Chapter Four
Being a Dad That Goofs Off
Monster
Night
There’s
nothing quite like wrestling with your Dad if you’re a little boy. I’ve heard some Dads say that if they’re gone
for a week, they have to spend several hours on the carpet with their kids just
to get the wrestling worked out of their system from their week hiatus. Whatever the reason, there’s something very
physical to the father-son relationship in particular—although surely there is
some of that to the father-daughter relationship as well.
Every
week for several years my brother and father and I would have what we deemed
“Monster Night.” This name arose from
Dad’s peculiar ability to glare at us in a distinct way, tipping us off that he
was morphing into a monster that would chase us around and wrestle us until we
were wheezing with equal parts terror and joy.
The nights usually followed a simple formula. Mom would be out of the house for her weekly
women’s group or a class she was taking towards a degree. After she was gone for a bit, lights would
begin to go off in the house and my brother and I would know the time had
come. We would scurry around in circles
and then find hiding places which, considering all the “SHHhhh-ing”
and “Where is he?’s” were
about as secretive as a firecracker in a funeral home. Dad would find us in short order, after
circling the hiding spot a few times slurping and groaning like a monster,
playing dumb to our obvious location.
Once
we were found my brother would make his great escape to his room, where he
would bunker doing who-knows-what for about fifteen minutes in monster-slaying
preparation solitude. Then Dad would
drag me out to the living room, tickling and wrestling me and giving me noogies till I was red with laughter. In a flash my brother would then re-appear in
a full super-hero/special-agent/western-gun-slinger outfit complete with a cape
and a briefcase full of spare plastic guns and fighting accessories. He would run into the room, sometimes
launching off a couch or chair, flying with his arms out and landing square on
the center of Dad’s back with both knees acting like photon torpedoes to the
monster on top of me. Wailing in true
pain, Dad would invariably be vanquished and we boys would run away to our next
pseudo-hiding place and the cycle would continue. It is a wonder Dad never needed major spinal
column surgery.
Becoming
a Goof Off
Despite
all of the training we men went through in high-school and/or college, goofing
off is hard to do once you’re “Dad.”
Giving lectures, imparting advice, and teaching lessons: these things
seem to come naturally for all parents.
It’s like we flip on some “over the hill” switch when we become parents
and start to say things we’ve never said before—sometimes even sounding eerily
like our own parental units. What really
sets Dads apart from one another is not the time they spend disciplining their
kids, but rather, it may be their ability to effectively goof off with their
kids. Good humor and fun times aren’t
just needed by our wives; kids need them too!
In fact they’re needed more by the kids than our wives. They’ve heard and seen all our jokes and
tricks a thousand times by now anyway.
You
can almost always spot a fun Dad in a crowd.
His focus is on giving a good time to his kids. Because of his wacky ways, he’s a virtual
clown in Dockers and a Polo shirt. He’s
the one making faces to his four-year old in the middle of the Wal-Mart
checkout line.. He’s the one doing the
fake separated thumb trick for the tenth time that vacation to Florida, and the
kids still trying to do it themselves in imitation of him. He’s the one playing hide and seek in the mall while his wife rolls her eyes knowing she’s
got one more kid to straighten out that night.