The Dads are All Right

I don’t review films. I haven’t even seen Grown-ups, yet. It’s only by coincidence that I prepared this post about fatherhood the same week that a movie opening Friday shows what happens when a mom couple with two teenage children meet their sperm donor in The Kids are All Right. Fatherhood is a really stupid topic for me to write about because I'm not a dad. Some of my best friends are dads. I even own one. But I, myself, was never infected. I am, however, deeply concerned for those young men who are considering allowing themselves to be transformed into fathers. I understand that no amount of caution can dissuade a guy from taking that irrevocable step. He feels it in his blood that it's going to happen. He hears the voices of his forefathers ringing down through generations, "It's time to beget a likeness of yourself, Numbnuts!"

Fatherhood is kind of like a hangover. It's not your fault. It could happen to anyone. There should be no judgment attached. You just get through it. And everyone knows the best treatment for a hangover. Stay drunk. The fatherhood equivalent of staying drunk is staying in the garage. My dad's garage was more like several farm buildings stuffed with farm machinery that was worth hundreds and hundreds of dollars when it was actually working. Now and then he would consider buying new equipment that would free up his time, but he always opted to keep on farming with his little John Deere tractors that were about the same size as today's lawn service equipment. I realized many years later that this was his way of staying drunk. He was just following in the wake of his fierce viking forebears who crossed the Atlantic in tiny wooden boats with five wives apiece and God knew how many kids. Try that one time sober.

Of course, it takes two to tango, so I should be remiss if I didn't address the full mathematical fact that gives rise to the production of offspring. The Internal Revenue Service. As a man gets older, his income naturally rises, pushing him into a higher and higher tax bracket. He begins to fret about all the extra money he is making and feels his soul being sucked away every year as he pages farther and farther back in the tax table to figure his obligation to Congress. Words cannot express the satisfaction a man feels as he rolls off a new mother (could be anybody) and leans back thinking of the thousands of dollars in tax deductions coming his way following the blessed event. A simple act of Congress has done more to make fatherhood a proactive concern for men than all the books ever written on the subject.

Okay. Okay. Some of this is a little off color. I admit that. Tessa, my senior editor, says it sounds slightly bitter. But I'm not bitter. What could I possibly be bitter about? That my baby batter is a couple tablespoons short of sugar? I have no idea whether it is or not. Don't care. I've just never made a new person when I didn't want to, which has been my case since birth. But I understand there is no resisting the call of the wild. When you're considering a hazardous spill of crud that could lead to fatherhood, you must learn to stay in your garage, and, if necessary, make your own beer.