Teen girls made pact to get pregnant – Associated Press

(shudder)

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g798CHaazwkE1E0TMQv8AZ60Bj1wD91DKPI00

One father was a 24-year-old homeless man.

This is why I drink…

When less is more, as in anxiety for dad

Let me start by saying this post was originally supposed to be about the stripper leg tattoos (glitter and all!) my girls got at the local fair. But with my wife inadvertently deleting the photo evidence needed to give the dialogue justice, I’ll keep that anguish buried deep within me…just like the therapist likes me to do.

Fortunately my wife is wonderful about making up for her mistakes and quickly provided me with some fantastic material for a make-up post. Unfortunately, I would have preferred if she would have provided a little more material (you’ll get my drift shortly – read on).

So (because I like to start 75% of my posts with that word), I’m sitting in my home office, changing the world for the better as only a person who works in marketing can, when the telephono rings (hola to my readers from Espana and Mexico – side bar, why is Spain spelled different in Spanish but Mexico is not? Seriously. It gets an apostrophe, that’s it. It’s like Mexico got the Spanish name equivalent of a Chi-Chi’s menu item. “I’ll have the El Steak, please.”)

I’m just going to start over at this point. That tangent took me completely off the rails.

So, I’m sitting at home working when the phone rings. My wife is at the Target, because we value quality, and she has a question for me. It seems Weirdo has requested a bikini and mom has defaulted to me to effectively squash that notion.

Now, mind you, my wife has it in her head that she really isn’t all that comfortable with the idea of our 5 year old in a bikini, but at the same time there is this little voice in her head saying, “She’s only 5 years old! It’s no big deal.”

I have no such voice. There is the voice saying, “Absolutely not,” and the even bigger voice behind that saying, “Abso-effing-lutely not.”

So, we agree. No on the bikini. I think I was the goat on that verdict, but whatever. As far as unpopular decisions I’ll make for my daughters go, this one pales in comparison to the arranged marriage they will eventually face when they reach their mid-40’s.

Fast forward an hour or so, the family returns home. Weirdo comes charging in my office, tears into that bag bearing the iconic red bullseye and produces a blue bikini.

And I have a itsy bitsy teeny weeny seizure.

Apparently i need to run my statements through Babel Fish next time, because I was pretty clear I entered a resounding “Nay” on the matter of Weirdo and the Bikini v. Dad and Better Judgment, but somehow things got a smidge (this is me not caring if that is a real word or not) cloudy in the translation.

My wife was immediately in tow with the explanations. I think Crazy was there showing me whatever it was she got too. I haven’t a clue what is was though. Hell, it could have been a goat or a big sack of dirty needles for I know. I was a smidge (the more I use it the less Webster can ignore it) distracted at the moment).

So now I’m getting the QVC showroom tour of the bikini. It’s not that small. The top is like a halter. All that shows is a little bit of her tummy. He’s a nice boy. They’re only going to Dairy Queen. We know his parents. The courts don’t differentiate between strangulation and bludgeoning. Blah blah blah. I’m not swayed.

I’m also wasting my breath. The Panamanian government during the construction of the Panama Canal had more authority than me. Or for you people who, shall we say, get the yellow pie last when playing in Trivial Pursuit, I am like Deputy Dog around my house. Sans the Goose Grease, of course. I also am without a friend or foe named Musky.

So Weirdo proceeded to wear the bikini all day. She didn’t actually go swimming at any point, mind you, just kind of frolicking around the house in it. I kept expecting to see a 9-year-old Hef shuffling around.

And as for my wife, God bless her, she left the jury with this closing argument to justify her treason: “I figured it would give you an idea for another column.”

As if I’m getting paid to do this. It’s a blog, goddamit. They’re made up of posts.

Thinking back to that day, because the nightmares force me to, I think my most favoritest (see: “smidge,” ref. 1) part is that at one point I could not bear watching my daughter wear the bikini incorrectly, and actually had to pull Weirdo aside and retie her top so it lay on her properly.

It’s like my own personal little Hell sometimes, ya know?

