As a father, you get to live everyday, for a while, as a superhero. To children, your strength is unfathomable. Your wit is sharper than a diamond-edged razor. Your knowledge of any and all topics puts you in the same realm as Einstein or Tesla. Your humor can lighten the most sour of moods. And you can drive. That makes you strong, smart, funny and cool...
But, just as any hero from any comic book, they will eventually find chinks in your otherwise seemingly impenetrable armor. And once that curtain has been pulled back and you are exposed as just a common man, it's a tough image to restore.
For me it's been sleepwalking, cotton balls and traffic.
To my children, I've always been somewhat calm and collected. I don't normally have to raise my voice to them. I can handle anything that they throw at me with a gentle manner and smile. I am, in their eyes, cooler than the other side of Billy D. Williams' pillow during a slumber party with Motley Crue (which is, for the record, the coolest thing in the world). There is one thing that can always throw me off balance, though. Traffic.
When my two oldest are with me for the weekend, it is my responsibility to ensure they are at school on time Monday morning. Living thirty minutes from the school, it always seems like we are pushing the tardy bell to its limit. But it doesn't help when I pull onto the interstate and I run right into a wall of the most insane, frustrating and idiotic drivers on the face of the earth. And God forbid there is the slightest bit of precipitation... Anyway... As I'm maneuvering through this quagmire of stupidity, my children become witnesses to the violent, stressed and abusive driver I am. I completely lose it. Passive aggressive comments turn into questions of other drivers' intelligence. Those turn into affirmations of their lack of intelligence. Those turn into threats of physical violence. (Not to the drivers directly, of course. I don't want any of them to potentially pull over and oblige me by beating me up in front of my own children.) And as we turn the corner onto the street where their school resides, I can see the expressions on my children's faces. Not of fear, but rather a severe disdain and disgust. They have been privy to the fact that I am not that "amazingly cool under pressure" guy that they have known me as their entire lives. I try to play it off like it was all a big game by saying, "Well, I guess I won that round of 'Make Up New Swear Words With a Vengeance,' didn't I?" But as they say their goodbyes on the way out of the backseat, I can hear the disapproval in their tones. So, I've lost the whole "too cool for school" image with them...
Bambakophobia is the fear of cotton balls. It's a real, and amazingly not uncommon phobia to have. And I suffer from this fear. And by suffer, I don't mean, "I suffer through talking to the parents of my kid's friends, even though I think they are even weirder that the funny-smelling kid that my kids are playing with." I mean, I SUFFER! The touch...the feel...of cotton... real or synthetic, will make me go mad with anxiety and paralyzing fear. If I see cotton balls on the floor of a room I am walking through, I will circumnavigate the entire room to avoid even the potential of having to encounter what I see as the dreaded white, puffy, droppings of Satan himself. When I buy aspirin, I will look to see if it has cotton in the bottle before I even put it in my basket to bypass entertaining the idea of having to shove my fingers into the squeaky, stringy horror that lies beneath that child-safety cap. I won't even listen to Aaron Neville anymore after he did the commercial for cotton. I hear "Crazy Love," and I want to pull the stereo out of the dash of my car. It's that real and that bad. Now imagine having as silly as a phobia as this, and trying to put on the image of the strong, fearless dad. I will take on any challenge: kill any bug that's above their bed, walk through the scariest, darkest basements to flip the breaker after a power surge, check on any noise at any hour in any part of the house with nothing but my clenched fist and a rumble in my growl...But if any of these situations included cotton balls, forget about it...My biggest fear in life is that someone will break into my house in the middle of the night, armed with nothing but cotton balls glued to his hands and holding a pistol that shoots cotton bullets. I know it's a ridiculous fear to have...and so do my kids. My son, Danny, once asked me why I was so scared of them, and I just said, "Superman's weakness is kryptonite. My weakness is cotton balls." He said that was a silly weakness to have. "Well," I replied, "Wonder Woman's weakness was to have her hands bound together...but only by a man...so, how silly is cotton, now?" Regardless, I know that the superhero's cape my kids once put around my neck has been hung up in the coat closet (along with my magician's top hat from the time they realized I wasn't actually pulling off my thumb and my monocle after it was discovered that $100 in the bank isn't really a lot of money for a grown man.) In fact, I have even found wads of cotton in my shoes in a primary attempt at a practical joke. So, I'm not the fearless guy they once knew me as...And they know it.
