Steely Dad

And stay-at-home dads are from a plant in a galaxy far, far away…

NOTE: I’ve switched back to the standard font.  It was too much of a pain in the arse with the other one.  If you can’t read it, get some glasses!

Being a stay-at-home dad (SAHD) has provided me a unique opportunity to study and annotate the differences between how my wife and I parent and how we conduct our lives in general.   Here’s the product of my empirical research.  I made a list, really for my kids when they get older, but let me know if it’s the same way in your crib.  We may not always share the same technique but the goal is absolute: to raise happy children who eventually become happy adults.

Here goes:

Mommy researches

Daddy recites the research that Mommy conducts

Mommy works

Daddy gets worked like a rented mule

Mommy cooks

Daddy grills

Mommy freaks out when someone gets hurt

Daddy says to rub some dirt on it

Mommy drinks wine

Daddy drinks whatever he can get his shakey hands on (sterno if necessary)

Mommy’s rules apply

Daddy’s rules are rejected like a conservative bill trying to make its way through Congress

Mommy can’t figure out how to work the remote control

Daddy uses the remote like an extra apendage

Mommy screams and shouts

Daddy gives “the look”

Mommy is loved

Daddy is considered “the help”

Mommy wants to protect you

Daddy wants to teach you how to protect yourself

Mommy engages the question “why?” and does her best to answer it

Daddy pretends not to hear the question that’s asked of him no less than 1,000 times per day

Mommy takes five hours to get out of the house

Daddy take five minutes

Mommy reads books on modern parenting methods

Daddy takes a trial-and-error approach

Mommy buys organic food

Daddy feeds you the organic food Mommy buys because he has no other choice

Mommy carries five diaper bags

Daddy carries what fits into his pockets

Mommy wants you to learn

Daddy wants to teach you

Mommy is bossy

Daddy is diplomatic

Mommy watches Court TV

Daddy has the dog test his morning breakfast

Mommy loves online shopping

Daddy loves onlines adult entertainment that is sophisticated and tasteful

Mommy buys toys for the kids

Daddy assembles (and plays with) them

Mommy loves you

Daddy loves you more  :)

Let me just right down to it. After all, I am not above pandering if that is required.

Being a stay-at-home dad (SAHD) can be a lonely (even the acronym is depressing), thankless and at times a frightening job. There’s no one there to offer you an “at-a-boy” when you do a good job. In fact, being a SAHD is the type of job in which you only hear feedback when you’re fucking things up. To be blunt, I rarely, if ever, receive any sort of validation unless by “validation” you mean being pooped on or asked “why” 1,000 times a day.

I surely don’t receive any accolades from peers or other adults (although I use the term “adult” quite loosely when describing myself). Rather, I usually receive judgments and mean stares. Many times it just plane blows.

To be clear, I’m not asking for your sympathy, your donations or your shrink’s contact information. I’m only looking for your vote.

What vote?

Well, I’ve been recently nominated by Blogger’s Choice Awards for my work on Steely Dad. Unlike those morons at the Academy Awards, I am not honored to just be nominated. As Ignacio in Nacho Libre so eloquently put it, I Wanna Wheen!

Here are a few of my campaign promises. Should I win:

I promise to fix the economy. (I can’t even write that with a straight face.)

I will not torture.  (Contrary to what some of you might think, making you read my blog has NOT been deemed an instrument of torture under the Geneva Conventions.)

I will not accept contributions from special interests.  (Not-so-special interests are fair game)

And I will reform and become more transparent.  (That’s actually more of a threat than a promise)

So Steely Dad Nation, can you throw me a bone and help me feel a sense of validation no matter how fleeting? Can you help me reach blogger immortality? Can you help me achieve my pathetic dream of being recognized for work for which I do not get paid? To you it’s just a tiny little vote but for me it means so much more. Please don’t feel guilty if you believe clicking on one of the conveniently located links below requires just too much effort. I understand. It is rather tiresome to click on a link. If you think you don’t need to vote for me because all my other friends will do so please keep in mind I have very few friends (certainly not enough to stuff the ballot box) and those that I do have are either ineligible to vote due to being incarcerated, are still in rehab or are too drunk to read this posting. However, if you believe I suck and am not deserving of such esteemed recognition, please just put those feelings aside for one second and vote for me because I’ll stop whining and begging and perhaps stem the flow of my draining dignity.

