Before beginning this baby business I thought that your wife got big for a little while, then went to see the doctor and then the baby popped out.
I was an idiot.
Pregnancy
So I was playing a computer game and I realized. That’s it. I’m grown up now. I have to leave playing to the professionals: To Kids. Namely my daughter.
First of all, to avoid being a worthless dead-beat dad I must spend lots of time talking to my wife’s belly button. My wife doesn’t mind one way or another, but she just doesn’t understand the societal pressure I’m under. If I don’t talk to our unborn baby, and if we don’t play classical music to her, or perplex her with fractal algorithms, then she is going to grow up asking people if they would prefer plastic or paper grocery bags as a career. I would be a failure before I’d even begun. Without such pre-natal attention, there is no way that she could ever be an astronaut, an Olympian, or even a hair stylist.
But what if I want my daughter to follow in her dad’s footsteps as an unpaid volunteer. Very funny, you. No, that is not a euphemism for a dead-beat dad. I am a missionary, thank you very much. It’s is the result of years of training, and well ok, from my parents reading the Bible to me when I was still a fetus.
But how can I, as a father, prepare her for the harsh realities of life on the mission-field, or even the harsh realities of a simpler life like that of an astronaut. Well, I could smack my wife’s belly a bit each day, but my wife has already had the unfair burden of bearing this load for months and months. No, she has already been through enough. I could try it when she is born, but it could get misinterpreted as abuse. Although, sometimes I wonder when I watch people burping their children.
Instead, I have a plan. Life is about pain and loss, and what could be more painful or embarrassing than loosing to your father at a computer game. Now I see that as a fully grown man and father it is my duty to prepare my daughter for life. It is my duty to hone my skills for competition. All I can say is…. Pass the Play-Station controller.