When I arrived at the park yesterday afternoon I spotted a suspicious character sat on a bench. He was looking dishevelled, with dark glasses, a big coat and a beanie pulled down almost over his eyes. He was huddled over a coffee and staring off into the distance, with his eyes just occasionally following a child as they ran by. He didn’t appear to be with anyone so the playground seemed like an odd choice for an afternoon brew. As I walked closer I realised that the suspicious character was a friend of mine who is thankfully a father of two older children who (apparently) had run off to play together allowing him some much required ‘staring space’.
There are a whole bunch of things it’s okay to do as a dad – for instance staring into space while drinking a coffee in a children’s playground – which were never okay as a non-Dad. So I thought I would compile a list of a few more reasons it’s great to be a Dad.
- You are expected to dance badly. Before becoming a Dad I was too shy to hit the dance floor; now I dance several times a week in my front room. Usually I groove to something very manly and the dancing often transcends into wrestling (of course). Adlai tells me I’ve got great moves and I’m starting to believe him
- You ‘have’ to go to toyshops. It’s a real bind but we as responsible Dads have to know our Ironman from our Spiderman, our C3PO from our R2D2. Without kids you’re a geek – with kids you’re a hero and the fount of all things worth knowing.
- Saturday mornings are the best time for the cinema. Pre-kids you’re asleep. Post-kids, you’re catching up on movies that came out 18 months ago, but at amazingly good prices.
- It’s completely acceptable to poop whilst another human being is in my bathroom. Let’s face it – this is a reality of fathering toddlers. All privacy is gone…but it’s kind of liberating.
- Most people will understand when you turn up to a party on time and leave at 9pm. Never would have done that before having children, but now we’re paying a teenager for every second we’re out and they have a 10pm curfew. There’s also the assurance that, no matter what time we’re home, our sons will be up at 5:30am. They don’t care that it’s New Year’s Eve – there’s Peppa Pig to be watched at the crack of dawn.
- Yogurt is a fashionable accessory. Quite how my kids know when I have a clean shirt on I don’t know but they are on a constant mission to wipe their yogurt full faces all over me. Clean clothes are are a thing of the past. Before I had kids, if I walked around work with yogurt smeared down my chest, people would have looked down their noses at me. Now they smile knowingly and bring me a cup of coffee, because I’m the poor, harried dad of two young boys.
The views expressed in this blog are solely those of the blogger and do not necessarily represent the views of Dad.info.