After all, I am nothing without my pride.

Vote for me in all four categories and win a trip to an undisclosed location (ARV = $0.00).

Let the clicking begin!

Ever watch the Discovery Channel show, I Shouldn’t Be Alive? It’s a program that reenacts real-life survival situations of average people (unlike survivor specialists Survivorman and Man v Wild). It’s compelling TV and I for one give it the Steely Dad thumbs up.

The producers of that show should do an episode on my recent survival experience.

No, I wasn’t caught in an avalanche subsisting only on pee-laden snow and no, I wasn’t stranded on the African plains surviving on elephant dung while fending off attacks from lions with a spear fashioned from the elastic band of my underwear and a filed-down button. No, my friends, this experience was much more harrowing than the aforementioned scenarios.

My survival experience involved four days of long treks, screaming kids, rude people, crappy food and massive crowds at The Happiest Place on Earth, otherwise known as Disneyland.

If you’ve ever been to Disneyland then you know precisely the survivor skills required to get out alive (and without having to file bankruptcy upon your return to civilization). One must be able to tolerate the searing pain of having countless strollers, some of them double-wides, rolled over your minimally-protected feet. One must be able to stand for long periods of time with antsy kids in lines that seem miles long. One must be able to stomach super-fried edibles without getting a violent case of the squirts that rivals Giardia. To be sure, one must be able to take being knocked and pushed around by large swarms of humanity without going postal. In addition, and this is perhaps the most crucial Disneyland survival skill, one must be able to distract the kids long enough to avoid spending huge sums of cash in the kid-appealing souvenir shops one will encounter immediately exiting each and every ride and attraction. It is the most skilled survivor who can do this without triggering an all-out flailing episode.

In addition to these skills, my personal experience in Disneyland required a skill, nay, an adaptation that most Steely Dad readers will find they already possess. For me, a supremely brave man who has always stared death and danger directly in the eye, I have to enter into an ecstatic trance in order to get my butt on…roller coasters. Anyone who knows me knows this about me. Roller coasters are my kryptonite, my Achilles Heel, my sole lapse in an otherwise armor-like aura. My phobia of roller coasters is the culmination of two traumatic events in my life. The first I attribute to a prenatal trauma when “Mom the Daredevil” went on a ride during my fragile gestational period that resulted in my mom hurling chunks. This incident occurred during the 70s, before they had signs warning pregnant women that going on coasters was a stupid idea. In fact, my mom’s experience set a precedent requiring all amusement parks to post the pregnant woman warning signs. The other trauma happened when my parents took me to a local fair run by a family of gypsies. You know the type where the operator of the ride has a patch over one eye and lacks any evidence that his mouth once housed teeth. Well, the ride I was on broke down and it caused a minor panic in the parents and a major one in me.

I could go on describing the depth of my phobia but it would require time better spent on other endeavors, like wrapping up this blog post. The point is, I’m deathly afraid of roller coasters. However, my three-year-old son (as well as my one-year-old daughter, who went on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride) LOVES roller coasters. Ever since I took him on this wimpy ride at Legoland when he was two, he has been addicted to rides. Well, I must say that after four days at Disneyland not only was I able to control my fear of Disney’s relatively tame coasters I actually began to enjoy them. With Steely Son, we hit up Thunder Mountain (his personal favorite) about 20 times, Space Mountain four times and a few rides on the famous Matterhorn. So how’d I do it? How did I adopt this unique survival skill? Bottom line: I had to Dad up and be there for my boy. That’s what dads do.

Am I ready for the panic-inducing rides at places like Six Flags? Not a chance. What will I do when he’s ready for those rides? I’ll do what any other courageous dad would do: have his mommy take him.

Dear Steely Dad Nation,

I am writing this story whilst floating in the air 35,000 feet above Planet Earth. In a way, it’s a new twist on the “Mile High Club.”

