Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man

him, out of a crowd, and simply say, 'We know. We know you don't know what you're doing. We've been monitoring you.' I know what he means. It's not really the 'monitors,' it's the reality police. It seems like my whole life has been by the seat of my pants. I'm making it up as I go along. I find it strangely funny that God allows me to make decisions; that life does just unfold, and lets me do the best I can. This particularly applies to fatherhood, in which you have ultimate responsibility for a totally dependent being. You can't go back and redo stuff you did, but you can't know if you're getting it right the first time, either.

There are some rules, however.

'Don't go near the pool. Don't hit me in the stomach. You've got to eat more.' I just want to take care of my daughter. I don't want her sick. I'm worried about her falling.

My wife is far better at this teaching stuff than I am. She thinks she's horrible at it, but she's wrong. That is why she can bask unashamedly in the delight of the school's calling to say, 'Your child is doing extremely well in fire prevention. And the drop drill. Also, your daughter seems to know military rules quite well. She salutes. What are you doing with her at home?'

Working so much, I feel oddly distant from the whole process. I do what I can. There's a lot of guilt involved. My wife says, 'If you spent more time with her. .' I spend all the time I can with her. I'm getting better at it, though. Rather than read aloud from books on military tactics and supply requisitioning, we go to dinner and have a couple of kiddy cocktails and a marvelous time. This is usually when Mommy isn't around. My little girl and I relate better then. They're alone together so much. We're alone so rarely. When we're alone together, she and I somehow behave differently. We learn about each other. She learns that I'm her father. I learn that she's my daughter. It's a weird feeling, but any parent knows what I'm talking about when I say that I often look at my daughter and wonder just whose kid she is. Where'd she suddenly come from? And why on earth did she pick Laura and me for parents?

When my daughter and I are alone she'll hug my leg and say, 'I just love you so much, Daddy!' She's so used to my leaving that when I tell her she and I are going to hang out all night, she gets this great look on her face and says, 'We've got so much to do, Dad!' There's nothing like it in the world.

I want my relationship with my daughter to keep growing, so I've been giving my wife a couple of hundred bucks each week and making her go to the mall with her girlfriends, or something-anything!

But this closeness is not without its problems. When I'm sitting there playing with Barbie, washing her hair, the lunatic in me suddenly says, I've got to get a scotch and get the hell outta. . Right in the middle of all this pleasantness, the lunatic goes, Look at yourself. You're bathing dolls!

My daughter likes to bathe with me. She goes, 'Jacuuuzi!' and gets scared when I put the jets on. She likes them, but wants me in there with her. I've got to be there. But I need to know: When do you stop bathing with your daughter? There's a day. It's coming. I want to mark my calendar. Oprah must know. Phil must know. Geraldo must. . nah. I keep asking around, because I never want to find out I've missed it by a day, but I keep getting this: 'Oh, you'll know.'

I'm not so sure. I want to cut it off long before you'll know, whatever you'll know is. Sounds like an est seminar. I don't want another situation like my brothers and me seeing my mom in the shower and staring just a moment too long.

My daughter likes me to chase her?-definitely a girl thing that stays with them until the day when they finally allow some lucky guy to catch them. I'm teaching her early, though, to run real fast. I like it better when we're working on my car. I drag her into my world whenever I can. She wanted to help me paint the raised letters on my tires. She likes going for rides with me. She loves going fast. She thinks my Mustang is a Ferrari. That's probably not a bad thing. If I'm real lucky, it will probably save me some money when she wants a Ferrari for her sixteenth birthday.

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Having a kid has made me do things I never imagined I would. I nurture other people's kids. I used to be such a smart?ass around other people who had kids when I didn't. And now, no matter what they do, I understand. I can be talking to an adult and wiping snot off his kid's mouth. I'm grabbing boogers out of some kid's nose and wiping them underneath the table or on the couch. Hey?-either I do it, or he will.

My wife and I used to avoid sitting next to people with small children on an airplane. Then, the worst thing in the world was a screaming baby.

'Can't they take care of the kid and stop it from crying? Give it something! Why don't they sit in the back of the plane with the engine noise? With a couple of oxygen masks and a blanket, I don't see why they can't ride in the baggage compartment. At least until he stops crying. We paid for these seats!' Like they didn't. Like they get them free. (Don't beleaguered parents always look like indigents even if they're rich?) They're hiding the child and saying 'Sorry' to the whole plane, like 'Forgive me for having this baby!' We didn't mean to interrupt you reading your inflight magazine.

But once it's your kid, you look at anyone who's impatient with you like, 'What's the matter with you? How come you don't have a kid? Get with the program and join the family of man!'

Every single thing you thought you'd never say or think, you say and think in the first two months after childbirth. Everything.

Now I yearn for a better life for all children. I'm interested in better education systems. In mentoring. In health care and eliminating ketchup from consideration as a vegetable at lunch. (Thanks, Ronald Reagan.) It's brought my whole life into focus. And yet, now and then, the lunatic will say, 'Uh huh, right! You could run them both over, take the money you got from the TV show, and live with some island beauties, drinking lime rickeys in the Bahamas!'

The lunatic is still alive. Now he just has nowhere near the impact. Besides, I can't hear him as well with the kid crying.

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When you're raising kids, it's valuable to have listened to your parents when you were young. You hope they listened to their parents, too. Passing child-rearing wisdom from generation to generation becomes very important. For instance, 'You can't party your ass off all your life.' You can, but eventually you realize it's energy misdirected.

When my attitude was bad, as a kid, my mom used to say, 'I can't wait until you have your own kid.' Yeah, right.

'It'll be all different when I have my own kid,' I'd say. I was an idiot. Parents wait for that day. And they love to rub it in.

Now, how many times have I said, 'Who put this bike here?' when I know exactly who put the bike there.

'Who put boogers on the wall? Who's wiping the boogers all over the wall!'

During one Christmas my daughter went through this phase where she'd pick her nose and wipe it anywhere. My wife, like a real smart parent, said, 'You know, you can eat those things!'

At least my wife wasn't wiping stuff on the wall.

Swearing too much around the house is also dangerous when there's a young child about. I've said stuff, then realized my daughter was listening. Even in general conversation you've got to be careful. Kids are a lot like celebrities. Even though they're in the room, people talk about them as if they aren't. You make decisions about and for the child, and you forget they can hear you. They're not stupid. And then, when you're least expecting it, they become little myna birds and repeat what you say.

Recently, my daughter and I went to the supermarket, but not the same market her mom takes her to. She goes there because there are generally fewer people there at a certain time of the day. I don't shop, but I had to get something for dinner, because I'd said I'd make dinner. On the way there, my daughter said, 'This isn't where Mommy goes.'

'I know, but it's where we're going.'

And she said, 'Ugh! It'll be a slow boat to China before you can get through that line in a hurry!'

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Life's so unfair. Carol died. That's my daughter's fish. We tried to explain death to her. She cried when she found Carol just floating there. We wouldn't have wanted her to see it, but we realized she had to start somewhere