Pater Familias … because I'm your FATHER!

A Man Must Do His Own Daisy Girl Iron-Ons

February 17, 2010 · House | Influences | Suburban Survival

SAH dads, you know you’re working the gender role thing, but where do you draw the line?

Father Rejects Dogginess, Does His Own Job

If we stay-at-home/work-at-home fathers had a mascot, it would be a dog, a special dog.  

The dog that can count to seven.

The counting per se is no big deal, except a dog does it.  

So it goes with guys getting strokes for doing routine parental and household tasks that nobody even notices when women do the same. Wrong but I’ll take it, as I have for six years and however many months since the first solo in public with Little Baby Girl Child.

Just show up with LBGC, people would get all goofy about what a good daddy I was. By people I mean females. Think of a tanning bed, except with rays of lovingkindness from women. That was the whole wide world.

Kid dad doesn’t do that old baby dad voodoo, but a guy can still rack up points for doing even a half-way job on anything housewives did in 1957.

Other week I showed up at school with some box-mix muffins that a lesser ape could make, and a mama-pal gave me a big glowy What a good father you are. She meant it, too, as she did when she offered to iron on the new flower petal due on Girl Child’s vest at the upcoming monthly meeting of Daisy Girls Troop 80.

The woman happened to be the first person I saw after officially declaring our own iron lost in household clutter. When I asked her if I could use her iron, she laughed and said to just give her vest, she’d do the petal.  

A pal being a pal, for sure. But I also picked up a sideband mamacode message that a man ironing-on was sort of silly. I passed on the offer and ironed elsewhere.

All in my head, maybe. On the other hand, I’m six-seven years in and wiser to the ways of the counting dog. Special consideration is great, but also a trap. Sometimes I just want to do the job.

In this case I like the job. Like the tool, a slab of coil-heated stainless, with minor risk of burning materials and/or self. And I like melting two components together. Ain’t nobody ironing, bro, this is fabric welding.   

What kind of a man would let a mama weld his kid’s Daisy Girl vest?

Not my kind.

Woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof.

So, Daddy-O, still workin' it? Where do you draw the line? 

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