So, Do You Like ... Stuff?

I was at a pool party recently because I am a hip dude who does neato things like that. It was the type of pool party you see in commercials—everybody was laughing continuously for no particular reason and my wife was on my shoulders in the pool playfully trying to knock over my friend’s wife, who was on his shoulders. The party was DJ’d by Ryan Gosling, who I didn’t even know was a DJ. The Coors Light beer train showed up at one point when it got too hot. All ethnicities were represented. Also, none of that is true. Most of the afternoon was spent frantically taking care of kids in the pool while being sprayed with water guns from unknown locations and trying in vain to have adult conversations while being interrupted with information like, “The pizza fell on the ground but I ate it” and “That girl (points to boy) said I can’t swing as high as her did. I have to pee.” That said, I did manage to get in some adult time. Some GUY TIME no less. At one point, a group of us fellas stood ...

Part of parenting—the most important part—is understanding your children’s tendencies well enough to avoid, as best you can because it will happen, embarrassment. I’ll give you a good example of a time when my wife and I actually succeeded in this. It was the only time. More than a year ago, before our youngest came along, we were shopping at Trader Joe’s with our daughter. Having completed the process of my wife asking, “Should we get this?” and me saying, “No,” only to have her place it in the cart anyway, we made our way to checkout.  As we approached our desired checkout line, we saw at the adjacent line a woman with—I’m not exactly sure how to put this delicately, so please bear with me—an extremely large … backside. I don’t want to harp on the enormity of the backside and I am by no means judging, but I must stress that it was impossible to miss. Through some sort of parenting ESP, my wife and I, at the exact same time , gently steered both the car...