So I arrived home from my trip at midnight and hugged little Elsie after she woke up and cried just for me. It was hard to tell if she recognized me after my absence since she was pretty sleepy. She was happy to see me this morning though, and especially happy to see my half-unpacked suitcase lying on the floor. As I took a shower she rummaged through it and when I got out Maggie was standing there with a very cross expression on her face.
"You left a razor blade in your suitcase and Elsie cut herself on it," she said.
"Oops," I said.
I had actually removed the bathroom stuff from my suitcase but apparently one of the little triple-bladed heads had fallen off and nestled in with the clothing where Elsie's deft fingers had grabbed ahold. She'd sliced the tip of her thumb, not very seriously, but it was bleeding everywhere and Elsie refused to hold still. Eventually I got a band aid to stick on her tiny little thumb and stopped the flow.
It was hard to convince Maggie that I hadn't left the blade there on purpose. Or, well, that at least it wasn't gross negligence. It's difficult to reason with the mother of a bleeding child. Later on Maggie wrote me an email saying, "I think a good topic for babble would be whether dads are more dangerous for their babies for evolutionary reasons. I think this is true." She has some kind of theory, which I bet many mom's would corroborate, that fathers lack cautionary judgement as part of an evolutionary scheme. I'm not sure I can explain it fully, but you perhaps you get the drift. I would definitely have to admit that I'm less cautious, and as I think over most of the parental teams I know this dynamic seems to hold true across the board, but is this really God's Plan? Like, would us dad's be tossing our kids out of trees to weed out the weak ones if mom wasn't around?
Anyhoo, here's a link to a funny audio clip sent to me by my sister Laura. Her husband David Kirkpatrick writes for the NY Times and was interviewed live on NPR last week. Unfortunately he was also on solo parental duty at home at the same time and their son Thomas was not having any of it. The interviewers are very good natured about the background noise and poor Dave just keeps going, "I'm so sorry." They have to end the interview early because of the ruckus in the background. I can't edit it so skip around for the good parts. I imagine many of us "dangerous dad's" can relate. I'd have beaten that kid silly as soon as I hung up the phone. Just kidding!
This is Thomas:
