Father's Day...

I suppose my first notion of the concept of Fatherhood occurred about when I was 4 years old.  My older brother Dave wasn't feeling well and my Dad got signed up to take both Dave and me to the doctor.  Being that dad was a salesman, he was always dressed very professionally for work; impeccable suit, tie, shoes polished - the works.

Whatever illness we had at that time, I remember that both Dave and I got shots for it.  And Dave started to feel a little queasy in the aftermath of the shot.  The color drained from his face, he crossed his arms over his stomach and said "Dad, I don't feel so good..."

My dad turned his attention from me, I was still sobbing from the shot, and he looked back at Dave.  I suppose it was the sound of that first hard gag that got his attention. I remember him crossing the room in a flash while at the same time searching for any kind of vessel to catch what was inevitably coming next.  It was almost like something out of a cartoon or maybe a Dick Van Dyke movie.  He danced around the examination room in fast motion - moving from counter to counter searching for a wastebasket, barf bag, lunch box - anything I suppose - and eventually wound up in front of Dave with his empty hands outstretched the same way a punter appears just before he drops the ball to kick it.

"BBBB.....BBBBBB.....BBBBB...BAAAAAARRRRFFFFFFF!" is what Dave said.

Dad's hands weren't empty after that.  In his later years, when we were grown and he was more confident in sharing with his children some of the saltier passages from his time in the service, he described that moment to me this way "I stood there, covered in barf, feeling like I had been shot at and missed and shit at and hit..."

The point of the whole story is, I remember at the moment it happened, thinking "Well, if that's what it is to be a dad, then I don't ever want to be a dad."

Well, I have been a dad now 11 years.  And in those 11 years I have been barfed on, peed & pooped on, had every shirt I own treated as a hankie for a kid crying from hurt feelings, skinned knees, or missing toys.  I survived 1000 or more shots to the grapes from the murderously cute and fast moving hands, knees, elbows, and feet of my two kids.  I have driven 75 miles round trip to a rest area in the middle of the night to search a rest area garbage can for a lost iPod Touch...let me just let that sink in for you...a rest area garbage can.  If anything on Earth can be more accurately described as Hell's anus than a rest area garbage can I don't know what it is; but I searched it for a missing iPod Touch that was a gift from Santa.  I mopped up Barf at Sam's Club - and I have never worked at Sam's Club.

I can confidently say that if those were the only things listed on the Dad job description, I would have never applied.  As it turns out though, the creepier, more disgusting aspects of fatherhood really kind of fall down to the level of "other duties as assigned" on the "Dad Job Description."

I have also cheered like a madman at baseball games and, lately road races.  I cried at scouting events and pre-school graduations, read stories and had them read back to me in hilarious fashion and have been party to a million inside jokes. I've had to stop the car two houses down, already late for work, because a pee-wee in pigtails and a sundress is chasing me down the street crying because I did not give her sufficient hugs and kisses before I left the door.  At work, I wear a lanyard carrying my work ID that proclaims I am "The World's Greatest Dad" because one Christmas when my son was 8, he apparently thought that.  I watched both of these children come into the world - have known them literally since the time they were "1 second old."  I have been told I love you 95,000 times more than I ever expected to hear that phrase in my life.


In short, I have been changed in ways I could not imagine. And  - despite the vibrant disagreement I am having with an 11 year old boy over what are reasonable expectations for a snoozy Sunday morning at the precise moment I am writing this  - I can say with certainty and confidence that I am still the luckiest guy I know.

So this Father's Day, I hope all those great dads out there stay dry and free from any type of human emissions. From this SmallTownDad to all the other dads out there, have a great Father's Day.

Dennis
smalltowndad@hotmail.com

P.S.  Any dads out there reading this already know the inevitable outcome of the missing iPod Touch.  The device that everyone was certain had inadvertently found its way into a McDonald's bag on the way home from some trip and was then discarded in the Rest Area garbage can?  Yeah, it was under the back seat of the car.  I only discovered it there AFTER I searched the garbage can.   But, I am a dad - and that still rocks.