Nothing prepares you for these fatherly moments
Joe Burris, who last wrote about walking while texting, returns as Guest Dad with observations about the moments in fatherhood for which nothing can prepare you.
Here he is:
Nothing prepares you for when a teenage boy calls your home asking to speak to your 12-year-old daughter, and, when you tell the boy that your daughter is not dating, and therefore isn’t receiving dating calls, he fires back, “Well, she gave me this number and said I could call!”
Nothing prepares you for when you find a long-lost DVD of one of your 3-year old’s favorite stories, and after telling her she can watch it at her story time -- and she spends the day telling you that she can’t wait for story time -- you place the disc in the DVD player only to discover that it won’t play.
Nothing prepares you for when your then 5-year-old daughter brings home her first ceramic clay creation.
"What a beautiful cow, Sweetie.”
“Daddy, it’s a table.”
Nothing prepares you for when you take your 3-year-old daughter to a crowded bathroom and she becomes fixated on those relieving themselves at the urinals.
“Daddy, what are they doing,” she yells, startling a young boy so much that he loses his aim.
Nothing prepares you for when you spend the entire morning styling your daughter’s hair only to have the folks at daycare stare at her curiously and exclaim, “We can always tell when daddy does the hair.”
Nothing prepares you for when your then 4-year-old child asks, “When am I going to get breast-ess?”
“Sweetie, you’re just four years old. Don’t worry, you have plenty of time for, er, breast-ess.”
“Ohhhh. Does that mean I get them when I go to kindergarten?”
Nothing prepares you for when you’ve been looking high and low for your back scratcher to reach the itching spot that’s driving you crazy, only to have your 3-year-old enter the room saying, “Daddy, fix this please,” handing you a broken back scratcher.
Comments
I bet my dad would add when I was 7 or so and asked him what a virgin was (thanks, Madonna).
Posted by: Heather | June 5, 2009 11:40 AM
Why can't your daughter talk on the phone to a boy as a friend? Is it all or nothing?
Posted by: Katherine | June 5, 2009 2:50 PM
Nothing prepares you for when most of your family leaves their seats in church to go up for Holy Communion, and your 4 year old yells at the top of her lungs, "Bring me back a cracker too!"
Posted by: Cheryl at Maryland Family | June 5, 2009 2:50 PM
Nothing prepared me for my daughter, then age 5, running into my bedroom at about 3 am screaming, "Mom! Mom! Mom!"
Me (awakening very rapidly from a deep sleep): "What? What? What?"
Kid: "Mom! What's 'men-o-pause'?"
Posted by: Nicole | June 6, 2009 6:53 PM
Nothing had prepared us when, after listening in on a grownup discussion of the effects of time and gravity on male chest muscles, our 5-year-old daughter asked, "Dad? What are sagging pesticles?"
Posted by: Frank | June 7, 2009 7:41 AM