Kid 'N Play

When you become a parent, there are certain things about your old life that you think are dead. And you’re right, many of them are.

(See: spontaneously deciding to tell everyone at work that you just puked so you can go to the bar and watch every game in the opening weekend of the NCAA tournament and drink amounts of beer not attempted since college, which does, in fact, lead to you actually puking.)

But some other things are still alive.

One of those things, that rises from the dead like a soap opera character after six years and no movie career, is a sense of freedom. That’s what today’s show is about. Freedom.

But before I get into freedom’s triumphant return, let me give you some context on its origins:

The summer after I graduated from high school, my parents went to Europe, leaving me home alone for two weeks. As they left, I remember thinking, “I’m going to do a lot of crazy shit.”*

This was a sense of absolute freedom I had never felt before.

(Side note: How dumb were my parents? Why didn’t they just buy me a keg and send Kid ‘N Play over? Seriously. Tanya Harding and Jeff Gillooly planned things out more thoughtfully than my parents did on this one.)

The two weeks were glorious, but with each passing day, I dreaded the end of my parents’ trip more and more. Unfortunately, they came back anyway and swallowed up my new independence like a donut on Rosie O'Donnell's nightstand. The good news is that my sense of freedom returned when I left for college five weeks later. And it never went away again.

That is, until my daughter Remy was born.

She crawled out of my wife’s body, grabbed my freedom, tied it up, and locked it in somebody’s basement.

Now, hang on a second… I just want to point out that this is not an “It Sucks To Have A Kid” blog. It’s beyond wonderful to have a kid. And while a kid does bitch slap your sense of independence, there are all kinds of powerful things that step up in its absence.

Quick example: when I pick my daughter up from day care, she smiles this gigantic, mid-debate Joe Biden smile, screams my name, then wraps her little monkey arms around my neck. That is a damn nice feeling.

But I digress…

Because at some point after the dregs of the umbilical cord fall off your kid’s body, (which, by the way, is weird and gross and reminds me of Gremlins) every parent has a chance to get away for a night. I don’t mean dinner at a restaurant. I mean, you get away, away for at least one full night. It’s a sleepover.

And there are two types of sleepovers:

1) Without wife
2) With wife

I’ve personally only enjoyed Category 1, but I hear Category 2 is pretty nice and relates to other somethings that you thought were dead.

Anyway, my first trip away from Remy was last year when I went to New York City for a conference (but had ever so wisely built in extra time for myself). She was 8 months old. As the plane took off from Burbank, I remember thinking, “I’m going to do a lot of crazy shit.”

Now, it wasn’t exactly the same kind of 18 year-old crazy shit, (with the exception of planning to drink heavily) but my list was pretty exciting:

I was going to sleep the fuck in. I was going to see a movie in the middle of the day. I was going to take a nap. I was going to not make any plans and just wander around NYC for hours and hours. I was going to watch Sportscenter three times in a row like I did on sick days when I was a kid. I was going to take another nap. I was going to eat something that was beyond bad for me, in a disgustingly ridiculous, somebody call a cardiologist, you-put-bacon-on-that-too? sort of way.**

Needless to say, the first twenty-four hours were everything I wanted and more. (I did put bacon on that.)

But here’s the thing: after the twenty-four hour mark, I suddenly started to really miss Remy. And I was only a third of the way through with my list.

Forty-eight hours in, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I was even having trouble on my second nap because I was just lying there wondering what she was doing. Was she saying new words? Was I missing, like, major milestones? Holy shit, was I a total deadbeat dad?

Then, seventy-two hours in, I was Bubs from The Wire. I was miserable. I was shaking. I was an addict and I needed a fix.

And this, right here, is the one major difference between the teenage incarnation of a sense of freedom and the adult version:

As a parent, I didn’t dread the return. I couldn’t wait for it.



*I’m not talking about like, doing lines of blow off naked hookers or anything. I mean, I was 18 and I grew up in Michigan. But you can use your imagination.


**This has nothing to do with being across the country from my daughter. This has everything to do with being across the country from my wife who rolls her eyes and makes comment after comment about the look/smell/idea of anything that combines red meat, cheese and more red meat. I love her to death, but she really sucks the joy out of me doubling my cholesterol in a single sitting.