Our friend Oren Miller of A Blogger and A Father is Guest Dad today. After learning about a local stay-at-home dads meetup from this blog, he summoned up the courage to go -- and write about it.

Here's Oren:

A lot of things went through my head before I went to my first daddies-playdate.

First of all, do they call it a daddies-playdate? In emails I referred to it as the daddies meet-up. Thought it sounded more masculine.

I figured I had to be cool--I didn't want the others to think they needed to babysit me and stand in line to introduce themselves--but not too cool.

I speak Hebrew to my son, but would that make other fathers uncomfortable? Would it make it seem like we were there, in a group, but not part of the group?

To paraphrase the mother in "Carrie," were they all gonna laugh at me?

What do daddies talk about? It's not just about sex before, during, and after pregnancy, right?

I don't know anything about sports!!!

I've gotten used to hiding my social awkwardness behind my son's cute face, but now everyone was going to have cute kids, which meant they were expecting me to be a functioning adult!

Now, here's what happened:

I guess I can call it a playdate or a meet-up or anything I want to call it. People don't have time to care. Some of the kids were younger than my kid, and some were older. No one laughed at me or at him. No one talked about sex, thank God. Or sports. Oh, and no home improvement, either. At least not the DIY stuff. I guess I don't know much about much. And as the new guy, I guess I wasn't expected to say much, anyway.

The bottom line is that I have a cute kid who doesn't go to daycare, and needs to meet other kids. And he has a father who can go a little crazy at home, occasionally. And here was a chance to get my kid the social interaction he needs, so maybe, when he grows up, he'd be comfortable around other people. Unlike his father.