Author Archives: snoozing on the sofa

I wouldn’t exploit you if I didn’t love you so much

Here I am, happily blogging along about my son and his soon-to-be little brother, thinking my biggest problem is getting more than 11 people per week to visit the site, when along comes A.A. Milne and son to scare the Pooh out of me.

I was shocked to discover that Christopher Robin Milne, the inspiration for the stories that made his father rich and famous, grew up to resent his father for putting him on such public display. Apparently, he was teased by his classmates in school. As an adult, he was put off at having to talk so much Pooh at social gatherings.

Lexy

I’d wanted to show a photo of Christopher Robin and his toy bear here, but that could present copyright issues. Instead, here is a more recent boy with his “toy” cat.

This information struck a sudden fear into my heart. What if my boys grow to resent me for making them the engine of my success? Fortunately, the word success was on hand to console me. I thought about the billions of people the stories of A. A. Milne had touched, and then I thought about you – the faithful 11. I love you all, more so because the odds say that, out of a sample of this size, there are unlikely to be any children in my kids’ school classes who might mock them and turn them against me. You guys always do right by me.

It’s good not to have your children grow up resenting you, especially if you didn’t earn any riches off the cause of the resentment. At least the Milnes had something to show for their familial strife. I can see an adult Christopher Robin trying to complain to his father about how he was wronged. I envision the elderly A. A. throwing heavy bundles of £100 notes at his son. “There you go, you sniveling little brat,” the old man grumbles. “I ruined your life, did I? Well, just go buy yourself another one. The bear never complains.”

Smokey

Okay, if you really need to see a fake bear, here is a random, thus certainly not trademarked, bear.

I can’t afford for my kids to resent me in my dotage. I don’t have wads of cash to throw at them. I’ll be lucky if I can compile a complete roll of quarters with which to defend myself. I especially don’t want my kids’ resentments to boil to a head during the nursing home selection season. I can hear them now: “After so many years of exposing our private lives to nearly a dozen people, it’s time to embrace your golden years, Dad. Enjoy your time at Putrid Acres.” Then they go visit their mother in the licensed facility.

I guess I’ll have to set them down one day and discuss what’s going on here. We’ll see what they think about writing all my jokes for me and whether it is a hardship to their lives. But until they learn to read, what happens here is strictly between the 12 of us. Okay?

You have one job, and one job only

With the delivery date for the new baby sneaking up, I was trying to remember all the things necessary to prepare for the hospital stay. There are certain things that the father is expected to do during and after delivery, and I was trying to bring one or two of them to mind so that I could present myself to the hospital staff as a useful addition to the family.

When my wife discovered that I was struggling with these recollections, she reminded me why I couldn’t recall any of the tasks on the modern father’s list of delivery room activities. “Remember what I told you last time,” she said. “I don’t care what they think you should be doing; you have one job and one job only. Do you remember what that is?”

The wavy lines that momentarily affected my vision indicated that I was flashing back to summer, 2008. My pregnant wife had just finished watching her 100th Lifetime movie about children switched at birth. We had gone to birthing classes for a number of weeks, but that training paled in comparison to what can be learned from Lifetime’s You Have the Wrong Baby Weekend Movie Marathon.

This was the moment of the defenestration of all of my weeks of training on how to be a supportive birthing partner.  “You can do whatever the hell you want until the baby’s born,” my wife explained. “Once the baby is born, you have one job. I don’t care what they tell you to do, you do not take your eyes off my baby. I will not have some stranger knocking on my door in five years, telling me I got their baby by mistake. I am not spending my time raising somebody else’s kid for them.”

She let this sink in for a minute, while she looked like she was moving on to something else. Then she came back at me all of a sudden, pop-quiz style. “What’s your job?”

“Watch the baby,” I replied confidently, like I was proving that husbands can pay attention when they want to.

“Watch? Did you hear me use a word as weak as watch? No, you did not. I said you are to keep your eyes glued to that baby from the moment he comes out of me until we get home. You are chained to that baby, do you understand?”

“What if you need me?” That seemed like it was the type of concern a woman would appreciate coming from her man.

“I won’t need you.” It sounds harsher than I’m sure she meant it. “I’m a grown woman. Nobody’s gonna stick me in the wrong family until it’s too late to do anything about it. I don’t care if I’m half dead, you are going wherever that baby goes.”

And that is just what I did. From the moment our son was born, I followed him around like a Secret Service agent, except that Secret Service agents probably don’t let their charges suck on their little fingers for three hours straight. If they do, I respect them all the more because that can really wear on a little finger.

At least somebody got to close his eyes for a minute during our hospital stay.

