Dentist first time. One after 909

This one is more about me than the kids.

I`ve been a Father for nearly six years now and still I have fears about getting it right.  I mean real fears of doing the something I have to do to the point where you want to just forget it and not do it.  Now, granted, I`m sure daddy's of 20 years will tell me, `yup, me too`, but I figured at some point some parents, maybe even myself, would start to relax and just do it like you go to the bathroom or get ready for bed.  Maybe it`s because I have a more general phobia of  "getting up" and doing anything at all.  Leaving the nice security of my home and chair is more than being lazy, its a medical problem.  Then again, maybe I am just making excuses and I AM lazy.  That would be a nice sociological survey:  Are you lazy or do you have a medical problem?  I could see the results now.  New drugs developed by Glaxo Smith Kline or Pfizer to combat "homeitus".  I shouldn't make such jokes as the condition really exists and it is terrible for those who have it. To even go outside can be a nightmare. So maybe I have a bit of that.  Travel fear carried to the nth degree.

I got off on a tangent there.  I drank a cup of coffee and got my two year old dressed for the occasion.   Her first excursion to the dentist.

Look, its not as easy as it sounds.  In fact you have to plan your whole day around this one event, and that will be another task for the mentally, lazy, inept such as myself.  The dentist appointment is at 3pm.  It means you have to get outside for the morning stroll by 10 am or sooner so you can be back by 11am so you can prepare the lunch by 11.30 so you can get her to her nap by 12.15 (she is a slow eater), so she can have enough nap, so you can wake her up by 2 so you can leave by 2.15 so you can pick up her sister at pre school by 2.30 so you can leave for the dentist by 2.40 so you can get lost for five minutes because this is the first time and a new location for you, so you can get them there BY 3pm and look like a completely responsible Father!!!

It reminds me of the Beatles song "One after 909".  "Took my bags.  Run to the station".

But, you will say, its nothing more than anyone who has a job that is tied to the clock doesn`t do every day.  Bingo.  Exactly.  I don`t understand why parenting is looked down upon because in fact it is a job just like any other job with all the same agenda.  Why do we look down on Mothers AND Fathers who are at home taking care of their little ones?  Maybe because nobody pays us so it is not considered "real" work.  Hey.  Mitt Romney--remember him?-- ran a huge financial company with hundreds of workers which took over other companies and fixed them or trashed them and sold off the parts.  He personally made millions of dollars every year.  Mrs. Romney raised 5 BOYS pretty much by herself who all are successful grown ups with good teeth.  She had to ask her husband for spending money.

Teeth?  Yeah, oh yeah.  So what happened was we got home at 11.15 from our stroll and she wanted to do a puzzle. No time no time, it will throw the whole schedule off.  Weeeell, lets just do the puzzle then we will eat.  That will be fine.   At 11.45 we finished the puzzle and she said, "Daddy I`m tired.  I want to go to bed".  She had gotten up at 6.30, earlier this day.  Uh oh, that wouldn't be responsible, putting her to nap without lunch.  Well she did have an egg for breakfast and some knackebrot snacks.  I was thinking about it puzzling over the ramifications and my duties, when I realized she was gone.  She was in her room taking off her clothes for nap time.  OK, that's decided. 

She woke up at 1.55.  Plenty of time, so I finished my cup of coffee.  We made it to her sisters pre school by 2.25.  Something about having too much time so you dawdle and do this and that and end up being late anyway, but that is for another story.  We got out of her school by 2.45.  I had insisted the smaller girl go in the stroller so I could go faster.  We live in the city, everything is nearby so we don't need a car for these things.  All the same it`s a fifteen minute FAST walk from school to the dentist.  The older girl is holding onto the stroller, tight, or else she will get left behind.  For some reason the music from the Wizard of Oz, the wicked witch from the West comes to mind as I`m pushing that stroller down a city street with another little girl running at the side.  Wasn`t I doing something like this just recently?  

At exactly 3pm I am at the door of the address I was given for the dentist.  But... there is no dentist in this building.  Agh.  I call up the office.  "Oh, we are at number 34, not 37".  Rrgghhh rggrr.  General knashing of the teeth sounds.   Took the stroller and the two little girls attached to it running down the street.