Up to this point, I have successfully allowed my children to see me freak out at complete strangers over something neither they nor I can control and I have dissolved the illusion of my bravery and fearlessness over something that is used as clouds in a kindergartner's craft project. My third weakness is something they have yet to see, yet still I wince at thought of the day it happens.
I sleepwalk...Not all the time, but it happens. My wife has told me some wonderful stories about things I have done or said in my journeys from the bedroom while sleepwalking. The problem with dreams is that they can be extremely dangerous. And when you act them out in an enclosed environment, they can become even more dangerous. Not so much physically dangerous as much as emotionally...
Case in point: When my wife was 7 months pregnant with our son, she woke up to me running in my boxer briefs out the bedroom, down the hall and towards the front door. As I was running, she screamed, "Where are you going?" I yelled that the house was on fire. "You're dreaming! Come back to bed." I snapped out of my slumber with my hand on the doorknob. I was only half a turn away from running through the neighborhood in my underwear screaming like a loon. I turned around and walked back into the bedroom. As I crawled back in next to my wife, she sat up and said, "Really? The house was on fire and you were just going to leave your pregnant wife behind?"
That's my fear when it come to my kids witnessing my somnambulisms. I worry that my actions in my "live for TV audience" dreams may be perceived as real decisions I would actually make while awake. It's not fair when you think about it. Other people get to keep their dreams a secret unless they want to share. But there might be a day when I decide to trade my children to an Armenian tailor that has made a jacket that has an endless supply of Hostess' chocolate mini-donuts coming from the left pocket. And that's something I don't want to them to manifest years later while stretched out on a leather couch paying $200 an hour because at age nine, they thought I would do that in real life. (Note: In real life, I would only trade them if the other pocket on the jacket issued Super Bowl tickets ever year as well.)
We all remember those things that our parents did that revealed them to us as nothing more than a regular person. Growing up, my father was one of the toughest, funniest, smartest guy I knew. And he still is. But, there was a point when I realized that he wasn't a superhero, but rather, a great man. And I realized it the first time I saw him do the "monkey dance."
The "Monkey Dance" is a move my dad would do when a project that he was working on would go sour. Usually, it involved a car.
You see, my dad is a talented carpenter. He had a small construction business when I was young and I was amazed with how easy he would make complicated projects seem. Like Bob Villa. He was a paramedic for years, as well, and is now an RN. His knowledge of complex medical conditions and procedures astounds and amazes me. But, even with his fine craftsmanship and tool skills, and his ability to track the tiniest of issues through the human circulatory system, put him in front of a car and his eyes grow big and blank like he is a deer about to plowed down by said car.
The "monkey dance" was a waltz, consisting of three very different, but equally important steps. Step one was to begin cussing. A lot of times this was caused by a socket slipping off a bolt, causing his hand to slam into something or a fluid leaking uncontrollably from underneath. My dad doesn't really cuss, though. He cusses like Fred Flinstone after Wilma tells him that her mother is coming to visit: "Snigglefragglegrubbledarble!" Step two came a little while later. The second step was to throw a tool. So, after the same bolt that caused him to start cussing still won't come loose, he would throw the socket wrench and cuss louder, even though it was still incoherent. He learned to throw the tool against something after an incident in which he threw a wrench down the street on a Saturday when every neighbor was out in their yards with their families. Now that is a walk of shame...And then, about an hour later, the bolt might break, which would lead into the third and final step. Step three was the actual "Monkey Dance."
The dance looked something like this:
Both hands outstretched at his sides...
Feet shoulder width apart...
Head tilted down slightly...
A panicked, hysterical, confused, apathetic and slightly psychotic expression on his face...
Grunts...
And, finally, a jerking back-and-forth motion on the balls of his feet.
It resembled Frankenstein's monster doing the Mashed Potato.
We laugh about it now. But it was the first time I can remember my dad being human to me in my youth; frustrated, losing his temper over something silly and being somewhat vulnerable. It's not a bad thing to be human to your kids. It happens to us all. I guess, as a father, I just didn't ever want it to really happen to me...or at least not so soon...We never really know what is going to disillusion our children. The littlest things we do can cause those pieces to crumble. And there's no glue to put them back together. But we can always laugh about it later.
