This just in: Bad Dads We (sorta) Love are now going to be on television! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you’ve begged, you’ve pleaded, and now VH-1 will give you exactly what you want and/or deserve: a new reality series, “Dad Camp,” which “tasks unprepared fathers-to-be to step up and become a part of their children’s lives.”
Step up, Daddies. Go big or go home. Must see stuff! A show about bad fathers who aren’t even fathers yet. I smell Emmy, folks, don’t you? Here’s more hype:
“Dad Camp” also addresses many of today’s societal issues including the importance of male role models, absent fathers and the struggles of being a young parent. In the dramatic conclusion, the mothers-to-be will decide whether they will be a family or if they will leave their irresponsible boyfriends and raise their babies on their own, ultimately deciding the fate of their children’s future.
You know what I like out my reality television programming? Issues is what, particularly societal ones. I can’t wait.
The baby has been acting strange lately. Very strange. On Tuesday, after I brought her home from daycare and fed her a couple of apple slices, she stood up and held out her hand to me. I took it, and she led me into the bathroom, walked to the tub and said, “Xi-xi!” Bath time.
Yesterday, it was almost the same. After daycare, eating apple slices. Then I said, quietly, without repeating myself, and without that cheerful, babyish uptalk we all use with babies, “Let’s go take a bath.” She stood up right away, took my hand, and dragged me to the tub.
What gives? What normal child willingly, even eagerly, wants to take a bath? What kid follows a simple instruction right away, with no fuss?
Clearly, there is only one conclusion to make from these events: The pod people have landed, and have taken over my daughter. Before long, they will spread through Brooklyn’s greater stroller zone, producing legions of obedient, well-scrubbed children, and leaving in their wake a great number of confused parents. Consider yourself warned.
You know, you try hard. You buy organic milk for the kid, try to come home early from work, don’t get angry when your wife says she’s tired. You put up with anti-crotchfruit loonies on one side and raging breeders on the other. You save money, get life insurance, start a college fund. You don’t bang the secretary—or the maid. You convince your company to offer a week or two of paid paternity leave. You wonder how your dad coped with all this crap, or if he coped with it, and if he could’ve been better, making you better. You start wearing cardigans. You designate one pair of pants as the baby-vomit pants. You don’t drink so much, at least until the kids have gone to bed. You fall asleep at 10 o’clock anyway, well before the Scotch glass is empty. You read parenting books on the toilet. You start a fucking dadblog.
OTTAWA — Richard Préfontaine and his wife, Lynne Charbonneau, were watching a playoff hockey game with their two daughters on Monday night when the ground beneath their house gave way suddenly and without warning.
The house’s bright green metal roof was all that was visible the next day in a vast mud crater near the village of St. Jude, Quebec, about 50 miles northeast of Montreal. The landslide created a hole 100 feet deep, 300 yards wide and a third of a mile long.
The family’s remains were found huddled together on a couch by the television, with rescuers discovering only their golden retriever, tied to a tree, alive.
In other words, ditch the crib—which’ll probably suffocate the baby, you jerk—and tie your kids to the oak tree in the yard. Oh, and keep up the life-insurance payments, because even if your home isn’t consumed by a freak landslide, you’re going to die anyway.
We DadWagoners, so chummy and close in blogland, actually don’t see each other that much. It’s not that we have some sort of seething Fred-hates-Ethel offscreen dysfunction. It’s just that we are scattered across two boroughs, somewhat busy and absent enough from our own homes that we don’t actually have much time to throw back beers in person.
So it was serendipitous that Matt was calling for people to come keep him company on a Brooklyn camping trip last weekend (Side note: Jean! Go camping! It’s fun!). I had absolutely zero Special Things planned for Mother’s Day weekend, so a near-shore adventure sounded perfect.
My wife, god love her, was game for spontaneous speed-packing and the hideous rush hour drive down Flatbush Ave. We found Matt, spent the night, learned a lot about a quirky corner of our fair city, and had an excellent time. Theodore brought the bairn out the next day and the three dads ended up spending half a day with JP and Dalia (side note: Christopher! Go camping! It’s fun!)
What I always seem to forget is that Matt is going to, you know, write about all of this. And like any good reporter, he writes the truth. As it turns out, the truth this time included a healthy dose of me and the wife and kids. In his post on the Frugal Traveler blog and the accompanying pictures, my role was as the guy who gutted a fish (actually Matt gutted much of it), picked up a defenseless froglet, let my son touch the campfire, and put my kids to bed at 10:30pm, whereupon one of them didn’t sleep at all.
It could have been worse. Last time I hung out with the Frug while he was reporting, my daughter ended up in the NY Times (anonymously) as a girl who licked bar snacks off a bar menu at Alchemy in Brooklyn.
All said, though, it’s a fine piece. And to be honest, in Matt’s blogposts and articles I come across as the father I wish I were all the time: a little too laissez-faire, perhaps, but adventurous. It’s a good standard for me to try to live up to, even when I’m the only reporter around.