Happy Father’s Day, Fellow Pole Preventers

Happy Father’s Day to my fellow dads out there who are striving to raise their daughters (and sons) and be the best they can at it.

I have lots and lots to share with you from over this weekend. Stay tuned. But for now, enjoy the card I got from Weirdo and Crazy. The inside lauds my talents for multi-tasking. Weirdo picked it out. Nice, huh?

Pole Position for the Atari? Good. For My Daughter? Stroke-Inducing…

I get that there are Euros aplenty who swoon at the thought of capturing the Pole Position for some prestigious vehicular sprint such as the Indianapolis 500. God Bless them. Honestly. But this ain’t Indy and my eldest daughter ain’t Danica Patrick (insert do-it-yourself rant here about Maxim photos and Go Daddy ads – I don’t have the time or energy). So you can appreciate how thrilled I was when I got to experience a double-header of daughter-on-the-pole moments recently.

Incident #1 involved our waiting to order food at a local restaurant. Check that. It involved us standing in a line that lead out the doors and into the balmy 60 degree Memorial Weekend weather to purchase sandwiches the size of raft straight out of a Twain novel. Don’t get me wrong – the sandwiches are good. Heck, even Oprah endorsed them. And Oprah doesn’t just endorse any food – oh wait. Check that too (Oh “boo” yourself. I’m sure I will rue the lost possibility of a link to O Magazine’s Web site). Where was I?

Oh yeah.

So since Crazy was PTFO (“Passed The ‘Eff’ Out” – congrats, your first Off the Pole buzzword. Impress your friends) in the stroller, I volunteered to wheel her out into the sun to stay warm while my wife remained shrouded in the arctic shadows of said restaurant, standing in line for, like, an hour. For a sandwich. Weirdo accompanied us too out of the tundra, but quickly became bored. Thank God there was an old gas lamp style light post there. Or, more simply put, a pole.

I and every other person standing in line, those eating their volleyball-sized sandwich, or those driving by were treated to a good 30-minute show of Weirdo swinging around the pole. A one-handed spin here. A two-handed twirl there. A shimmy-up-and-slide down for good measure. And it wasn’t enough that she was doing it…she was getting good at it.

For half an hour I lived in white-knuckled fear that one of the passersby would actually stop, stoop down and lay a tip at her feet.

Moving on to Incident #2…

While the first half of this grind house flick involved my balancing on the precipice of a public breakdown, I was treated to a private show the following day. You know, the Champagne Room of Fatherhood nightmares.

The family and I spent a couple hours at a park we hadn’t been to before. It had an enormous wooden castle-like structure complete with stairways, bridges, tunnels, towers, and – everyone together now – a pole! Yay!

Everything was all Family Circus swell until we gave the 5 more minutes warning (translation for you non-parents: 15 minutes. Minimum). At that point, I was helping pull Weirdo up out of a tunnel made from tires that she was climbing. And upon emerging, her eyes seized upon that tormenting shaft of iron and off she went.

Down the pole she slid. No biggy. I’m not a total basket case (Yes you are. Leave me alone!). So she climbed back up the ladder and slid down again. That’s fine too. But then it became a game to see how fancy she could slide down the pole, like her own little version of Pole Dancer Idol. Corkscrew around it. Run and jump and slide quickly. Run and jump and slide sloooooowly. And to top it all off, she uttered the one phrase no father wants to hear:

“Watch me slide down the pole, daddy!”

My therapist says I should be able to dial down my dosage soon if I continue moving toward a full recovery.

Apologies…

So, it’s been a while since I posted. I’m trying to religiously post an Adventure every M-W-F, and pepper in an Ironic Observation or Question of the Day as they arise.

We recently and suddenly lost a dear family member. And with all that ensues with that, I fell behind.

Rest in Peace, Willy. You were my little snuggler.

And now, back to the sarcasm and mockery…

“Daddy, what are Apple Bottom Jeans?”

There can be nothing sweeter than taking your little girl to a Daddy/Daughter Dance, right? I mean, as far as purity goes, there’s the Virgin Mary, Columbian cocaine purchased locally in Bogota, and the Daddy/Daughter Dance.