But, just as any hero from any comic book, they will eventually find chinks in your otherwise seemingly impenetrable armor. And once that curtain has been pulled back and you are exposed as just a common man, it's a tough image to restore.
For me it's been sleepwalking, cotton balls and traffic.
To my children, I've always been somewhat calm and collected. I don't normally have to raise my voice to them. I can handle anything that they throw at me with a gentle manner and smile. I am, in their eyes, cooler than the other side of Billy D. Williams' pillow during a slumber party with Motley Crue (which is, for the record, the coolest thing in the world). There is one thing that can always throw me off balance, though. Traffic.
When my two oldest are with me for the weekend, it is my responsibility to ensure they are at school on time Monday morning. Living thirty minutes from the school, it always seems like we are pushing the tardy bell to its limit. But it doesn't help when I pull onto the interstate and I run right into a wall of the most insane, frustrating and idiotic drivers on the face of the earth. And God forbid there is the slightest bit of precipitation... Anyway... As I'm maneuvering through this quagmire of stupidity, my children become witnesses to the violent, stressed and abusive driver I am. I completely lose it. Passive aggressive comments turn into questions of other drivers' intelligence. Those turn into affirmations of their lack of intelligence. Those turn into threats of physical violence. (Not to the drivers directly, of course. I don't want any of them to potentially pull over and oblige me by beating me up in front of my own children.) And as we turn the corner onto the street where their school resides, I can see the expressions on my children's faces. Not of fear, but rather a severe disdain and disgust. They have been privy to the fact that I am not that "amazingly cool under pressure" guy that they have known me as their entire lives. I try to play it off like it was all a big game by saying, "Well, I guess I won that round of 'Make Up New Swear Words With a Vengeance,' didn't I?" But as they say their goodbyes on the way out of the backseat, I can hear the disapproval in their tones. So, I've lost the whole "too cool for school" image with them...
Bambakophobia is the fear of cotton balls. It's a real, and amazingly not uncommon phobia to have. And I suffer from this fear. And by suffer, I don't mean, "I suffer through talking to the parents of my kid's friends, even though I think they are even weirder that the funny-smelling kid that my kids are playing with." I mean, I SUFFER! The touch...the feel...of cotton... real or synthetic, will make me go mad with anxiety and paralyzing fear. If I see cotton balls on the floor of a room I am walking through, I will circumnavigate the entire room to avoid even the potential of having to encounter what I see as the dreaded white, puffy, droppings of Satan himself. When I buy aspirin, I will look to see if it has cotton in the bottle before I even put it in my basket to bypass entertaining the idea of having to shove my fingers into the squeaky, stringy horror that lies beneath that child-safety cap. I won't even listen to Aaron Neville anymore after he did the commercial for cotton. I hear "Crazy Love," and I want to pull the stereo out of the dash of my car. It's that real and that bad. Now imagine having as silly as a phobia as this, and trying to put on the image of the strong, fearless dad. I will take on any challenge: kill any bug that's above their bed, walk through the scariest, darkest basements to flip the breaker after a power surge, check on any noise at any hour in any part of the house with nothing but my clenched fist and a rumble in my growl...But if any of these situations included cotton balls, forget about it...My biggest fear in life is that someone will break into my house in the middle of the night, armed with nothing but cotton balls glued to his hands and holding a pistol that shoots cotton bullets. I know it's a ridiculous fear to have...and so do my kids. My son, Danny, once asked me why I was so scared of them, and I just said, "Superman's weakness is kryptonite. My weakness is cotton balls." He said that was a silly weakness to have. "Well," I replied, "Wonder Woman's weakness was to have her hands bound together...but only by a man...so, how silly is cotton, now?" Regardless, I know that the superhero's cape my kids once put around my neck has been hung up in the coat closet (along with my magician's top hat from the time they realized I wasn't actually pulling off my thumb and my monocle after it was discovered that $100 in the bank isn't really a lot of money for a grown man.) In fact, I have even found wads of cotton in my shoes in a primary attempt at a practical joke. So, I'm not the fearless guy they once knew me as...And they know it.
