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.