Savvy Stories, The Book - Chapter 1, continued Before a guy has to face his daughter’s first dance recital (shudder), there’s DIAPERS. No guy wants to change a diaper, any diaper – boy or girl – unless he really has to. But to see that first big mess and everything all squooshed into areas that it’s not supposed to be, we are lost and wondering if we’re supposed to clean in there or what. One time, before our child was born, I had to babysit the kid of one my wife’s friend’s. The girl was about 1 ½ or 2 at the time I think; not potty trained. To “help” me, her mom changed the diaper before she left for her errand, showing me how to clean all the “girly parts.” I had to look away. I was fully prepared to drop that kid into a Hefty bag and tie it off at the waist if necessary rather than change her diaper. To my credit, I kept asking the kid if she was wet and needed a diaper change, and she kept saying no. When her mom arrived 4 hours later, I was impressed at the kid’s self control. Her mom was impressed that the kid could pee 4 or 5 times into one diaper and it didn’t leak. So everybody was happy. And by that I mean, I was happy. Heck, I was relieved. I don’t think I got a second call to babysit solo, though… There’s potty training, which we still haven’t mastered yet, and there’s going to the park or an airport and having to take your LITTLE GIRL into the men’s restroom – nobody likes that. Not the dad, not the other guys in the restroom, not the kid. Everybody’s pretty polite, though, and if a guy in there’s been through it before with his own daughter, he’ll offer to help you. But he doesn’t really want to and you don’t want him to. It’s just a bad situation all around. So it works like that for all guys; they’re thinking that they’ll be WAY more comfortable having a boy around, because they know the ins and outs of being a boy, and we fully understand that we DO NOT understand what being a little girl is all about. So the thought of being partly responsible for raising one is, well, a bit scary to a guy. That is, until he HAS a daughter. Then it all changes. TO BE CONTINUED FRIDAY AUGUST 23
Posted on: Sun, 18 Aug 2013 10:00:00 +0000