About ten years ago, writer Mark Leyner published his fifth book, Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog. Having been introduced to Leyner's screwball prose by a friend who'd insisted on reading whole passages of the author's fourth book, Et Tu, Babe out loud in between gasps of breathless hysterics, I knew I had to investigate further. When I found an advance copy of Tooth Imprints... on the discard pile at work shortly thereafter, I instantly snatched it up. In very short order, it became one of my favorite books, morphing me into that same individual who insisted on reading whole chapters aloud to uninitiated parties.
Ten years later, I find I've somewhat lost my taste for Leyner's self-consciously surreal style, but there is a piece in Tooth Imprints... that not only still speaks to me, but that has grown significantly more relevant to my life in recent days. I remember taking particularly derisive glee at Leyner's chapter fourteen, "Dangerous Dads," as it deftly dissected my then-brother-in-law's plight with hilarious laser-precision accuracy. Being a snot-nosed twenty-seven year old with precious little responsibilities other than making sure I'd procured enough spending money to keep me in beer and compact discs, Leyner's depiction of a struggling Marlboro-man-turned-doting-dad ("It's hard to thumb your nose at the grim reaper with one hand while you're massaging the gums of your mewling teether with the other") appealed to my burgeoning love for schadenfreude, made only that more enjoyable by knowing someone deeply ensconced in that very dilemma. I vividly remember insensitively chiding my brother-in-law for forsaking his testosterone as he dutifully cleaned up after my little nephews. Fast-forward a decade and it's now me that's trying to balance my identity as a formerly self-styled sneery, beer-swigging rock pig with my new role as a nervously nurturing father, frenziedly trying to steer my toddler around early life's numerous pitfalls. While Leyner's account is still hugely funny, the joke appears to now be on me.
I'm not alone, though. Many of my former bar-hopping, ravaged-eared, booze-besotted comrades have also taken the paternal plunge. Where once we'd exchange suspiciously swashbuckling war stories of a perpetually hung-over "oh no you didn't" variety, we now e-mail each other to blearily account tragic yarns of sleepless nights, pungently full diapers and disquietingly colored sputum in an lesser-paced but equally willful bout of one-upsmanship. "Oh, ya think you got it bad?" one friend will portentously intone, "just wait `til your little girl starts teething [or starts weaning or starts crawling or starts eating solids or starts walking, etc. etc.]". There's always another hurtle to clear, just around the corner. Raising a child, to use a suitably macho analogy reeking of simmering insecurity, is somewhat akin to doing battle with the many-headed Hydra from Greek mythology. Successfully overcome one problem, and two grow in its place, providing we whiney new dads with endless fodder for commiseration.
At the end of the naptime, though, every child is different, and only you can find the perfect rhythm with which to meet the challenge. I remember the first few times my wife deigned to leave me alone with still tiny Charlotte. Long overdue for a breath of fresh air away from the clinging little paws and constantly hungry mouth of our daughter, Peggy would go for the briefest of possible walks around the block, leaving me in charge for what seemed like hours. Left alone in the apartment with the infant felt like a first day at work with the NYPD bomb squad. "Oh sure," I'd think to myself, "she's asleep right now, but one false move on my part and she could wake up and scream like a car alarm, projectile vomit across the living room or drench her crib seven sickly shades of brown and yellow". The consequences of being careless or slack were all equally unappealing.
Eventually, it all got easier. After changing innumerable diapers filled with unspeakable contents and having weathered the ceaseless all-sensory assault that accompanies living with an adorable sixteen month old, I swiftly found my stride with little Charlotte. That said, there are still countless challenges. Given my bizarro-world work schedule, I happen to have two days off in the middle of every week. We've organized it so that on those two days, my wife goes to work and I look after the baby. Now, on the one hand, I'm blessed with that rare opportunity of spending inordinate amounts of quality time with my child. On the other, well....let's just say that these days can be long.
The secret to survival is routine! Establish a routine, bookmarked by naptimes and meals, and the day goes much smoother for both parent and child. When we decided to drop the second nap from Charlotte's day (which I invariably found more traumatic than she), the onus was even greater to find a way to fill the hours. Couple that with Charlotte's developing mobility (the ramifications of which I moaned about in this entry), and the daunting reality of taking my daughter out into the big, bad outdoors became unavoidable.
In installments to come, look for helpful hints on how to navigate through stroller-hostile delicatessens, how to retain your insouciant punkster cool while your toddler screams bloody murder in a crowded restaurant and how to successfully attain adequate time on the swings for your child in the cut-throat thunderdome of the New York City playground circuit (and you thought the club scene was exclusive!) Incidentally, following Tooth Imprints On a Corn Dog, Mark Leyner went onto publish a novel, The Teatherballs of Bougainville and just recently published the book, Why Do Men Have Nipples? Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini, co-writted with Dr. Billy Goldberg.
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