On Fatherhood...

K-Mad has not made much of an appearance here in the blog of late, and for that I truly apologize. Lest you were worried, she is still breathing, and not so underweight anymore. Apparently she inherited both her mother and father’s genes of a high metabolism. If so, she can be sure that this gift will end suddenly and completely when she hits 25 years old. Lately she is tipping the scales at a whopping 11 pounds and some odd ounces. We do another weigh in this Friday. We are hoping to get out of the 25th percentile at some point.

She’s finally out of her newborn clothes too. I remember the days when her mother and I talked about how much money (mostly other people’s money) was spent on clothes that she would probably fit into for a month or so. What a joke that turned out to be. We have got our…or your…money’s worth out of her clothes. But can I be honest here…maybe even a little mushy? I’m sorry to see some of those outfits go. It’s not that I just liked the way they looked…it’s that she is growing…and growing means she is changing…and I hate change.

For a while I thought that fatherhood was not living up to its billing. I mean, in the way that it was supposed to be all “hard to do” and such. Please. I had come to believe that I was some freaking natural or something. She was helpless against my innate abilities to rock her to sleep at night. Her 4:30a.m. diaper changes were a breeze. Sometimes she could be overly cranky, but if that’s the best she could do, then this parenting thing was no problem.

Something happened to me last Friday. I was already in a mood regarding United 93’s release. Obviously, I chose to blog about that instead… Make no mistake, in some ways this event impacted my psyche every bit as much…

…Thanks to my insistence on making friends with total computer geeks, my Thursday nights are spent online doing geeky things. I’m not proud of that fact…but I’m married and have no one left to impress. Plus, my troll character is becoming uber…and uberness is next to Godliness. Friday mornings are fairly brutal, especially because Congress has not, so far, acknowledged my idea for permanent three-day weekends. Thus, I must depend on my friend…let’s call him Mr. Starbucks…to give me a little pick-me-up.

Have you ever seen one of those TV shows or movies that start out by following some average joe in his regular routine. You may see him going to the grocery store, or the dry cleaners… Then he makes his way to the bank. Now you, the viewer, also see the van pulling up full of guys that are about to rob the same bank that our average joe just entered. You might even scream something like “Don’t go in there!” He is in the wrong place at the wrong time.

On Friday, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I stroll up to the Starbucks and enter not realizing that today would affect me in profound ways. I would be forced to deal with a crisis for which I was not prepared. I hadn’t taken any of the self-defense courses that I promised myself I would. I didn’t check to make sure I knew where all the exits where in case of emergency like you are always supposed to do. No, I went in the door in a sleep deprived coma and missed an obvious bad sign standing right in front of me…

…two teenage girls in their Paul VI Catholic school uniforms were ahead of me in line. I could barely make out the bleached blond hair of both girls through the crust that still covered my eyes, but their overblown sense of self-importance hit me like a wall. I think some of it even got in my nose. And then they began to communicate. It is the communication of girls that are obviously high school seniors and know all about life. This communication requires a slightly upturned nose and copious amounts of fixing your hair. Giggling is also involved and apparently we have re-entered the valley girl era of the 80’s and no one told me because everything was “oh my god” followed by a pronouncement of something that I’m sure God could care less about.

If you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time, you know that one of my biggest fears in life is the thought of rearing a female teenager. It is not that I view them as the most useless thing ever. Some of them are quite lovely…at times. It is that I have zero experience with what in the heck they are thinking at any given moment. I do have a sister, and she was a teenager at one point...but that only serves to validate my inability to decifer their very essence. Male teenagers are easy. They are certifiable morons. But I was once, and some would say still, a certifiable moron myself. So at least I have a foundation for dealing with a male. I have enough trouble understanding what my wife wants.

At the bottom of all of this angst is really my feelings of total inadequacy regarding parenting. I know…I just flaked out on you. I went all “girl” myself by even uttering the phrase “feelings of inadequacy”. It’s the truth though. What the heck do I know about guiding anyone through the road of life. I fall asleep during road trips…this one hasn’t been much different. Now I’ve got to be the driver? God help us…and He’s going to have to for this to work at all.

Of course, this angst I feel could all be for naught, you never know how K-Mad will turn out over a decade from now. She’s just barley staring to show her personality now, so I’m not sure what I’m hyperventilating about. Besides, I married smart. I married a Middle School teacher. I figure one half of this parenting corps is somewhat prepared.

I think this calls for a self help book….