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?