Like most fathers, I am constantly worried about my children. I have long-term worries that any father would have, most of which center around concerns that my daughter will be the groupie of the college ice hockey team or that my son will be living in a man-cave in my basement when he's 40 years old. I don't spend too much time obsessing over these concerns, however. Instead, I spend most of my days worrying about one thing in particular: whether my I've somehow pissed off my wife because of something she would describe as lazy or careless parenting.
I am the first to admit that I can be a lazy parent. I sometimes pretend to hear my infant daughter's stomach grumbling so that I can tell my wife there's no need to change her dirty diaper quite yet since another deposit is imminent. Naturally, I then secretly hope that my wife will be sufficiently annoyed by my chronic indolence that she'll then change the diaper herself. It's not a strategy that maximizes marital bliss, but it usually enables me to watch a few more snaps of the Niners game without interruption. (I can assure you that there's no need to call child protective services as, other than a few dozen isolated mishaps, I have always changed the diaper before her liquid poo has seeped out of all of her clothes and pooled underneath her head.) And, in the spirit of confessional candor, I should probably admit that I sometimes skip pages in the books I read to my son before bed, primarily because one more complete reading of Goodnight Moon might make me use the firearm I've stashed near his bookcase to end my own misery induced by children's books. (Again, don't rush to call the authorities: other than a few isolated incidents, I always have the safety on the gun. And the gun is almost always unloaded.)
Naturally, I try to make my laziness as inconspicuous as possible so not to draw the ire of my wife, though I'm not really good at doing so. Case in point: about a month ago, my wife decided that we were all going to a Halloween party. She told me that we were going to a friend's house to carve pumpkins. My wife told me that it would be a good bonding experience for me and my son to carve pumpkins. I didn't really question the wisdom of giving a toddler a knife to carve with, and I dutifully followed orders. On the day of the party, we got the kids ready. As all parents know, the duration of the event you attend is usually dwarfed by the amount of time it takes to get the kids ready for said event, and this occasion was no exception. We packed bags, grabbed a tray of cupcakes my wife had made, and headed out to the car. We stuffed the car with bribes to keep my son from having a shit fit, dozens of diapers and wipes in case of emergencies (yes, plural), and enough clothing to keep a small Tibetan village warm for the winter. I took at least three trips back to the house to grab more things for the one mile car ride to our friends' house. In the meantime, my wife buckled the kids into their carseats.
Weary from the hour-long process of getting ready to leave, I contemplated calling it quits and taking the kids back inside before we left. Since they had never carved pumpkins and didn't even know what the verb 'carve' meant, I was pretty sure I could come up with some lie that would assure them they had indeed 'carved' pumpkins on the trip to the car. My wife sensed my devious plan, gave me a skeptical look, and my sinister plot was quickly scrapped. Instead, I pulled out of the driveway and we headed to the party. At the first intersection I slowed the car and was just about to make a complete stop when I saw something pass over the windshield and crash into the ground just in front of the car. There was glass everywhere, but I was perplexed by what I also saw: orange gobs of goo amidst the countless shards of glass.
My son immediately became hysterical, which naturally caused my daughter to lose her shit as well. All I could hear was incessant crying and screaming, and I still didn't know what the hell had happened. I put the car in park, and I walked toward the front bumper. There I saw the carnage of cupcakes strewn about the street, the orange frosting coating the street for a 20 foot stretch. In years past, I probably would have laughed my ass off. I may have even tried to pick off the glass shards and eat a few of the deformed cupcakes. But this time—with the screaming kids in the car—I had only one thought: how did I manage to fuck up this time?
Now, I knew that my wife put the cupcakes on the top of the car as we were getting ready, but I knew that any deflection of blame—even if I was in fact innocent—was surely an approach doomed to fail. Like any male with kids, I know most of the cardinal rules of fatherhood, even if I don't always abide them. In this instance, the rule was simple and undeniable: when one of the parents is responsible for some fuckup, it is always the male's fault. There was no doubt that somehow the cupcakes strewn about the road were my doing. Perhaps I hit the brakes too aggressively, or perhaps I was driving too fast when I got ready to turn. It made no difference that the roof of a car is no place to put cupcakes, it was my reckless driving that caused the accident. I didn't dare accuse my wife of any wrongdoing, for I knew that the conversation would shift from the cupcake carcasses to my general failings as a husband and father. I would hear about my seeming inability to get out of bed when my daughter cries at night, the time I told her that my son was just a chronic whiner when it turns out he had salmonella poisoning, and my general avoidance of dirty diapers. So, in the time-honored selflessness of a father singularly concerned with self-preservation, I accepted the blame. I suggested that perhaps I left the cupcakes on the roof, that I undoubtedly should have seen them while I was packing the car, and that I would curb my reckless driving in the future. My wife, who also knew that she had left the tray of cupcakes perched on the roof of the car, was happy for the concession. After I swept up the cupcake carcasses and shards of glass and my son finally calmed down, we made our way to the party—marital bliss intact and nary a mention of my laziness.
