Dad Confidential

Dad Confidential

By Jeffrey Cohen

Illustrations by Robert Wallman

Copyright 2013 Jeffrey Cohen

Smashwords Edition

ISBN: 9781310392894

Dedications:

For my boys, Ben and Matt

– Jeff

Robert dedicates this book to his family, friends, and sadly-neglected Rapidographs.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Prologue

I’m a good dad.

There I said it.

Or at least, I wrote it. God forbid I say it. Out loud.

Once you say something like that out loud, you can never, ever take it back.

I’ve made that mistake before with the Wife.

"Did you notice how much of an asshole your cousin was tonight?"

"That’s the worst-looking dress I’ve ever seen."

"I’m a good dad."

Once you say something like that, it becomes a competition.

"Are you saying I’m NOT a good mom?"

No, I said I was a good dad. I didn’t say anything about the quality of your mothering. As far as I’m concerned, it’s apples and oranges.

"You know I hate oranges."

Okay, it’s tomatoes and potatoes.

"Oh, am I just a ripe tomato, at your disposal?"

You see where this is going.

When I come home, I want to punch the clock and relax.

Maybe not hear that day’s laundry list of grievances.

"They scheduled a school trip when they know I can’t chaperone."

"Brad left his jacket at softball practice. Can you pick it up from the Y?"

"The light switch in the dining room isn’t working. Do you have the electrician’s info in your phone?"

Then again, when I don’t talk to the Wife, I have to talk to the kids.

"Can you look at my book report?"

"Why was Francis Bacon important?"

"Why do farts smell?"

Come on, that’s what makes the Internet so great. Look up farts, look up Francis Bacon, even look up book reports.

I have been a dad for 12 years.

Doing the math, I’ve been a good dad for a portion of that time. For instance, sleep is important. Everyone talks about how sleep-deprived parents are, but most of the time I can sleep like a stone. Maybe it’s my genetics or the food I eat, but there have been dozens of times when I wake up and the Wife looks at me through eye slits.

"You didn’t hear THAT during the night?"

Didn’t hear WHAT?

"Simon was up for an hour coughing! I had to take him to the bathroom and give him medicine!"

Nope. You should have woken me.

But if I spent 8 hours a night of the past 12 years sleeping, that’s one-third or an entire four years that I apparently wasn’t a dad.

And then consider the eight hours, five days a week, at the office. And the 90 minutes of commuting time each day. Rounding it up to 10 hours, that’s another 50 hours per week.

Bottom line, weekdays are a lousy time to be a good dad. If you’re fighting for counter space to jam a mini-muffin into your craw, if there still are mini-muffins, in which case you’re stuck with a protein bar. Again.

Thankfully, there are the weekends to even things out. I’ve never chickened out of any of the family activities that the Wife piles onto my plate and forces me to stomach… The little kid music concerts, the daughter/daddy dances, the sports programs. I am committed. And that commitment makes me…a good dad.

Still, it’s a tough choice between being the extra parent at any event or crashing on the couch. You know the drill – two kids are accounted for, with friends. The third child needs a responsible adult while they do something that costs you money, such as karate or piano lessons. It’s a blessing when the Wife says, I’ll drive him or You were going to change those light bulbs. Average time for most household chores is 2-10 minutes. The rest is golden downtime. An empty couch always beckons.

We’ve never gotten into quibbling over who’s done a fair share of the daily responsibilities. Over the years, the time you spend arguing over completed tasks adds up to nothing but hurt feelings and insults tucked away that come out right before you make a move for sex at bedtime.

Our meals are on a three-day plan. I have a few specialties that I can cook. The Wife has a few tricks up her sleeve. The rest is magic with leftovers and ordering in.

People have asked me, What do you want your kids to be when they grow up? I reply, I’d like them to become chefs and I want them to start now! The day my 12-year-old son asks me if I want a grilled cheese sandwich will be one of the proudest days of my life.

I decided a while back to use some of this mobile technology to chronicle my battles and create a living document of the day-to-day struggles of the modern dad. For people reading it in the cold morning light, I’ll provide a few semi-literate doodles as well. Everyone loves drawings, and there seems to be a rule that publishers banish them around age 9 or 10.

If I can offer resolution to one conflict between other parents, or help somebody gain insight into their child’s muddled, incoherent communication between arguments with their siblings and video games, then I will be validated.

My name is Michael Kaufman. But call me Dad.

June

Wednesday, June 19

This year, my wife Karen’s birthday fell a whopping three days after Father’s Day. So all of my cards got ripped from the fridge, slapped into a jumbled pile cemented together with tangled, sticky tape pieces, and tossed on my knapsack to bring to work for display in my cube, if I can ever surgically separate them.

