Sunday, June 20, 1999
Fathers and kids
BY PETER BRONSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Most dads take care of their daughters like a borrowed Corvette. You agonize over the slightest scratch. A serious dent could drive you to temporary insanity. And by the time you finally figure out how it all works, along comes some grinning wiseguy to drive off with her.
Sons are like a 4-wheel-drive farm pickup. You can't wear 'em out. They will go anywhere and do just about anything — haul loads of coolers and chairs to the beach, climb steep hills in mud. And when it's time to play, dings and scratches are no big deal.
Baby-boomer parents are too politically correct, gender-sensitive and bran-muffin brainwashed to say it out loud, but girls and boys are... different. We've been harangued by the equality cops to pretend pickups corner like Corvettes and Corvettes can plow snow like a Jeep. But no matter how hard you rub it in, no car-polish can make a 4x4 look like a sports car. And a Corvette is next to useless for hauling firewood.
I know because I have one of each — no, not the cars, I'm much luckier: I am blessed with a daughter and a son.
And I am a different Dad to each of them. Both are my favorite. And they are both, at the same time, God's most wonderful gift to me.
I guess that doesn't make sense unless you're a dad. But there is a lot of senseless behavior that seems perfectly rational to members of the fatherhood.
• I'd rather miss the Reds winning a World Series than miss seeing one of my kids hit a single.
• My 10-year-old boy beats me at Nintendo “NBA Slam Dunk” like Michael Jordon going one-on-one with a Sumo wrestler — and I love it.
• The words, “Dad, can I mow the lawn?” are more thrilling than hearing, “Hello, I'm Ed McMahon from Publisher's Clearing House...”
• I firmly believe peace will come to Kosovo, Belfast and Beirut before my two children last one hour in a car without renewed hostilities over “autonomous territory” in the backseat.
• When I was a kid I swore a hundred times I would never speak the most annoying words in the history of parentkind since Abraham told Isaac, “This will hurt me more than it hurts you.” But I can't stop myself from saying, “Because I said so.”
• Three airplanes circle a few inches below the ceiling in my son's room. The P-40 Curtis Warhawk is olive drab with big, hungry shark's teeth. The Cessna is cardinal red. A forsythia yellow 1930s racer is named after my golf game: “Mister Mulligan.”
Each was painstakingly crafted during hundreds of hours of prolonged exposure to toxic inhalants.
Each frail little skeleton of feather-light balsa wood was covered with a skin of transparent tissue paper so thin it can be ripped by a sneeze two blocks away. Then it was sealed with thick paint named “dope” to remind you what kind of people do this.
These are not mere models — they are sculptures of machines that are eloquent poetry of grace, beauty and speed. The assembly method faithfully imitates the way the real airplanes were built from wood and fabric.
And one of these days, the boy will decide to see how they fly from a second-story window, probably with a firecracker attached to simulate enemy flak.
And that will be OK with me.
I did the same thing to the ones my father built for me. And he probably did the same thing to the ones his father built for him, and so on back to the days when cavemen and their sons huddled near a flickering fire, gluing flange A to spar C to assemble model rocks that were launched from a cliff.
More proof that fathers are irrational.
For years, they were so foolish they thought it would be silly to tell their own children how much they loved them. They thought the kids could figure it out by how hard they worked and the long hours they sacrificed away from the family, to give their children things they never had.
Now we know that 90 percent of fatherhood is just being there — with Nintendo games and credit cards.
We finally understand that our children are more important than jobs and meetings and the crisis of the week in Washington or at the office — but we still don't act that way. And sometimes we still think they know how much we love them without saying it.
The same guy who would never think of letting his 4X4 or Corvette run low on oil expects his kids to run on empty until one day they are grown and gone and all he has is a heart like an empty garage.
It's not so hard. Just say it.
Peter Bronson is editorial page editor of The Enquirer. If you have questions or comments, call 768-8301, or write to 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202.
Peter Bronson is editorial page editor of The Enquirer. If you have questions or comments, call 768-8301, or write to 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202.
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