Let me first tie up a few loose ends from last week before I move on… I wrote a line about getting my daughter a loom for her second birthday in July. I have absolutely no idea how I fudged those two key strokes, but her birthday is in June. It was simply an oversight, so don’t lump me in with “those” Dads. I can tell you the exact hour and minute she was born. I can tell you how far apart the contractions were when we left home. I can tell you my top speed on the drive to the hospital in Salisbury. But for some reason, I just goofed on the month and I wanted to apologize because it’s really been bothering me.
Second, I may have exaggerated, or gotten a little too tongue-in-cheek with the inferences that my motivation, hygiene, and grooming skills have been lacking since I’ve been off of work for this month. While it’s true that I have spent a majority of 2014 thus far in sweats and slippers, and have only ventured outdoors a small handful of times, I am in fact still bathing. Forgive me if I implied otherwise.
And finally, there’s the mental image I left you with as I closed last week. It’s certainly not the most disturbing picture I’ve painted for you over the past few years, but it may or may not have haunted you for a few days. It certainly haunted my dear wife who had to see it firsthand. If you missed it, I’ll give you a rundown. After I discovered an old box in a closet, I pulled some treasures out of it and put together the following outfit which I was wearing when my wife got out of the shower. A pair of electric canary yellow sweats that I purchased when the hottest couple on the planet were Luke and Laura. These were the sweats I wore every day in football practice because sadly, they were half of my school colors. The last time I’d worn them, “gym” was a place I spent a lot of time, not just a word I use as a punch line. So they are now skin tight and anything but flattering. My top half was clad in only my high school football jersey. It was skid mark brown with my name and number stamped on it in that same overachieving shade of yellow which our school’s founding fathers referred to as “gold.” It was a mesh, half jersey that ended with a bit of a struggle at about my solar plexus. My upper body has progressed in the same direction and at the same pace as my lower half, so you can imagine the fit. It was cold, and I couldn’t find my slippers, so I had to borrow my wife’s. So on each of my feet was an oversized Eeyore looking up at us. Is the picture coming together now? To finish the ensemble, my hair at the moment looked as if I had gone to an extraordinarily talented hairdresser and said: “make me Albert Einstein”.
The little ones were napping, the nine-year-old was at school, and my wife was in the shower. I sadly have very few boundaries as far as the lengths I’ll go to for a laugh. So I stood in our room and waited for her to come out. When she saw me, she didn’t laugh. She didn’t scream. She didn’t even look straight down at the floor and shake her head in disappointment. (I get that one a lot). She actually looked a little frightened. It was like she had just had an epiphany. Like the ghost of Christmas future had just visited her. Then I became a little scared. She walked past me with a completely blank expression and sat on the bed. In a troubled voice she pleaded, “I love you dearly, more than anything. I ask very little of you. But I am begging you, with all of my heart, please, please do not wear those mustard pants for the next month.” Realizing what a wonderful thing I have, and how sincere she was, I took them off. It was a couple days later, but I did take them off.
Moving on now… our oldest daughter turned nine in December. Given her birthday’s proximity to Christmas, it’s always easier to have her party in January after the holiday dust has settled. We were working on a very short financial leash this year, but we didn’t want her to know that, or feel slighted in any way. We asked her what she wanted to do for her party, and various ideas started flowing. I immediately turned into my Grandfather and started seeing dollar signs floating in the air. Without consulting my brighter half and against my better judgment I blurted out the following words which will forever haunt me: “How about a sleepover party?” My wife raised her eyebrows and looked at me as if I had just given our little girl permission to go skydiving. My daughter’s face lit up like I’d just unveiled her new pet unicorn, and for a moment I felt like the Man!
But once it was on, there was no turning back, and I had no one to blame but myself. I was going to be spending Friday night of MLK weekend with a house full of nine-year-old girls. If you ever have the opportunity to do that, or think for even a second that it might be a good idea, make sure to pour yourself a nice warm cup of hemlock as you sit down to think it through. I’d recommend taking a hot bubble bath, perhaps with a toaster to keep your head clear before making such a decision.
She was allowed to invite six of her friends. I figured that was the max that I could handle. Between my wife, my daughters, and the cat, I’m already outnumbered 5-1 by females in my house. I am a disabled sinking ship alone and adrift in the estrogen ocean. There’s so much estrogen under my roof that I now routinely find myself crying over Subaru commercials. So I figured at that point, what’s a half a dozen more?
Two of the girls were unable to attend. My wife and daughter swear to me that only four girls came in addition to my own, but I’m pretty sure I counted at least 30. I say most of this in jest. The truth is we had a blast. The girls for the most part were very polite and well behaved and they were not a problem at all. Having five nine-year-olds for a night really wasn’t as nightmarish as I’d anticipated. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll never, ever do anything like it again. The complications arose when I realized that I hadn’t taken into account having five nine-year-old girls, and then adding a one-year-old and a two-year-old to the mix. They couldn’t quite grasp why they couldn’t stay up late with the big girls, and the big girls couldn’t quite grasp why they needed to be quiet after a certain time.
If you ever want to truly challenge yourself, take five nine-year-old girls, pump them full of cake, ice cream, and the fumes from several bottles of nail polish, and tell them they have to speak to each other in a quiet voice. The odds of you being successful are the same as getting struck by lightning while reading your winning Power Ball numbers to your date, Scarlett Johansson. Thanks for playing along.
Until next week,
Syd Nichols