That little boy did not go anywhere in that hospital without me. When a nurse offered to take him to the nursery so Mommy and Daddy could get some rest, my wife just about called 911 on her. We didn’t want rest; we wanted our biological child, not whichever baby happened to match the number on our claim ticket at checkout.

So don’t come knocking at our door telling us we went home from the hospital with your son.  The boy we brought home was under strict guard the whole time. And just in case I did doze off for minute while I was watching him, we’re raising him in a barn, so you wouldn’t want him back anyway.

 

Before you try to claim your “switched at birth” boy back, you should know that this is the lady we employed to teach him table manners. (Credit: Steve Hillebrand/USFWS)

 

Conversations with my wife: Prison

SETTING: We were watching a reality show about how people cope with their first week in prison. One of the subjects commented that he had been wearing the same clothes for a week.

WIFE: Oh my God! I can’t go to prison if they make you wear the same clothes for a week.

ME: Were you planning on going to prison?

WIFE: Only if you forget how to treat me right.

ME: Look at the bright side: you could learn how to make shivs and shanks.

WIFE: (scoffing) I already know how to make them. You file down your toothbrush. Anyway, if you were in prison, could you wear the same clothes for a week?

Prison Tip #1: When not being used to stab rivals, shivs and shanks are handy for darning socks. (Image via Wikipedia.)

ME: If I’m in prison, I think changing my clothes is the least of my concerns.

WIFE: You think that means they won’t let you take two showers a day?

ME: Probably not. And I wouldn’t want to take two showers a day in prison.

WIFE: Oh no! I would need my two showers a day.

ME: Maybe dirt is part of the punishment.

WIFE: I am not a good candidate for prison.

ME: Don’t let ‘em take you alive.

WIFE: I’m gonna have to do a really, really good job of hiding your body.

Incarceration: A fashionable alternative to the burdens of personal hygiene.

I’m waiting for you to become a reasonable human

My well-behaved, three-year-old punched me in the chest the other day. We were sitting in our recliner together when I gave him that look a father gives his son that tells the boy he should punch the old man as hard as he can. I’m not sure what that look looks like. I’m not in any position to see it, and then I have no idea when I’m giving it, until I get punched.

For the record, I must point out that the boy never hits his mother. Apparently, she doesn’t know how to give the “hit me” look. He’s pretty good around other kids too. He seems to save up all of his best testosterone surges for me.

Huge, anthropomorphic pigs are very scary, yet he'd never dream of lashing out at one.

I figure I must have given the boy some non-verbal cue that I wanted a good, hard punch. What other reason would he have to haul off and slug me in the midst of what should have been a tender moment of father-son togetherness? To punch me without any provocation would be almost irrational, and this would be completely out of character for a three-year-old boy.

Not realizing that I had commanded him to punch me with my hypnotic eyes, I demanded to know why he would do such a thing. My tone was not at all repentant, as the tone of the one responsible for all the trouble should be. In response to my unfair question, the boy donned his victim costume, puffed out his pouty lips, and declared, “You hurt my feelings.”

I end up hurting my son’s feelings whenever that urge to lash out strikes him. This is mostly because I am petulant and unreasonable. Little boys have a need to punch, kick, throw elbows, and head butt every once in a while. There are secret cues throughout the universe that control this need and compel little boys to act upon it without warning. The little boys have no say in the matter. A more reasonable dad would probably take this into consideration.

Some of these cues come from the strange, electromagnetic fields surrounding other little boys in close proximity, but most of them come from the universe seeing an opportunity to get a clear shot at one of Daddy’s soft spots. In the ultimate addition of insult to injury, the universe makes Daddy the transmitter of its cue to strike.

It can be a fleeting moment of eye contact that tells the boy, “Kick me in the kidney.” Sometimes it is just the hint of a squint that communicates my desire to have his forehead slammed into my nose. And nothing says, “Ram your boney little elbow into my gut,” like Daddy letting his eyes fall closed in sweet repose.

The first time I gave him that "hit me" look. You can see him wondering why I would want him to do such a thing.

By now, I should understand that my boy is not responsible for the cosmic forces that I am channeling at him. It is very unreasonable of me to scold him for things beyond his control. This causes his feelings to be hurt, which in turn causes him to stand, head bowed, with his back to me while he waits patiently for me to grow into a reasonable human with which one might expect fair dealing.

He is an extraordinarily forgiving soul though. It may take a while, but he always comes around to giving me another opportunity to show my growth as a human being with his fist, foot, or elbow. I only hope that I can evolve into such an even-keeled creature as he is some day.