Remember what it was like BK (Before Kids) when flying was a breeze? I recall flying back to the states from Barcelona, arriving at the airport about five minutes before the plane was about to depart. Annoyed but ever professional, the airline staff rushed me onboard and I was good to go. That was BK but also preceded a certain catastrophe that needs no mention. Nowadays, you must arrive at the airport about 48 hours in advance of your flight and if kids are involved, you might want to get to the airport tomorrow if a summer vacation in the Bahamas is your desire. What with the strollers and the car seats and the food bags and the diaper bags and having to remove your shoes and strip down to your skibbies. Trust me, though, I do appreciate the new-and-improved safety precautions. One must keep this in mind when being inconvenienced with an anal probe administered by members of Homeland Security personnel.

All that aside, the inconveniences are nothing compared to the stress a parent experiences when, in quarters too close and too populated to be remotely comfortable, he or she must deal with an inconsolable baby. My baby girl was apoplectic. She was exhausted, hungry (but wouldn’t eat) and I think her ears were hurting. It was awful. I was finally able to get her to fall asleep until, stupid me, in an attempt to make her and myself more comfortable I lifted the armrest and she went ballistic. At that point she turned violent, thrashing about, throwing pacifiers like projectiles, tearing up the SkyMall magazine beyond recognition. It was a terrible site indeed. I honestly didn’t even care what everyone around me thought; I was just doing the best I could under the circumstances. I know how these people felt because there was a time when I shared those same feelings: can’t those people control their child? We had officially become “that” family: “How was your flight? It was great except for that family who couldn’t get their kids to shut up.”

Once we were able to assuage Ms. Tasmanian Devil, my son decided he needed to use the loo. Have you ever tried to provide bathroom assistance to a child in an airplane lavatory? That space is barely big enough for you and your shadow much less you and a child. My son damn near fell into the toilet and out of the plane after I accidentally bumped the poor lad! Do you guys remember the story of the Indian baby who fell out of the toilet on a train to Gujarat Flushed Away? This situation was no laughing matter.

So I’d like to open the discussion up to the entire Steely Dad Nation. What is your worst travel experience with kids? It doesn’t have to be on a plane. It could be a camping trip (I’m planning our first Steely Dad/Steely Son camp out this summer), a trip to The Happiest Place on Earth or to a family nudist colony. Whatever. Share your stories here…oh, hell, hold on a second. My son just informed me that he now has to go #2! Is he kidding? OK, so write your stories in the Comments. I’d love to hear from all of youuuuuu…

We’re flying today. Yup, me, Steely Wife and two Steely Kids are taking to the skies. 35,000 feet in the air, we will be propelled through time and space to reach our destination. Where are we going? Well, that’s classified.

I hate flying but for not for the reasons you might assume. In the past, I had a fear of flying but after having kids that aversion went away with free time and drunken orgies. Even with these recent crashes http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Travel/story?id=7156889&page=1 I’m not afraid of the dreaded airplane “malfunction.” Like I said, I’ve got two wives and a kid two kids and a wife and nothing can instill fear in a man more than those statistics especially when going through airport security (with car seats and strollers).  It’s a pain and is much more frightening than the other scenarios that can potentially play out when flying.

But that’s not the real reason I hate to fly. I hate flying because I’m an inveterate germaphobe and what scares me more than dying in a massive ball of fire is contracting some sort of communicable and incurable illness like tuberculosis. Just the idea of sharing that stale air with total (and unhygienic strangers) causes minor panic attacks in my otherwise placid disposition. In fact, the fear is so uncontrollable that my physician has to prescribe to me “calming” medications. Those tiny pills, along with a couple of brews, make me feel like I’m flying even before the aircraft takes off and I don’t care if some fat slob is coughing all over my airline penis peanuts.

Not only that but my debonair alter ego often rears his congenial head when I’m slightly “relaxed” so I can charm any would-be terrorists into capitulating. Of course, there is another alter ego that can show up and he is not so much charming as he is brave stupid. If said terrorists don’t give up peacefully, this character is likely to take matters into his own hands because he’s not going down without a fight.

I realize you have your choice in blogs so thank you for choosing to “fly” with Steely Dad. Have a great trip.