Dave’s DIY guide to fathering
BEING a staunchly committed cheapskate is a bloody onerous gig, what with birthdays, Christmases and godforsaken baby showers gnawing at your bank balance like a cash-eating bacterial infection.
What you really want to do is get a gig as a newspaper columnist and interview your old man just before Father’s Day, in lieu of forking out $50 for a set of drill bits he will never use.
My patriarchal precursor, David Victor Calcino, a thoroughly decent bloke born in Nineteen-hundredand-something-or-other, was absolutely chuffed at the idea.
“Don’t do this, mate. No seriously, it’s a stupid idea. This is more punishment than a present,” he joked. “You were supposed to be a girl.” Not having any experience of fatherhood myself, but presumably fertile and getting to that sort of age, I decided to quiz the old fella about his top tips for raising a troupe of grubbyfingered little hellions.
“You’re really going to publish this?” Dave quipped, feigning reluctance.
“Well, OK. After we had (eldest overachiever, but quite short, smelly and hairy) Andrew I learnt the best way to change him was to take him out the back and hose him and the nappy both down at the same time.
“It worked really well too, until your mum caught me. “Then I never did it again.” This dodgy revelation required further investigation.
Was Andrew an infant at the time? Could Dad’s dangerous technique have led to a head-knock that accounts for my brother’s prodigious production of drool when he sleeps?
“No, I wouldn’t have dangled you by your bloody ankles. Don’t put that in there,” Dad lied.
But fatherhood wasn’t all about swinging around toddlers with wild abandon, he assured me.
It was also about keeping detailed notes of every mush-brained comment to come out of your offspring’s mouth – but only with the youngest (currently unemployed, running around Europe like an unshaven ditch-gypsy) son, Paul.
I just so happened to have an email on file with some of the moronic lowlights.
• After a strenuous walk up Red Hill near our place, Paul lifted up his shirt and said, “Daddy, do you think I got a little bit skinny?” He’s quite a chubby boy.
• I said to Paul I had better go to work and bring home the bacon. Later, mum Kay asked where I was. Paul replied, “Buying meat.”
• Kay joked with him not to pinch her pillow when he lay down with me on our bed. He said, “I won’t. I’ll just look after it with my head.” What a scheming little nong. The passing of time makes it easy to gloss over some of the fairly substandard fathering to which old Papa Bear was occasionally prone.
One key traumatic event in my aforementioned short, smelly, hairy, sleep-dribbling sibling’s early life immediately springs to mind.
Mum came home to a dad beside himself with frustration as howls of anguish erupted from their new son.
“No matter what I did, I just couldn’t get him to calm down. I had no idea what was going on,” Dad explained. My mother, who probably legitimately does not want to be mentioned here and may well poison me at the next family dinner, swooped in like a champion.
Dad had swathed his firstborn in a nice fresh nappy, accidentally sticking the safety pin through his supple young leg, back through the cloth and fastening it tight.
“She immediately found the pin,” he said.
It’s a wonder we never had a visit from child services.
Our conversation turned to the stressful times and the good times.
“Obstacles come along the way. The discovery of alcohol was always an issue,” he said.
“The hardest part of being a dad is just the concern that your kids are going to have a happy life, really.
“The best parts were the innocent things kids say and the embarrassing things as well.
“They ended up being amusing, even if they weren’t at the time.”
Hopefully this sentiment still holds true.
Happy Father’s Day for tomorrow to the lot of you child-producing fellows. Have a beer in bed – you sure deserve it.
THE PASSING OF TIME MAKES IT EASY TO GLOSS OVER SOME OF THE FAIRLY SUBSTANDARD FATHERING TO WHICH OLD PAPA BEAR WAS OCCASIONALLY PRONE.