I got over to number 34 at 3.05, five minutes late.  I know that makes me a bad parent. I should have re calibrated my whole day to account for more time to get lost.  I shouldn't have finished my coffee.  I should have gotten out the door sooner.  It`s my fault.  I am not responsible enough for this parenting thing.  Mommy better do it.  I am IRresponsible.

The dentist took us at 3.20, fifteen minutes late.  She asked me a couple questions.  She looked at my older daughter`s teeth for three minutes in the patient`s chair.  Then she had me in the chair with my two year old.  Looked at her teeth for three minutes.  Said they both had really healthy looking teeth and the teeth had come in correctly.  Two more molars still coming in in the little girl`s mouth.  Don`t let them drink too much fruit juice and definitely no sodas.  They don`t drink sodas or even pop, nor cola.  Fine.  So make an appointment for the Fall.  Nice to have met you, have a nice day.   End of story.

Said we`re driving on the one after 909. 

Superman as a responsible hero

This Daddy thing, its not for everyone.  I ll say that. 

 I have this graphic novel, called "Too Fat Cant Fly" by Yuko Kondo on Gingko Press, in which eventually Superman comes home old and tired and is ready to hand over the reins to Junior Superboy.  But Junior has become a fat, slacker teenager with no practice in flying let alone saving the world so that as he jumps out the window to fly in his first caper, he is too fat and falls to his death.  Superman, his Father, had done crap all of preparing him for the job of even being an adult.  

Recently I was having lunch with a friend who is a bit older than I am, yet doesn't have any kids.  In fact he had been married just one year at the time of our meeting.... to his third wife.  Did I say he was a bit older?  Well, I believe men, unlike women, can spray their seeds around planting progeny till just about the time they are ready themselves to be hacked down and thrown on the compost heap as more fertilizer for the earth,  but if he had been a woman, he would have been past his time of reproduction.   

He asked me, "but look, don't you have to put your children first all the time?  If you want to go out, you have to plan, get a babysitter, and in the end maybe it wont work and you have to scrap it all?"

"Yes", I said smoothly and with no problem.  

"Well, I`m not going to become a father then," he replied back just as nonchalantly.   

He went on to say in so many words I cant remember, that he wanted to look out for numero uno.  If there was something he wanted to do, get on a plane for a weekend in Egypt, go out to a club on Wednesday night, he was going to do it by gum.  Kids couldn't get in his way.  

Needless to say, he said it himself, being a father at home, even being a father at all would not be for him. I am glad he is responsible enough to realize that and not mess up some humans life by siring them and then NOT being a father in resulting Sires life.  Other people haven`t been as responsible. 

And here is where I go out on a limb, go on a tangent, change 180 degrees and get a wee bit controversial.  I will say that in the search for finding and creating equality, many women have lost their responsibility to their family, to children.  In their quest to build their own careers and develop their self determination, they have become "I" centered and lost their ability to be "We".   They have, in the typical manner of the course of a revolution, gone too far the other way and like Robespierre have started chopping off the heads of those that oppose their goals.  Children can not get in the way.  

I read some small blurb about a high powered executive woman who found the time to be with her 18 month baby girl, from 6.15 in the morning till 7am because they were both early risers.  I`m not sure what she was thinking.  That THIS was being a Mother? Then she "responsibly" took her baby over to a day care center while she continued her career?  I have to say that I wanted to cry after reading this because this woman may know how to legalize or financize in the corporate world, but she is a lame parent and shouldn't have had kids at the time.  I have recently read and agree that small kids need quantitative time, not qualitative.  They need lots of time of just being with their parents.  45 minutes in the morning and then bedtime story don't cut it.  

BUT, have no fear, because this is where men can now swoop in and become the heroes, once again.  Men can take over the parenting quantitatively with their children.  I like that hero analogy, because its what should have happened in the annals of superherodom.  Clark Kent, aka Superman, should have let Lois Lane stay at work as the journalist and he should have stayed at home taking care of Superboy.  Then Superman would have been the real hero.  And lets face it, men have always been heroes in literature and comics.  Ha ha.  Now, once again, they have to be heroes and stay at home and be a responsible loving father to their children.   She-at, Lois Lane would have been a crap mother anyway.  She was too wrapped up in the Daily Planet and furthering her career.