This is not the first time it’s happened and it won’t be the last time. Our family does not have a ton of patience with cards, except for my daughter Faith. She has almost every card we’ve ever given her, or been given to celebrate her achievements, since she was born 10 years ago.

We don’t have the cards from Faith’s third birthday because we were in the process of moving to the new house and they got misplaced. Naturally, she blames me. When puberty hits I’m hoping she starts blaming her mother.

I used to get five cards from the family. My wife would give me one in the morning, and I’d get one from each of my three kids. Before we went to bed, Karen would give me a second card, with some personal thoughts. Around the time that our youngest child, Simon, went through the Terrible Twos, the second card went away. Just as well. The card generally accompanied a sleepy Let’s get this over with, and some exhausted-from-the-day married sex. Given a choice, I wouldn’t miss the second card.

Which brings me to my wife Karen. If you ever asked me to describe my type, I’d assemble a woman who looks like Scarlett Johansson or Katherine Heigl. Naturally I married someone who looks nothing like them. Karen is tall and thin, with long, straight dark blonde hair. Her genetics are a major plus, as she never had to bounce back after delivering any of our kids. She was tall and thin, then tall and pregnant, and then tall and thin again.

Our two boys, Brad and Simon, are also tall and thin. At six, Simon is almost as tall as his 10-year-old sister, Faith. And wouldn’t you know it, Faith is the one who looks like me. I’ll get nervous when she begins to bring around any tall and thin boyfriends.

After graduating from college (might get back to that later), I bounced around a couple of jobs doing statistical analysis. My father’s credo was Find a job and do it right. I modified that to Find a job and do it right enough, so they leave you alone.

Location played a part in determining where I worked. If you’re saving up money to move out of your parents’ house, you want a short, simple, cheap commute. I spent six months working at a medical supply company almost walking distance from where they lived in Bayside, Queens.

When my friends visited their folks for the holidays, I took a lot of digs about living my life in a 12-block radius. Shortly thereafter, I got a gig at a major pharmaceutical manufacturer in Manhattan. I took the railroad and subway to get to their headquarters, totaling almost three-hours in round trips on a daily basis.

But I was in the city and that was where the action was. My friends were all urging me to split a place on the Upper West Side or downtown. Get out of Queens! they told me. Get out of your parents’ house!

I grabbed the opportunity when a colleague took a one-year consultancy in Spain. He needed someone to sublet his studio apartment in Greenwich Village. It was destiny.

Trendy new digs gave me some street cred. Sure I had to deal with vagrants and a mystery smell that came up through the radiator. But now I was on the scene, single and ready to mingle, a man about town.

Until I gave people my address. Even if you’ve never been there, people get a certain connotation from Christopher Street. Yeah, I took sensitivity training. Buy a woman two drinks and casually mention you live on Christopher Street. You are immediately downgraded from potential boyfriend to shopping buddy.

A call from a headhunter landed me a job doing statistical analysis for Connor Brothers Investments (CBI). It was part of a hiring boom period and I was grouped with three other newbies, including one Karen Gail Levy.

Other than occupation, we had very little in common – I was a middle child and Karen had no siblings. I grew up in the suburbs and she was city-born and bred. I went to a local college and Karen went to the University of Southern California. I spent summers doing manual labor or internships. She backpacked around Europe. In other words, a total mismatch.

By the time we ended our six-month trial periods at Connor Brothers, Karen had practically moved into the tiny sublet with me, despite the fact that she had an easier, quicker commute from the apartment she shared on the Upper East Side. I took that as a sign that she really liked me. Or really hated her roommates.

Those paying close attention might have picked up the term statistical analysis. You can Google it. For whatever reason, I have the mental acumen to crash through chunks of data and retrieve information. What information, you ask. Well, that’s the point. What information do you want?

Karen always liked to point out that when she quit working at CBI shortly before our wedding, she was the better analyst. In fact, our supervisor offered her more money and begged her to stay. But she was supervising repairs to the fixer-upper we could afford to buy and did some freelance consulting from home.

A year after she left Connor Brothers, our department purchased state-of-the-art software. You could put in literally mountains of data and it would spit back results in seconds. Half of our group became unnecessary overnight. If Karen had not quit, one of us would have faced the axe. Since I was a quick study with the software, I moved up to supervisor status (and a small pay increase).

Lo and behold, fewer staff could produce more results in a shorter time frame. Pretty soon, I realized that the software was too good. I mean, if you can submit 1,000,000 queries and generate 5,000 usable results in 4.2 seconds, why do you need a six-person department?

