A Week on the Wagon: Playing With Our Balls

Usually, every Friday when we put together “A Week on the Wagon,” we try to discern a uniting theme for the past five days’ posts. Were we all cranky? Did we put up a lot of funny pictures? Was Theodore cranky, Nathan morbid, Christopher nerdy, and Matt drunk?

But sometimes, nothing emerges. Like this week.

But that’s not a bad thing! We had our usual fun, after all, and the Tantrum, in which we reminisced about sports experiences we had with our fathers, and may have one day with our children, got us some good mileage. It also brought in a guest post by the esteemed Will Leitch, who wrote of dutifully informing his dad he’d never be a major-leaguer. Will doesn’t yet have kids himself, but he seems to have a good handle on how disappointing and depressing they can be.

Elsewhere, Nathan was fairly serious this week, talking about how the Gulf oil spill may save his beloved childhood home of Key West from being destroyed, and angsting over whether 3-year-olds need preschool “standards.”

If it’s free, Theodore wrote in response, then yes. Then he called Nathan stupid. Theodore also gave us insights into his reading list: the NYT’s Ideas blog, where he watched the Simpsons; Transparental, the blog of a mother of two who’s “transitioning” into a man; and inCharacter, whose essay on the science of embarrassment he deemed “dubious.”

Chris was in hiding for much of the week, but emerged from his underground lair (actually a section of old pneumatic tubing he’s been decorating with old Polaroids scavenged from Midwest yard sales) to reveal that there is now such a thing as chocolate-flavored baby formula.

Matt’s incipient psychosis apparently deepened this week, as his fervid imagination bounced from suing Tylenol to blaming mothers for everything. In his more lucid moments, he fretted over not being able to teach his daughter the word “butt” and considered looking for a sitter so he could see “Iron Man 2.”

All in all, it was another week of typically insane, difficult fatherhood, brought to you by four overstressed guys who don’t know what they’re doing, or who they’re doing it to anymore. Have a great Mother’s Day—we’ll see you Monday.