That's right. This guy:
the same guy who wrote this:
But if, say, Anne Hathaway met me at the 46th street gate with a dozen warm doughnuts (again, not of fund raiser quality), well, then we could talk. No guarantees. If she was naked, or even mostly naked, that may help sway my decision, but still won't necessarily carry the day in Mr.Cuccinelli's favor.
and this:
"Couldn't help but notice you were enjoying the jazz!! I really liked the part where the trumpeter went 'skiddly bap bap do bap di dap dap dibbledy dibbledy doowhap POW POW POW BWAAA! Yeah man, those cats sure can jive. You gotta smoke?"
and this:
Amelie sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled her bathrobe tightly around her body, trying to keep out the autumn chill that touched her soul like a distant longing. She listened in the darkness to her husband snoring loudly with smug contentment. She sighed. It wasn't that James was a bad guy, but it was just so embarrassing to be with a man who was so worried about giving away Coke's "secret formula" when he was drunk at a party; so worried that he made everyone sign non-disclosure agreements on the back of napkins written in block letters with a sharpie.
is a dad. A Father. Ein Papa. As proof, I submit the following picture of my daughter Elizabeth and me, taken recently as she painted one of the pumpkins we bought at the local pumpkin patch before celebrating Halloween:
 |
| Elizabeth and Me. Photo props to my wife Trish. |
If not mentally prepared for the change, however, I did turn out to be surprisingly adept at the stuff of fatherhood. There were justifiable concerns in this area. After all, one has to wonder if a man who once set his own eyebrows aflame during an outdoor candlelight Christmas Eve vigil (my cheeks were numb with cold, and the Andy Rooney like quality of my eyebrows makes them easily combustible) would have any luck keeping his child alive without a very detailed instruction manual.
As the picture shows, so far so good. I have a happy, healthy, smart little girl. In fact, last week while I drove to church to meet my wife and daughter for one St. Mark Lutheran's weekly dinners (prepared by the talented volunteers at Cafe St. Mark) there was a comedy bit on the radio about being a guy being a new dad, the comedian lamenting -- without much hilarity -- the lack of the aforementioned manual. As I listened I gave myself a pat on the back with the knowledge that so far my foray into fatherhood could be considered a great success.
O Beware, those who suck upon the sour teats of Our Lady Hubris!
The church dinner was over, choir practice had begun, and it was time to take Elizabeth home. Because I arrived late I had to move the car seat from my wife's car to mine (times are tough, the middle class is squeezed, and so we can only afford the one), and I put Elizabeth in the seat but did not strap her in, grabbed my keys which had fallen out of my hoodie pocket on to the bench seat, and closed the door. The car beeped, indicating the door was locked.
No big deal, I thought. I'll just take my keys out and unlock the door and....
What is this? My keys are disconcertingly light. Something is missing. The car key and FOB are missing. The door is still locked. And it dawns on me that I have just locked my daughter in the car.
You see, I keep my car keys on a little hook, a clip, so that I can detach my car keys from the rest of my keys. I do this because I hate carrying my keys around in the pocket of my jeans. I hate carrying around keys around in the pocket of my jeans because I like to wear tight jeans to accentuate my buttockular region, which if I do say so myself is quite exquisite. Most of the time my keys live in my satchel bag (aka as a purse) along with whatever book I happen to be reading and some other stuff (mints, a flashlight, pens and pencils, a slide rule, knuckle dusters, flick knife, Hungarian phrase book, a Civil War bullet I bought at an antique store, a flip book in which two stick figures do it if you flip the pages real fast), but if I ever want to walk around without my murse I can just quickly disconnect my car keys from the rest of the set, slip the FOB in my pocket, and then I can make the world a better place in my own particular way with my tight man booty.
The drawback of this system is that occasionally, just occasionally, my car keys disconnect themselves without me knowing it. I think they are desperately trying to get to Japan where they were born.
Unfortunately for me they had rather unwisely decided to attempt their latest great escape while I was in the car itself getting my daughter's car seat in place (which naturally I did with great success, because this guy, who just locked his only child in the car, is something of a Superdad), and I was just short of a full set...of keys.
I'd like to say that coolness of head prevailed. It did not. The problem was clearly too large for me to solve (and it turns out there was indeed a rather simple, elegant solution), all of my circuits overloaded, and I decided this was a matter for the Police, the Fire Department, the Kommando Spezialkrafte, or my wife.
I ran into the darkness of the parking lot, abandoning my now bewildered and frightened child, and went back into the church. I poked my head into the choir rehearsal room, pointed at Trish, and motioned to her to come outside. Clearly my face betrayed that something was very wrong, and she ran out into the hall.
"What is it?"
"I've locked Elizabeth inside the car!"
We both rushed out into the parking lot where Elizabeth, realizing the gravity of the situation and upset over my cowardice, was crying. Much like any Tommy Lee Jones character in movies such as Law Enforcement Officers of the USandA and The Man Who Ran Away From the Police, wife quickly wrested control of the situation away from the inept keystone cops who had so royally managed to screw-up (me, Superdad), and rapidly seized on the very simple solution I had missed: because Elizabeth was not strapped into her car seat, if we could convince her to get out of her seat and try pushing one of the buttons on the doors to unlock the car, we could get her out. The Kommando Spezialkrafte would not be necessary.
Trish started talking to Elizabeth through the closed windows, and once Elizabeth was calmed down she happily made her way into the drivers seat where she started mashing all the buttons at my wife's direction; because there are like 8 buttons next to the drivers seat even in my run of the mill Subaru Outback Sport, and since it was dark, she just wasn't hitting the right one.
So it was that Agent Samuel Gerard sent Deputy Roscoe P. Coltrane back into the church to see if Gus, who is basically St. Mark Lutheran's Sargent-At-Arms, had a flashlight. To do this I had to interrupt choir practice for a second time and as the choir director turned to me with a look of slight yet genteel exasperation I felt some kind of explanation was in order.
"Gus, do you have a flashlight? I locked my daughter in the car!"
The wide range of human emotion that greeted the news was an amazing thing to behold. On the women there were looks of shock, deep concern, and touching sympathy.
The men? They all laughed at me.
Gus, ever resourceful, DID have a flashlight on the hip, and so I went back out into the parking lot only to see that Elizabeth was thankfully out of the car, cradled in Trish's arms, her tiny hands raised in triumph. "We did it!" shouted Trish. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
But one more problem remained. For some reason my car's alarm had gone off in the process of extracting my daughter from its interior, and the only way to turn it off was to insert the key into the ignition three times. Not 4, not 2, and definitely not 5, but 3.
So I proceeded to search the car for my car keys. I couldn't find them. I thought maybe they had somehow gotten under the car seat as I was installing it, so I ripped it out. All the while the horn is blaring and the headlights are blinking and the choir, now hopelessly distracted, is now starting to congregate in the parking lot to see what is going on.
The keys were not under the now dislodged car seat. Confused, I stepped out of the car to get a little fresh air and re-evaluate the situation. I rubbed the back of my neck and looked down as I often do under duress...
I saw something. I couldn't be sure...I couldn't quite believe it...
There, on the ground, sitting in a puddle of fresh November rain all this time--
My car keys.
Aaaaaaand ::headdesk::
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