To save ourselves, we began to subtly circumvent the process. Queries submitted in the morning would be returned by the late afternoon. If anyone asked about the delay, we blamed the high volume of requests that we received from around the company.

One flustered middle manager sat outside my office for 45 minutes in an attempt to speed along report generation. I checked my e-mail twice, called Karen to find out what the pediatrician said about Faith’s rash, then acted surprised to see him seated in the hallway.

Greg, I told him, I e-mailed the report to your secretary 15 minutes ago!

To help Greg save face, I didn’t watch him stalk down the aisle and disappear around the corner. Instead, I returned to my small, windowed office and pulled more tape from that year’s birthday cards to affix them to my filing cabinet.

Which brings me back to standing in the kitchen, clutching a stack of awkwardly-connected cards and finishing a cup of coffee. Brad and Faith had already gotten on their school bus and Simon was methodically slurping the milk from his cereal bowl.

God, I love this kid.

I mean, as a good dad I love all my kids. But by the age of six, Brad and Faith were giving me looks that meant the jig is up. My word was no longer law. I could no longer be counted on for all the answers. Simon still trusts me implicitly and if I don’t screw it up with him, I’ll be 1-for-3, and that’s a pretty high average.

We’re still crossing our fingers to see what goes wrong with Simon. Brad needed special orthopedic shoes to correct his feet. Faith is getting braces next year and is none too happy about it. Neither am I, considering the cost and incessant regularity of the visits. Perky, agreeable Simon has dodged both of those bullets and seems fairly well-adjusted. Every now and then we poke the façade. It’s a waiting game.

Ready for school, buddy?

Ready, Daddy.

Simon hopped off his stool, dropped his bowl and spoon in the sink, and headed off for the bathroom. I washed off the dishes, put them in the drain, and waited to see if Karen wanted me to walk Simon to school, two blocks away.

No dice. Karen was already putting on a raincoat over her denim shirt and blue jeans.

You’re going to miss your train.

Glancing at my watch, I realized I’d need to hustle.

If I catch this train, I get to the office right before my managers. Miss it and there’s a long walk down a corridor of windowed offices.

I helped Simon zip up his windbreaker (rain is expected), grabbed an umbrella, and we all headed out together. At the corner, they walk one way and I go the other.

Hello, Kaufmans!

It was Shauna Duvall and her daughter, Tess, who is in Simon’s first grade class. I nodded and waved as they went by and all four of them headed for the school.

Shauna had Tess when she was 21, never married the father, and works a couple of jobs to make ends meet, including as a fitness instructor. For the June weather, Shauna chose black yoga tights and a white shirt over a black sports bra.

Remembering that anything more than a split-second is inappropriate, I filed away the outfit and the hint of tramp stamp. I can’t figure out if it’s lettering or a dragon. I made a mental note to ask Karen if Simon likes Tess. The only way I’ll solve this riddle is if they have a playdate.

I picked up the pace to make the train.

Saturday, June 22

I grew up in a sports-based family and there is a maddening disconnect between my youth and present day. My sister Jennifer played soccer in two different leagues, which kept my mother on the run. My little brother Kevin played in little league from age 5 until he got to high school and played on the baseball team.

I didn’t have the skills (or tenacity) to stick with little league, but I did have a memorable one-year stint on the bowling squad in junior high. Our team was remembered years later for racking up 15 consecutive gutter balls, although possibly six or seven of those were intentional.

Our coach was the school’s balding, reformed alcoholic math teacher, Mr. Mason. Whenever someone guttered, Coach Mason would stifle gasps and sputter barely audible curse words. Naturally, we found these restrained outbursts hysterical and tanked games whenever we could, as long as it didn’t look obvious.

Come on guys, Coach Mason would rasp, You didn’t look this bad in practice! Michael, where’s that topspin?

Sorry coach, it must have gotten away from me, I’d smirk lamely, as my teammates would cover their mouths.

Since Shea Stadium was a short car trip (and slightly longer railroad trip with a transfer), I developed into a long-suffering Mets fan. This form of torture saw a few brief, shining moments in the mid-80s and mid-00s. But mostly it was a lot of standing on the LIRR platform, bitching and moaning and standing guard while my idiot friends tried to pee behind a trash can.

CoBro has a corporate discount for Mets games, which was fantastic for cheap dates. Good seats, some at two-for-one value, occasionally with a meal voucher. During the period I lived in the downtown apartment, it was even cheap to get home after a game on he subway.

