Getting ready for bathtime tonight, and I set down my son just outside the bathroom door as I prepped the tub. Once it had filled, I bent over to turn off the tap, then stepped back to regain my balance. What I didn’t know was that my tiny son had silently crawled up behind me, so he could grab hold of my leg and pull himself up. And as I stepped backward, I felt a dull thud against my heel, and then a moment’s silence and a loud cry.
That’s right, people. I kicked my baby in the face.
Okay, little guy, here’s my penance. At some point, deep in the future, when you’re 10 or 12 or 15 years old, you will be poking around the Internet, presumably on the flat-panel eight-foot Minority Report screen that we’ll all own by then. You will, using the GoogleMicrosoftNewsCorp 3-D megasearch engine, run across the archives of this site called Dadwagon, long since absorbed into (and likely run into the ground by) a giant media conglomerate. And you, my son, will read this very post, and head into the bedroom to find my collapsed and weary self, and ask, “Did you really kick me in the face when I was an infant, Dad?”
At that point, son, you are granted one clean father-vanquishing sucker-punch. No questions asked.
Oh c’mon, don’t beat yourself up. There are far worse things you could have done to your son.
You know, like take him into a bar!
It’s rare that I – like man, if not most, I imagine – am actually L-ingOL when and if I type, “LOL” (which in and of itself is rare).
However, I’m a longtime fan of slapstick and pratfalls (yes, even if babies and/or old ladies are involved – as long as everyone gets up and walks – or crawls – away). Blame my Dad for weaning my off Sesame Street and straight to the Three Stooges.
Anyway…
LOL.
Best to the wee one,
Nothing some good father-son bonding time at the local pub can’t cure.
Am I a bad mother that I kind of laughed when I read this? Seriously, it happens. I put my kid in tears the other day because she snuck up behind me just as a backed up. Apparently mom’s butt to the face is extremely upsetting. We all make mistakes and our kids cry for a couple minutes and then get over it. Trust me, that kid will deliver several sucker punches to you long before he ever comes across this post. My nephew broke his dad’s nose when he was a baby. Such is parenthood.
i cut off my kid’s finger when she was a wee one … with a fingernail clipper. okay, it was only a little patch of skin, and I don’t even think I made it bleed … but the way she screamed! You would think I made her digitally disabled.
She still asks about it, and she’s seven. “Tell me, mom, tell me about that time you cut off my finger.”
My advice to you: delete this whole sucker off Dadwagon NOW and pretend like it never happened. Or. You. Will. Be. Sorry.