DADWAGON

Q: If you cheated on your wife with another woman, and got her pregnant, and she never told you about it and then gave the baby up for adoption, and then told you about it, how would you react?

A: It doesn’t matter one bit, because the wife (as in, my wife) who’s asking you this hypothetical question after the Season 2 finale of Mad Men isn’t looking for an actual answer. (Which would probably be along the lines of “Huh? What? What the hell am I supposed to do about any of this?”) She just wants you to answer in a way that demonstrates that you possess the human quality of compassion—i.e., that you are not a jerk-ass. Something like “I would be furious—but understanding. And I would do everything in my power to regain custody of the child, then beg your forgiveness for my transgression so that we could raise the baby together. Because I love you.”

(Do I really need to add that I got this question wrong the first time around?)

This has been a DadWagon Special Service Feature™: “We suffer so you don’t have to (much).” Tune in next week when we reveal the answers to mysteries such as “Is it bad that I finished the ice cream?” and “Why didn’t you get more ice cream?”

It was a week of ups and downs here on the ol’ DadWagon. Christopher, for instance, began the week fretting about whether he and his family might be killed by falling tree branches, but by Thursday afternoon he’d regained enough composure to be horrified by a pregnant woman sucking in her belly.

Likewise, Nathan started off by complaining about his younger child’s incessant questioning (why, Nathan, why?), then shat all over the greatest Pixar movie ever made. At his lowest point, before he discovered his older child loves tae kwon do, he even seemed jealous of Theodore’s temporarily blessed life. Why, Nathan, why?

Me, I began the week by crowing about my successfully manly installation of an air-conditioner, at night, in my daughter’s room, without waking her. But a weird attempted mugging sent me into dizzying spirals of self-doubt, from which I took only a brief pause to question the parenting of the pseudo-spies.

Theodore, however, had the most even tempered week I think we’ve ever seen from him. From giggling at terror babies and watching his son get water-blasted to complaining about pre-K and the science of motherhood, he seemed to float effortlessly above the objects of his ire. I guess it was good to be him this week. But next week? We shall soon see how Independence Day treats him—and us all.

Here’s a nice post from Lisa Belkin, about older parents and the fact that their own parents miss out on some grandparenting time. Briefly: If you wait till you’re 40 to have kids, then the grandparents miss out on a bigger portion of their grandkids’ lives. Not tragic—just a fact, and one with consequences.

What interests me lately about later-in-life parenting, though, is the dire financial outlook. Theoretically, at least, if you wait to have children, you’ll be more established by then, and your kids will thus have it better. Certainly if I’d tried to raise a child on what I was making fifteen years ago, it would’ve been extremely difficult.

But just think it through for a moment. If you have kids at 40, you’ve most likely thought about buying a place to live around that time, too. The kid then goes to college when you’re about 60. You won’t be done with the 30-year mortgage by then—and it’s precisely during those late-career years when you’re frantically topping up the retirement account you didn’t pay enough attention to, back wen you were trying to assemble the down payment and pay for daycare. In short, the three biggest financial demands of your life (housing, college, retirement) all demand a piece of you at once. Ulp.

Nice detail: All this happens just as you get into your sixties, with their significantly increased prospect of illness, or at least ebbing energy.

All I can say is: Kid? I’d never ever push you into a career you hate. I want you to love what you do, or at least like it most of the time. But if you happen to like doing something that turns out to make a lot of money… well, let’s go with that. You’re our last best hope.

The nice thing about having a blog is that I can complain about whatever it is I want to complain about and no one can complain. Blogging = complaining – free-fire zone. Enter and you know what you’re in for.

There. On to some more bitching about the New York City public school Fuck You. Feel free to poke around on this site for earlier school complaint posts, mostly from me and Nathan. It’s a crash course in urban whingeing.

Now, for those of you not expert in the complexities of this nation’s free public education system, let me refresh your memory. Universal Pre-Kindergarten does not guarantee free pre-k education to all children. No, no. That would be too simple. Universal pre-k is only guaranteed to those children who apply …  and get in. The chances of gaining entrance to one of the better public schools in New York is almost as remote as, I don’t know, getting into Harvard. In my son’s local school there were over 500 applications for about 50 spots last year. Good luck, Johnny!

In fact, JP has already been rejected. That was in May. Actually, JP got rejected by eight Brooklyn public schools. Does that mean he isn’t getting a free public education? No. That would be too simple (thank god: private pre-K would run about $20,000). JP was rejected on the first round of applications. He may still get in on the second round. Unfortunately, second-round applications aren’t even made available until the end of July, and notices aren’t sent out until “late August.” (Why doesn’t the Board of Education know when acceptances and rejections will be sent out? Only the Shadow knows.)

Meanwhile, as an inveterate gamer of the system, we already have JP on a waiting list at his local school. Apparently, we’re no. 2 on said list. Sounds good, right? Wrong. That list isn’t an actual, official list with the Board of Education. It’s an informal list that the local school registrar has put together to accommodate pushy parents. There’s no guarantee that this list will be used (the BOE may have its own list). Nor is there any guarantee that anyone will come in off of any list or that any second-round applicants will be accepted. There just may not be any open spots at all. And, oh yeah, we haven’t reserved a spot at the private pre-K because to do that you have to put down a several-thousand-dollar deposit—non-refundable, thank you very much.

Serenity Now!