The Moment I Realized My Toddler is Cooler Than Me

From Clark Griswold to Dr. Evil, countless movies have been filled with terribly cliché fathers trying to be cool around their children and failing miserably.  Though I was never the coolest kid in my school, or the least, I was friendly enough to at least stay on the fringe. Now I’m at the point in my life where my desire to be popular is greatly outweighed by my desire for the mythical good night of sleep. Still I want to be and have fun with my kids and if they want to view me as more fun like Vince Vaughn in Old School than known terrible father Darth Vader, so be it.  

But a couple recent events have made me realize that maybe I’m not as cool as I think I am, or maybe it’s just that my boys are already breezing past me right before my eyes. Mrs. Dude and I took the boys bowling recently and I never expected that seemingly innocuous experience to open my eyes so broadly. I hadn’t been bowling in many years, other than on Wii where I’m an expert, so I was surprised at how long the lanes seemed and how heavy the ball felt.

As we took our turns gliding our tie-dyed spheres down the slick lane I felt like I was having a good time. It was fun to get out there with the boys at this stage when they still need us and don’t realize that before long they won’t want to bowl, or do anything else in public, with us anymore. As we took our turns, aided mercifully by the raised bumpers denying any gutter balls, I heard a couple of older kids in the lane next to ours calling the Littler Dude’s name. Not paying much attention because his name is not uncommon, after a moment I realized they were indeed calling for my 2 year old.

I looked up but couldn’t place these kids, who appeared to be about 10 years old, so the fact that they knew my son was both perplexing and concerning. Several thoughts raced through my mind as I stood there when suddenly I noticed the Littler Dude’s preschool teacher standing a little further back in the next lane. These were her kids who had taken a shining to the Littler Dude on a couple visits to his school. Whew.

It truly surprised me that these elementary schoolers would turn their focus from a group of 8 or 10 of their friends to even notice a 2 year old, let alone pay even a smidge of attention to him, but then it hit me: my 2 year old son is cooler than me. This is clearly the beginning of my boys’ upward trajectory and my plateau. Hopefully I’ll have another 50 or 60 years on earth, but I’ll likely never again be as hip as I feel like I once was. (Note: using the word “hip” means I’m clearly not.) I’m not suggesting that I need to be put out to pasture quite yet, but as my psyche is coming to terms with me turning 40 later this year, I realize that I’m no longer a kid. Despite feeling a little sore the day after we bowled, I’m not feeling too many aches and pains yet. I’ve been working on becoming healthier because I know I must keep my machine in solid working order to keep it running smoothly as long as possible. I may be getting older but I don’t intend to feel old in the process.

That afternoon, while the Littler Dude napped, (who’s cool now?), I visited my barbershop for an overdue cut. I saw a new stylist who did a great job (and not only because she noted that I have a good thick head of hair), which really reinvigorated me a bit as I’d been feeling a little shaggy. As she used the clipper to clean up my neck and sideburns, I heard the buzz getting significantly louder when it dawned on me that she was trimming the tiny hairs on my ears. I attributed it to my uber-strong hair follicles and Russian ancestry and let it go.  A few minutes later, though, after she applied the styling goop to my hair in a generous effort to make me look a smidge less like, well, me was when I received official confirmation that I’m not as cool as I thought.

“Do you want me to tame your eyebrows while you’re here?”

“Um, OK,” I sheepishly replied, though the real thought burning my brain at that moment was “get off my overgrown over-eye lawn!”

It’s official: my kids have clearly surpassed me in coolness and there’s likely no turning back.

Bushwacked brows & buzzed ears

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Up in the Air

One of my favorite bloggers and also a good friend, You Know It Happens At Your House, Too, kindly asked me to write a guest post for her short series featuring Dad Bloggers this month & here it is. Thanks, Tara!  

You should follow her on Facebook and Twitter, too. Especially if you like pictures of Johnny Depp. 

Before I was married, I used to travel a lot for business. Connecting flights to random airports were the norm for me. If I was lucky I got upgraded to First Class. If not, I usually tried to sit in the quiet part of the plane, i.e. away from the parents traveling with little kids.

It’s not that I didn’t like kids, it’s just that I was invariably seated next to a mother traveling with screaming triplets and no other adults to help. I really think it must have been a similar experience that inspired the invention of noise-cancelling headphones.

Yes, I had no sympathy. I just wanted quiet so I could read in peace watch my DVDs of Anchorman or Old School for the 64^th time.  Do you know anyone who likes being kicked in the back for 3 straight hours?  I walked off of many flights feeling like a soccer ball after the World Cup.

That all changed when I became a parent and started flying with the Little Dude. He was 7 months old and it was our first trip as a family of 3. We’d pre-boarded our aisle and middle seats in the bulkhead of the plane. A few minutes later, a woman approached and noticed us. The look of disgust on her face resembled Morgan Spurlock’s after he ate at McDonalds every day for a month.  I watched her complain to the flight attendant before ultimately taking her seat. Let’s just say that my kid is so charming that within 30 minutes of departure she wanted to hold him.  It wasn’t lost on me that the way I’d long felt about kids on planes was being forced to evolve now that I was on the other side of the equation.

Traveling solo, I was thrilled to board a recent flight before most of the cabin. I staked out my carryon space in the overhead compartment and watched the huddled masses squeeze down the aisle, silently guessing who I would get stuck with. As I was getting settled in my aisle seat, I saw a woman with a screaming newborn baby headed in my direction.  I cringed and empathized concurrently.

They slowed down and sat across the aisle from me. I thought to myself that it was going to be a long 90 minutes. But then my parental instinct kicked in and told me to chill. I watched as they got settled and the baby calmed down a little.  It’s not a stretch to say I’ve mellowed over the last 2 ½ years.  But I felt much more at ease than I anticipated given the situation was compounded by my lack of sleep and change of time zones. As I was trying to get comfortable, a man claimed the window seat to my right and I stood up to let him pass.

I sat back down and was checking email on my iPhone when I heard someone say “excuse me, sir”. I looked up to see a woman with a boy who was probably 7 or 8 years old. “That’s his seat.”

Caught off guard, I stood up and let the boy pass. He had an Elmo backpack slung over his shoulders and was clutching a teddy bear tightly. He sat nervously between me and the window-seat man.

I looked around, expecting his mother to be headed off the plane after having dropped him off. Maybe to see his grandparents or his father, I wondered to myself.  Instead, she was headed 4 rows behind me to her own middle seat.

It was my turn in a heated game of Words with Friends, but I was suddenly distracted despite an available Triple Word space.  I started to feel badly for the young boy stuck alone between two strangers.  It wasn’t that long of a flight and he had things to occupy him, but I wondered how he was feeling. Was he scared? Should I say something to put him at ease? And it made me wonder how I would feel if my own young son was in his position.

I looked to my left and suddenly that baby didn’t seem to be crying so loud anymore.

I stood up and turned around. I spotted the boy’s mother and asked her if she wanted to switch seats.  With a look of joy and a tear in her eye, she happily said yes.

So I grabbed my things, headed down the aisle and crammed into a middle seat for 90 minutes. It was totally worth it.