The one that goes...

You kids got your ears on? That's CB lingo. It will be completely obsolete by the time I get to explain it to you. We'll all be talking on cellphones the size of nickels. On the moon. My point is that you're growing ears, four of them (so damn many), so you can officially hear, which means you can officially begin tuning me out as you will no doubt do for many, many years. Frankly, the sooner the better, once you stop using the bathroom in your pants I'm kind of out of advice.

So many people have been telling me what it will be like once you two show up, how much it will change not just my schedule, or my life, but my perspective. It's like being told that you're going to have a lobotomy and the people telling you it's going to be fine are the ones with stitch marks across their skull. I don't doubt them. The fact is, a lot of my friend's are different since they had kids, and to be honest, I liked them better before.

Now, human beings are notoriously awful estimators when it comes to what will and won't make them happy. This is the only reason anyone owns ferrets. Studies show that many things we wouldn't wish on our worst enemies (ferrets) turn out to be not so bad, and things that we pine away for tend not to be so great. The common mistake is assuming that we know ourselves. I certainly like to think I know myself, but that's largely because I can't possibly claim to know anything else.

What I'm really afraid of is that they're all right. That you're going to be amazing, the best thing to ever happen to me, and that I'll anxiously take up the job of being your father as opposed to being me. From where I'm sitting, that just doesn't sound right. I'm supposed to generate my own happiness by dunking basketballs and writing books, not get it by proxy from seeing you in matching outfits (and believe me, your mom is stocking up on matching outfits). It's the idea that all the things that are important to me will become secondary. I'll forget them or put them aside until one day you stop holding my hand and calling me daddy and start locking your room with a deadbolt and calling me Hitler and I realize that I'm old, bald, and I forgot to hitchhike through South America. If you don't think this really happens I invite you to visit a Harley dealership on a weekend. Lots of bald guys named Hitler looking for bikes.

Someday you'll hear a song that you love, and you'll have no idea what it is or who it's by. You'll try to explain it, you'll use non-existent words like da, dee, and dum and no matter how you put them together the people you tell will have no idea what you're talking about. It's one of the few downsides to having ears (along with John Tesh). But for all they can do, there's some things that words can't handle. You can't explain a guitar solo, people have to hear for themselves. I've heard every variation on how I'll feel when you two escape that weird little snow globe where you're floating around, but until it happens it all just sounds like a lot of da's, dee's, and dum's. I'm sure when you show up I'll finally hear what everyone has been talking about. I probably won't even miss my old tunes.

And that's exactly what I'm afraid of.

Novel - Into double digits
Dunking - Wk3
French - Unit 2