Things I Learned Today

     I have a friend named Pete.  We were buddies in high school and eventually shared an apartment while he was in Grad School and I was finishing my BA.  While we lived together, he had a serious girlfriend who became a fiancée, which gave me a ringside seat to their relationship and the planning of their wedding.

     At that time I was an independent man (read: single, desperate, and unable to get a date with anyone who wasn’t underage or clinically insane).  As I watched Pete’s relationship move along, I found myself spending most of my time mocking the hell out of him.  Every time Pete made a concession about the wedding, I made the sound of a whip cracking.  Every time he went home to spend the weekend with her instead of “bach-ing” it up with me, I teased him mercilessly.  

     “Yes, dear,”  I would cry in my most sing-songy, girly voice.  “Right away, dear.  Anything you want, dear.”

     Pete took it all in stride.  He just grinned at me.

     Whenever we would get the chance to “bach-it-up”, which for us meant cheap beer and three or four games at the local bowling alley, I always asked him if he’d gotten permission to go out.  “Wouldn’t want the Missus getting upset,” I’d say.  And he would just grin and shake his head.  And, as invariably happened when I was exposed to cheap beer, bowling balls, and sweaty shoes, I declared that things would be different once I got a girl, he would just look at me.

     “Really?” he would ask.  “How?”

     “Well,” I would respond (usually as I was throwing a near-gutter ball that took out one pin, two if I was lucky), “for one thing, my woman will know who’s in charge.”

     “You?”  Pete asked.
     
     “You got it,” I would say (usually as I missed the last remaining eight pins).  “And she will know that I am MAN,” (said with an appropriate flexing of my ‘guns’), “and that my word is gospel.  I will rule my house with an iron fist!”

     Pete would chuckle at that.  The chuckle of a man who knew – it would never be my house.

     “And,” I would finish, usually as I settled into my chair after failing to break 60 for the third straight game, “there will be no ‘yes, Dear’ in my house unless it comes from her mouth.”

     “Whatever you say, Chief,”  Pete would laugh.  “Whatever you say.”

     He doubted me.  He doubted that I could follow through on my plans.  He doubted that, in the face of finally finding a woman crazy enough to put up with me, who could also understand what I was saying around the foot I so frequently stuck in my mouth, I would be able to hold to my convictions.

     Today, as I wrap up my first week of being Daddy-Day-Care for The Bean (so named because she resembled a lima bean in her sonogram photos), I found myself in an unusual situation.  I was filling my dishwasher with baby bottles.  And calling The Wife for instructions on which medicines to give when, which of the baby clothes needed to be washed, and how long to let The Bean nap for.  And in between phone conversations, I was dancing around my kitchen, using a spatula as a microphone, and singing chorus after chorus of Captain Feathersword, Ahoy (from The Wiggles) to a giggling Bean.  

     And I realized some things:

• The Wife does know who’s in charge – the crying, burping, pooping, never sleeping drool machine and the four legged, barking, socks and underwear eating shedding machine.

• The Wife does know I am MAN.  As evidenced by this exchange (repeated a dozen times over during the course of any given week over a dozen different things):

“Honey, can you take out the trash?” (which she is, of course, standing next to)
“You’re closer.  Why don’t you do it?” (man logic)
“Because you’re the boy.”  (female logic – winning logic)

• And there is no ‘yes, dear’ in my house.  Partly because, as Pete predicted – it’s not my house.  Oh sure, my name may be on the mortgage and the checks that pay the bills.  But one look around – at the piles of baby clothes, toys, and five different colors of Binkies, at the chewed up socks and stuffed bunnies, and the various bags of make up and forty some odd pairs of shoes – makes it crystal clear whose house this really is.  And besides… it’s ‘yes, honey’ around here.

     And you know what?  

     I blame Pete.  

     He could’ve warned me.