When we were planning our wedding, I still managed to go almost one game every week. Karen didn’t mind because it wasn’t a great expense. And there were a number of people who were willing to go with me – coworkers, ex-coworkers, college friends, high school friends, neighbors.

Karen only put her foot down when her best friend (at the time) and former college roommate Darcy Evans, expressed interest. You are not taking Darcy on a date, she snapped.

It’s not a date.

Two single people at the ballpark, it’s a date.

I’m not single, I’m engaged.

Karen stood firm. If we went to the Mets game, it would be a date. If you go to the Mets game with another woman, it’s a date.

I went with Lisa, my college friend. Was that a date?

Lisa wouldn’t consider it a date.

Okay, I reasoned. So why can’t you explain to Darcy why it isn’t a date?

No response.

How about I wear a t-shirt that says WITH MY FIANCÉ’S BEST FRIEND?

Don’t be a jerk!

Pretty much, end of conversation right there.

About five years in our marriage, I finally got a straight answer from Karen.

In college, a group of people planned to see a movie. Only Darcy and one of her friends’ boyfriends showed up. After the movie, Dancy slept with the guy, felt awful, and told Karen.

What movie did they see? I asked Karen.

She was baffled. I don’t know. Does it matter?

Sure – if they saw A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN or some other baseball-themed movie, you’d have had a rational reason to worry about me.

Don’t be a jerk!

Like his Aunt Jennifer, Brad took an early interest in soccer and continues to play. Luckily his aunt is his biggest fan and she comments on every short video of game footage Karen posts on her Facebook account.

It doesn’t matter if Brad was stripped of the ball or the goalie made a diving save on a side kick. Jenn will comment, Yay Brad! or Awesome attempt!

Early on, I tried to take Brad to Mets games but he was content to wander around the upper deck, picking up discarded All-Star ballots as if they were legal tender.

In return, I took Brad to a Red Bulls professional soccer match near Newark, New Jersey. He was elated. I drank two cups of coffee to stay awake. After that, Brad made it known that he was willing to suffer through Mets games, but only if I would reciprocate with a Red Bulls game. Détente.

Faith has zero sports interest. The one time I got her to Shea Stadium, she spent her time on my cell phone, calling her friends and asking what THEY were doing on a Saturday afternoon while she was stuck at the ballpark, watching the Mets and saying, Who is the other team? The Yankees? They play in the Bronx, don’t they? So what’s the big deal?

The pained tone of Faith’s voice made is sound like she was a prisoner of conscience handling her community service, waiting for the game to be over so I would give her enough credit to finish her sentence and return to her normal life.

In return for sitting through an interminable, ninth-inning rally where the Mets came back and won 9-8 on a SAC fly and play at the plate, I took Faith and two of her friends to see Dennis Dillon at the Nassau Coliseum.

Dennis Dillon was a lesser version of Justin Bieber whose 15 minutes have thankfully already come and gone. But for that brief eight-or-nine month period, Faith bought his two CDs (and special edition re-release of the first CD), posters, and magazines.

Brad walked by her room one afternoon and put it simply. Holy cow.

Karen brokered the deal, arranging to buy three tickets for the girls in exchange for them doing well on special testing.

Karen had volunteered to make phone calls for the PTA that night, so she could not take the girls.

You can’t make the calls from the Coliseum? Don’t they have a waiting room for the parents, downstairs?

The noise level is too much, Karen replied.

Why can’t one of the other parents drive them?

They’re all busy. Besides, I’m the one who organized them all going.

Dragging down the evening one step further, Faith wanted to play Dennis Dillon music all the way TO and FROM the concert. I gritted my teeth at the level of 10-year-old discourse:

Maxx is such an awesome guitarist!

He is so hot! But not as hot as Dennis!

Dennis is the hottest guy in his band!

Well, duh!

Lots of giggling. Lots of controlled eye-rolling.

We got to the Coliseum and I waited until the girls entered the main concourse. I pointed to the section and exit sign, so Faith would know where to look for me after the show, then headed downstairs to the waiting area, with the other foolhardy parents.

On one hand, I had been dreading the concert. But I was looking forward to 90 minutes of uninterrupted time, catching up on the newspaper and Sports Illustrated. Maybe cruise some sports scores on my iPhone.

I could count the number of dads in the waiting room on one hand. Dozens of moms, chatting and drinking coffee. Many young moms, in Dennis Dillon gear, who were clearly there because they were allowed to share their daughters’ interest in the performer, but the girls would not be caught dead sitting WITH their mothers. Even if the mothers were wearing skintight pants and heels and could have had some fun with the band on the bus on another night.