Allow me to set the scene for those of you who like to apply a visual to my misery.

Weirdo is in her little ball gown, she’s got her hair and nails did (as the kids say – I am pretty hip for a middle-aged white dude, if I must say…Word.), and there’s even a dab of make-up and a sprinkling of glitter (I could do an entire other post on make-up and glitter – stripper staples – but I’m trying really hard to focus here, and you are not helping with your snickering. Ass).

I’ve got on a nice suit. I have meticulously styled what is left of a hairline that is retreating across my scalp faster than Marion Jones with a six needles pin-cushioned in her posterior. I’m happy. We take pictures for mom. Good times.

At the dance, held at the local middle school, the gymnasium is decorated in white lights and balloon arrangements. Weirdo grips my hand tightly with excitement as a big grin spreads across her face. She is excited and, you know what, I am too. I’ve got a strong feeling that we’ll beat last year’s endurance record of dancing to one song, eating two cookies and then going home to see mommy.

We get in line to get our picture taken and since we arrived early, in just a little less time than the average Pope is in power, we are on our way to the gym to hoof it up to the likes of Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus, the JoBros and HSM. That’s the Jonas Brothers and High School Musical for those of you I lost on the last couple references (He is so damn hip…).

Things start off good. They play a nice Carrie Underwood tune. We dance to it, which consists of my swinging Weirdo around in a circle and tossing her between my legs. It sort of looks like two uncoordinated people tried to recreate a Gap commercial on YouTube, but, hey, we are genuinely having fun, and that is all that matters!

As the song comes to a close the DJ, a rumpled looking fellow in his forties wearing a shirt I can only guess he removed from the glove compartment as he pulled into the parking lot, announces he’s taking requests.

Great! I ask Weirdo what she wants to hear. She wants a little Hannah Montana. By God, I go get her some HM (I’ll go out on a limb and guess you have caught on to the initials by now. Hip.). We get some HM. Solid.

Songs ends. Next song starts. It’s ‘Low” by Flo-Rida. I shit you not. For those of you not indoctrinated to the Flo-Rida catalogue of street poetry, here is a sampling of the lyrics:

Shawty had them Apple Bottom Jeans
Boots with the fur
The whole club was lookin at her
She hit the flo
Next thing you know
Shawty got low low low low low low low low

Them baggy sweat pants
And the Reeboks with the straps
She turned around and gave that big booty a smack
She hit the flo
Next thing you know
Shawty got low low low low low low low low

If you hit the word “Shawty,” got lost and never found your way back to the Rant Train, allow me to bring you up to speed on what has just transpired.

On the third song of the pure as a newborn baby Daddy/Daughter Dance, the DJ dropped a record about a stripper. I can’t make this stuff up, folks.

I quickly suggest we get a cookie from the cafeteria and Weirdo thankfully consents. She’s no fool. That’s a bonus sweet. You’d have to be an idiot to pass up that opportunity. And since I am not raising idiots, she grabs my hand and we are off.

As we are heading across the gym toward an exit, I am craning my neck in every direction trying to find someone to exchange “WTF?” looks with or at the very least has noticed what the song is about and is similarly making a hasty retreat. But, here’s the thing, not a single other father so much as flinches.

You ever see the movie Blade? You know the opening scene where the unsuspecting dude is at this underground club and all of the sudden blood starts squirting from the sprinkler system, but no one seems to notice but him. Kinda like that…except that no one tried to bite me and I’m reasonably certain there were no bi-curious vampires making out in the corner. Then again, it was pretty dark, so don’t hold me to that.

After trying to discuss this with 3 or 4 dads in the cafeteria and unsuccessfully finding anyone who had any clue what I was talking about (but further cementing my hipness superiority), I finally violated the no-mommy mandate for the evening and called my wife. I had to talk to someone about what just happened.

Seriously, what the hell is with people? At least the cookies were freaking unbelievable. Weirdo and I must have eaten like 3 a piece.

Err, I mean, we split one, hon.

Damn he’s smooth…