Father of the Year (and the mug to prove it!)

Anybody that knows me from my other blog is probably not surprised to see me pontificating about child-rearing on this new blog here.  I don’t know how many times a week I get a personal email asking me about my views on how to handle a tricky family situation or advice on raising the perfect child (based on my first hand experience).*   If you’ve read Feet Meet Street, the overriding takeaway most people get is What a Wonderful Family Man and How Can I Be a Perfect Dad Just Like Him (though with decidedly less use of the word “anus”).

Then your prayers were answered as – viola! – this blog appears and provides me with the proper forum with which to espouse my views on family, life, and kids.  I’m sure you’re all ears and eyes.  After all, there’s only ONE Father of the Year and I have the coffee mug to prove it! 

So pull up an internet connection, stuff your kids in a closet with a mouthful of duct tape**, and prepare yourself for rich tales of my family interwoven with life lessons and some homespun R rated humor that’ll form a virtual quilt to warm over your fragile parental psyche. 

Now, I’m not the only one contributing to this blog.  There are others as you can see by the list on the sidebar.  No, I’m not the ONLY, just the most IMPORTANT.  We’ll ALL attempt to put a smile in your child-addled brain and soothe your battered and tattered sense of hope.  I’ll just be the most successful though polite applause is always appreciated for the others.  After all, at every school music show, someone has to hold the cymbals for the drummers as they rock out.  And just because the cymbal holders can’t be trusted with a clearly defined sense of beat and rhythm and perform essentially the same job as a steel pole doesn’t mean they aren’t useful.

My kids are 14 and 11.  One just entered high school; one just entered middle school.  I don’t play Chutes and Ladders anymore and the only butt I wipe is my own (and the dog sometimes when she gets a ‘dangler’ and it threatens to jump off on the carpet).  I signed my first ‘pledge to have an alcohol free house when hosting students and friends from the high school’ last week.  We fast forwarded from buying the first batch of Proactiv to looking over the schedule for driver’s education classes in about two months.  Isn’t this whole parenting thing supposed to take longer?  Before long, one kid will be out of the house and then there’ll only be one left to eat all my food and stand in front of my TV to block my view.

I’ll tell you life as learned through youth soccer.  I’ll show you all the great things the Mrs. and I have taught them as well as all of the horrible things they must have learned from television or the internet.  I’ll brag a lot.  Oh, you’ll get sick of my bragging real quickly.  Did you know my daughter scores goals by the handful each game?  Did you know my son likes to eject attacking forwards in a manner that is borderline assault?  Wait two paragraphs into the next post and you’ll never want to hear about it again.

Oh, and I’ll complain a hell of a lot.  Kids are annoying and there’s just no way to sugar coat it.  Sugar and spice and everything nice?  How about bitter and sticky and everything that you want to smack the living shit out of and send to bed early?  I know, it doesn’t rhyme as smoothly but still….Can I just watch Breaking Bad without someone asking me a fairly obvious 5^th grade math question?   Hellllooooo?!?! Walt is about to shoot half a drug kingpin’s face off and you want to know what ‘x’ equals??

You can learn something here.  I don’t know what exactly but…something.  At the very least, you’ll learn to hate blue asterisk footnotes.  If you aren’t a fan of adverbs, head elsewhere.  Quickly. 

And don’t threaten me with child protection services.  Been there, done that.

Grab yourself your non-Father of the Year coffee mug, fill it with some rum or drink of your choice and settle in.  I’ve got some stories to unload that’ll make your hair stand up.  I’m a veteran parent and I’ve got the thousand yard stare.  Vietnam vets have nothing on me.  I’m still in the shit going on 15 YEARS now.

I’ll end this because I have to pick one kid up from practice….and take the other to practice all while suppressing burps, plastering on a fake smile, and balancing my F-o-t-Y coffee cup on my knee.  Later they’ll need dinner and perhaps they’ll allow us to pick up their jackets and shoes for them.

Take my advice:  Run.  No one is watching.  Run.

*Waiting for the first one but certain it’s coming.

**This is called the “Kidnapper Technique” and I’ll expand on that later for those curious.

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