When I looked up from my paper, something strange had happened. The other dads had skedaddled. I was the lone male and the women clearly did not like my presence. I could feel an intense, radiated distrust.

Why is this man here? Does he even have children watching the concert? Or is he just here to check us out? Or check out our children!!!

Folding the paper under my arm. I made my way over to the plastic containers of cheap coffee and poured myself a cup, stirring in a little cream and sugar. I nodded pleasantly at two of the least-attractive moms leaning against the table, but they quickly edged away to continue their important conversation in hushed tones.

Slightly annoyed at this point, with at least another 45 minutes of this nonsense to go, I pivoted to return to my seat (with my jacket on it). Two other women had perched right next to me, evidently not realizing that the sole male in the room was in No Woman’s Land.

Ladies, I said quietly, as I sat down.

I was drowned out by intense shrieks from the arena, as Dennis Dillon and his band kicked into one of their hits, possibly Love You More or More To Love or You Mean Love.

Man, that’s loud, I chuckled. But the kids love him.

You have kids here? one of them asked. She was wearing a pink Mom blouse and black slacks.

Talk about a loaded question. What she was really asking was, Why are you here?

Not losing my temper, I replied, Yes, my daughter and two of her friends are upstairs, somewhere.

A tactical mistake.

You don’t know where they’re sitting? the same woman asked.

Well, they have the tickets. My wife bought them…

I took a sip of coffee with my left hand, giving them a clear view of my wedding ring.

My Cassidy is sitting in Section B2, she remarked.

Floor seats, I replied, too quickly. I think Faith and her friends are in the 200s.

Her name is Faith? asked the other woman.

Suddenly it was an interrogation.

Since 2002, I replied. They looked confused. That’s the year she was born.

I guess one of them did some quick math in her head. She’s only 10? You sent a 10 year old by herself to a concert?

Um, she’s with two friends who are 11…and she’s going to be 11 in…a few months, I stammered.

Sensing blood, they moved in.

Do they have a cell phone? Can they contact you if something is wrong?

I think Megan has her phone, she was going to post photos on Twitter, I said.

An 11-year-old with a Twitter account? Now they were completely suspicious and all pretense was out the window. They either thought I was a horrible liar or a pervert on the make.

She didn’t say Twitter, maybe just text photos to a friend, I replied, taking my jacket slowly from the chair, so as not to attract undue attention. They were going on and on about the concert in the car, I didn’t listen to every word.

Why would you? chirped another mom. Then you might have heard them say where they were sitting.

I think the men’s room is that way, I remarked, heading in the opposite direction. I sat in the car, with the motor running and the heater on, for the next 40 minutes until I saw girls and their moms begin to stream from the building.

I broke quickly for the meeting place, hoping none of the women from downstairs were in the vicinity. Bad luck. The pink Mom shirt was right there with her plus-size daughter and a friend.

Faith! I yelled, as my daughter emerged with her friends.

Megan was busily entering text into her phone (thank you, Megan!).

I jogged over and gave Faith a demonstrative hug, clearly freaking her out in front of her friends. Good concert? I asked, hustling them towards the parking lot.

Yeah, sure, Faith replied, putting some distance between herself and me.

The pink Mom gave me a disinterested look and jetted off in the opposite direction on her broom. Any attempt to placate her was wasted energy. Her opinion was cast in stone. I was a creep, one way or the other.

And Faith was annoyed with me, for embarrassing her in front of her friends, although to the best of my recollection, they never indicated or said anything. To me, to Karen, or to their parents who would have leaked it back to me or Karen.

One time, I vented my frustration to my cousin Don. We went to Opening Day games at Shea Stadium for over a decade. And he went multiple times every season with his wife or kids, or sometimes the whole family.

Jesse (his 14-year-old son) has gone to a game every year of his life, Don confided.

How is that possible? I asked.

Well, he was born in February. So late in the season, I brought him to a day game, just for a couple of innings. I did the same thing the next season. And by the following season, he was excited to go with a little glove, wearing Mets gear.

And your wife was okay with it?

Don laughed. She wasn’t exactly thrilled, but she knew that baseball was something I wanted to share with my kids.

Karen got pregnant with Simon early in the year. When she charted the probable delivery date, it was mid-August. Still, I broached the topic.

You want to take a newborn where? Are you INSANE?!

That closed the door to year one for Simon.

I was mildly miffed that Don hadn’t told me about his nutty scheme when Karen was pregnant with Brad. I waited through two whole kids, two whole wasted opportunities.

I pitched bringing Simon to