Parents are People, Too - 4/10/12

I know how this looks. But unless you have kids, you don't know what it's like to have every moment of your free time sucked up by recitals, trips to the mall, or worse yet, soccer. I'm a dad, and that's wonderful and everything, but I'm still Mike Baxter. I didn't just die when my daughters were born and get reincarnated as a wallet with a driver's license.

There are still plenty of things I want to do, many of which include animals and guns. The problem is that my daughters only like one of those things, and don't care for the two-fer so much. I'm glad they're involved in activities because it keeps them out of trouble; I might have more than one grandson if they weren't. But between Mandy not even bothering to learn her lines, and then Kyle talking about all that father stuff, I guess I just snapped. Or maybe it was after hearing Kyle owns cats. It's hard to pinpoint the exact moment, but it was definitely something that turned my stomach.

If you're a parent and you haven't had that moment yet, you're just a ticking time bomb. You'll be planning your day, and you'll realize you have time to go somewhere fun, like a sports bar, or a fish fry, or if you've given up on life, maybe a knitting class or something. And then your children will breeze in like it's no big deal, and you'll watch your plans for an afternoon of homebrewing turn into a trip across town for a singing recital that isn't exactly a night of Billie Holiday. (We're being honest here, right?) A warbly rendition of "My Favorite Things" is the sound your dreams make when they die.

My daughters are the best things that ever happened to me. I just wish they didn't have to keep happening so often.