When you're married, with a little boy running around, you really have to learn to pick your battles. When you're simply married, sans children, you can quibble and argue about all the meaningless crap you want. Once you have a little one toddling around, however, you realize that all that quibbling and arguing is a completely useless expenditure of energy.
Still, sometimes it's just the principle of the thing. Today, for example, my wife and I were sitting on the couch, while the boy cooed and babbled on the floor, playing with his endless supply of toys. I happened to notice a roll of StarBurst fruit chew candy on the coffee table, and I set about finding a cherry one, because they're hands down the best tasting StarBurst flavor. I found a cherry StarBurst and unwrapped it. I then set it on the coffee table to save until after I finished drinking my Diet Pepsi, because candy residue in you mouth makes soda fizz and bubble more than usual, and I find that incredibly annoying.
That's when we noticed the smell. I knew it wasn't coming from me, and it's very rarely my wife, so I knew the boy's diaper needed to be changed. And, boy howdy! Did it ever need to be changed! It was easily in the top five running for the nastiest diaper bomb I'd ever encountered. But, I soldiered on, knowing, in the back of my mind, that an unwrapped cherry StarBurst was waiting patiently for my return.
But, upon my return, I discovered my StarBurst had gone missing. I knew, right away, my wife had eaten my StarBurst, and I was furious. I was simply taken aback by the sheer selfishness required to swipe another person's hard-earned, UNWRAPPED, StarBurst. A heated verbal exchange ensued, but it was obvious I had the high ground, so she gave up the fight after a few choice words, leaving me completely unsatisfied with the outcome.
So, I went back to that pack of StarBurst and ate every last remaining square, including the pink ones, which I honestly can't stand.
And that was pretty much the highlight of my day. Well, that and my boy giving me a hug before I put him down in his crib for the night. That was pretty cool, too. I guess.
I have to be honest. I'm basically faking my way through this whole parenthood thing. Oh sure, I may look like I know what I'm doing, but behind the cool facade of confidence I radiate is a terrified doofus who is mentally screaming "AHHHHHHHHHH!!!" 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
My son is now officially one year old, and when I look at him I can't for the life of me figure out how he's still alive. Despite all the odds stacked against him, my wife and I have managed to feed him, regularly put clothes on him, bathe him nightly and get him to bed at a reasonable hour.
In short, I've managed to do things for my son that I routinely fail to do for myself. I mean "bathe nightly?" If by "nightly" you mean "maybe shower once every three days." "Regularly putting clothes on" for me means wearing the same pair of pants for a week, and my eating habits have deteriorated to a point that most rats would look away in horror come dinner time.
I'm not sure, exactly, when I descended into such a state of human disaster, but I'm pretty sure it was during the stretch last winter when my son woke up crying every 20 minutes at night because he couldn't find the pacifier that had fallen from his mouth. After about a month-and-a-half of Guantanamo-caliber sleep deprivation, my mind simply decided enough was enough and started stripping away the non-essential life activities so it could concentrate on maintaining a heart beat and regular breathing. Everything else became extraneous nonsense that got in the way of precious sleep.
In those rare moments when I can engage my brain and actually think for a change, I notice how much things have changed in a year. The house, for example, looks like a small nuclear device detonated in a Toy-R-Us store. There are toys EVERYWHERE, and at some point my mind just decided that was the natural state of the world and I shouldn't think too deeply about it, lest I sacrifice further sleep. For example, I recently stepped on a Rubik's cube on the bathroom rug, and I gave it no more initial thought than if I had stepped on a wash cloth; a Rubik's cube seemed perfectly appropriate in the bathroom.
Even discussions with my wife have taken on a surreal quality that defies the conventions of polite society. We've had serious disagreements about whose turn it is to change a diaper, and I've found myself trying to make the case that I've changed the nastiest diaper ever, not her. That's just a plain old stupid thing to try and establish because, seriously, every single diaper is nasty in its own unique way.
And so now I look back over the past year, and I wave wistfully back at the man I used to be, while at the same time confronting the disheveled specter looking back at me each morning in the mirror, and I think "Only 17 more years to go."
And then I go change a diaper, with just the hint of a tear in my eye.
