won’t get out of my room!”
“It’s my room tooooo!!!”
…
“I need some toilet paper! I need some toilet paper! I need some toilet paper!!”
“Why didn’t you think of that before you sat down!?”
…
“Ack! What did I just step in? EEeeeew! One of the cats threw up on the floor!”
…
“Bark! Bark! Bark!”
“Shut up! Stupid dog! It’s 2:00 in the morning!”
…
“Dad. I need some help with my homework.”
“Okay. What do you need?”
“I have to write a two page paper on chapters 4 and 5 of The Great Gatsby.”
“When is it due?”
“Tomorrow.”
“It’s 10:30 at night, and you’re just bringing this to me now?!”
…
“MMmmoooooommm! She hit me!”
“I did not!”
“Yes you did!”
“Well, you bumped into me!”
“It was an accident!”
“No it wasn’t!”
“Mooooooommmmm!!”
…
“Daddy? Will you read to me?”
“Sure, Binky. Go get our book.”
…
I’m sorry to be so sentimental this early in the morning. I know you probably don’t come here to get all teary-eyed. I just woke up this morning in a mood and felt the need to share it. I’ll probably think better of it, once I’ve had my coffee… I realize that most of the above is probably enough to drive a sane man crazy, especially when you consider that these are only a tiny fraction of the things that go on in our home on a daily basis. But I was thinking this morning about how much I’m going to miss all of this craziness when it’s gone. I guess as you get older you start to realize how temporary everything is. You blink and your children are born, you blink and they’re teenagers, you blink again and they’re moving out (well, I haven’t blinked that much yet, but it’s coming). I think that sometimes we neglect to count our blessings, sometimes we take our blessings for granted, and sometimes we don’t even realize we had any blessings until they’re no longer there. I’d like to be someone that recognizes his blessings… even when they sound like:
[CRASH!!!]
“I’m not hurt!”
“Good… what broke?”
There. That’s enough glurge for one day…
Sixteen years ago yesterday, a young 23 year old man sat in a hospital cafe staring at his uneaten hamburger with a dazed and confused look on his face. One thing kept running through his mind over and over and over again.
“Woah. I’m a dad. I’m not sure I’m ready for this…”
Yesterday, as that same man – now considerably older – hugged his daughter and wished her a “Happy Sweet 16th!” One thing kept running through his mind over and over and over again.
“Woah. I’m a dad. I’m not sure I’m ready for this…”
TC: Hey Dad?
Me: What?
TC: If you could have any one of Superman’s powers, what would you pick?
Me: Hm. That’s a good question… I think I’d have to say flying.
TC: Why would you pick that one?
Me: Well, I think it would be really cool to be able to zip around in the sky. You could go pretty much anywhere you wanted, and if people were bugging you, you could get away and be alone really easily.
TC: That’s true. And it wouldn’t take you as long to get to work either.
Me: Besides, who really needs x-ray vision? I mean, it might be fun to see through walls, but I think it would get old pretty fast. And you’d see people naked all the time, and there are a lot of people out there you wouldn’t want to see naked.
TC: Ew.
You know who I admire? Calvin’s dad. You know, from Calvin & Hobbes? No, not because he has a son that’s a holy terror, but because he can tell his son the most outlandish things and Calvin believes him! Consider the following conversation from one such classic strip:
CALVIN: Dad, how come old photographs are always black and white? Didn’t they have color film back then?
CALVIN’S DAD: Sure they did. In fact, those old photographs are in color. It’s just the world was black and white then.
CALVIN: Really?
CALVIN’S DAD: Yep. The world didn’t turn color until sometime in the 1930s, and it was pretty grainy color for a while, too.
CALVIN: That’s really weird.
CALVIN’S DAD: Well, truth is stranger than fiction.
CALVIN: But then why are old paintings in color?! If the world was black and white, wouldn’t artists have painted it that way?
CALVIN’S DAD: Not necessarily, a lot of great artists were insane.
CALVIN: But … but how could they have painted in color anyway? Wouldn’t their paints have been shades of gray back then?
CALVIN’S DAD: Of course, but they turned colors like everything else in the ’30s.
CALVIN: So why didn’t old black and white photos turn color too?
CALVIN’S DAD: Because they were color pictures of black and white, remember?
Now contrast that with a conversation I once had with one of my own children:
CC: Dad? Where do babies come from?
Me: Well, in your case, we found you on the side of the house… Out by the trash cans.
CC: Daaaaaaadd…
See what I mean? They don’t even believe me when I tell them the truth! Sometimes I wish my children were a little more gullible. I suppose that’s a terrible thing to say, but you’ve got to admit they’d certainly be a lot more entertaining to have around.
But you know who I really want to be? I want to be That Dad. You know the one I mean. You’ve seen him in countless chick flicks. He’s usually the father of the lead female character. He spends the entire movie bumbling around, doing everything wrong. He can be a trifle overbearing at times, love for his child motivating him to be this way. His sole purpose in the film seems to be to provide comic relief. He pretty much acts like a doofus for the first 70 minutes of the movie, and then That Dad gets to that moment. It’s the moment in the movie when his daughter hits an all-time low, her heart is broken, or she’s screwed up her life in some way and she just doesn’t know what to do. It’s right at that moment when That Dad shines.
He sits down, puts his arm around her and words of pure wisdom pour forth from his mouth. He asks her poignant questions that get her thinking in the right direction. He tells her just what she needs to hear. Her tears begin to dry up and he hands her a handkerchief so she can blow her nose – which she does… loudly. She looks up at him, and a smile hesitantly touches the corners of her mouth. A new light of hope dawns in her eyes.
“I love you, Daddy,” she whispers and kisses him gently on the cheek.
“I love you too, Princess,” he replies.
Tears pour down the cheeks of everyone in the theater. It’s the pivotal moment in the film. All of the conflict that has been building up from the beginning of the movie has come to a head, and now – because of That Dad – things will turn out right.
Do you see why I want to be That Dad? Sadly, I don’t think I’m even close. Well, I do have the “acting like a doofus” part down pretty well. So maybe I’m not as far off as I think. It’s just the “words of wisdom” bit that I struggle with.
If only I had a script!