Up to this point, I have successfully allowed my children to see me freak out at complete strangers over something neither they nor I can control and I have dissolved the illusion of my bravery and fearlessness over something that is used as clouds in a kindergartner's craft project. My third weakness is something they have yet to see, yet still I wince at thought of the day it happens.
I sleepwalk...Not all the time, but it happens. My wife has told me some wonderful stories about things I have done or said in my journeys from the bedroom while sleepwalking. The problem with dreams is that they can be extremely dangerous. And when you act them out in an enclosed environment, they can become even more dangerous. Not so much physically dangerous as much as emotionally...
Case in point: When my wife was 7 months pregnant with our son, she woke up to me running in my boxer briefs out the bedroom, down the hall and towards the front door. As I was running, she screamed, "Where are you going?" I yelled that the house was on fire. "You're dreaming! Come back to bed." I snapped out of my slumber with my hand on the doorknob. I was only half a turn away from running through the neighborhood in my underwear screaming like a loon. I turned around and walked back into the bedroom. As I crawled back in next to my wife, she sat up and said, "Really? The house was on fire and you were just going to leave your pregnant wife behind?"
That's my fear when it come to my kids witnessing my somnambulisms. I worry that my actions in my "live for TV audience" dreams may be perceived as real decisions I would actually make while awake. It's not fair when you think about it. Other people get to keep their dreams a secret unless they want to share. But there might be a day when I decide to trade my children to an Armenian tailor that has made a jacket that has an endless supply of Hostess' chocolate mini-donuts coming from the left pocket. And that's something I don't want to them to manifest years later while stretched out on a leather couch paying $200 an hour because at age nine, they thought I would do that in real life. (Note: In real life, I would only trade them if the other pocket on the jacket issued Super Bowl tickets ever year as well.)
We all remember those things that our parents did that revealed them to us as nothing more than a regular person. Growing up, my father was one of the toughest, funniest, smartest guy I knew. And he still is. But, there was a point when I realized that he wasn't a superhero, but rather, a great man. And I realized it the first time I saw him do the "monkey dance."
The "Monkey Dance" is a move my dad would do when a project that he was working on would go sour. Usually, it involved a car.
You see, my dad is a talented carpenter. He had a small construction business when I was young and I was amazed with how easy he would make complicated projects seem. Like Bob Villa. He was a paramedic for years, as well, and is now an RN. His knowledge of complex medical conditions and procedures astounds and amazes me. But, even with his fine craftsmanship and tool skills, and his ability to track the tiniest of issues through the human circulatory system, put him in front of a car and his eyes grow big and blank like he is a deer about to plowed down by said car.
The "monkey dance" was a waltz, consisting of three very different, but equally important steps. Step one was to begin cussing. A lot of times this was caused by a socket slipping off a bolt, causing his hand to slam into something or a fluid leaking uncontrollably from underneath. My dad doesn't really cuss, though. He cusses like Fred Flinstone after Wilma tells him that her mother is coming to visit: "Snigglefragglegrubbledarble!" Step two came a little while later. The second step was to throw a tool. So, after the same bolt that caused him to start cussing still won't come loose, he would throw the socket wrench and cuss louder, even though it was still incoherent. He learned to throw the tool against something after an incident in which he threw a wrench down the street on a Saturday when every neighbor was out in their yards with their families. Now that is a walk of shame...And then, about an hour later, the bolt might break, which would lead into the third and final step. Step three was the actual "Monkey Dance."
The dance looked something like this:
Both hands outstretched at his sides...
Feet shoulder width apart...
Head tilted down slightly...
A panicked, hysterical, confused, apathetic and slightly psychotic expression on his face...
Grunts...
And, finally, a jerking back-and-forth motion on the balls of his feet.
It resembled Frankenstein's monster doing the Mashed Potato.
We laugh about it now. But it was the first time I can remember my dad being human to me in my youth; frustrated, losing his temper over something silly and being somewhat vulnerable. It's not a bad thing to be human to your kids. It happens to us all. I guess, as a father, I just didn't ever want it to really happen to me...or at least not so soon...We never really know what is going to disillusion our children. The littlest things we do can cause those pieces to crumble. And there's no glue to put them back together. But we can always laugh about it later.
Thank you for the delicious laughs!
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