Те чувства, которые он тут описывает, не только папы испытывают, но и некоторые мамы(
A few days ago I was leaving a restaurant with my youngest daughter, and I was holding her hand, and I was texting with this hand. Yeah, I’m that guy. A woman walked by and she gave me a dirty look, like “Hmm you should pay more attention to your kid.”
Ok, guilty!
But I have something to say to that woman. This is why I’m able to spend time with my kids when I should be at work. It was noon on a Thursday, okay? I had a crazy amount of work to do, but my kid graduated from pre-school that day and I wanted to take her to lunch!
And it was a great lunch.
We sat at the same side of the table the way she likes. We shared a chicken cutlet. I ate some of her chicken cutlet. We looked at her drawings. She told me many stories about the chinchilla in the classroom.
And so now I’m texting and you walk by “errr bad father!”
What do you know?!
OK, I’m being defensive, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been texting.
You know when my kids were younger. I used to avoid them. I used to sit on the toilet until my legs fell asleep.
You want to know why your father spent so long in the toilet? Because he’s not sure he wants to be a father.
I felt like being a dad was taking away everything I wanted to be.
And I was right.
But so what? What’s so great about our lives? What the hell is an adult without kids, what’s the point? So I got off the toilet, I flushed down my personal dreams and I decided, I’m going to be a dad. I’m not going to be Mum’s assistant. That’s depressing, don’t do that if you’re a dad, just wait for her to write you a list, walk round the store staring at it and call her from the cereal isle to make sure you’ve got the right thing. Be a man! Make your own list. [Do we need any avocadoes?]
Fathers have skills that they never use at home. You run a landscaping business and you can’t dress and feed a four year old? Take it on. Spend time with your kids and have your own ideas about what they need. Get into it. It won’t take away your manhood. It’ll give it to you.
I did that. I spent more time with my kids. I took it on.
I found out that I’m a pretty bad father. I make a lot of mistakes. I don’t know what I’m doing, but my kids love me. Go figure.
