The How-Not-To Guide to Parenting and Marriage (6 page)

I was a bit surprised by the number of people I had upset with yesterday’s story
, The Horror. This is sincerely not my intention.

I had people angry because I had let my daughter see me naked. I had people angry because she had not seen me naked prior to the incident, and I think a few people who simply wanted to let me know that I’m an idiot . . . but that is sort of the underlying theme to these stories so it was no surprise.

At any rate, I have decided to change my writing style a bit, in the interest of not making people angry.

You will notice as you read the revised version of yesterday’s story, that at certain key points, there are blank lines, followed by a number of options for the reader to put into the blanks. This way the reader can choose the options and mold the story in a way that is least upsetting and the funniest to them. Who knows, I may have stumbled on to the future of comedy.

You will also notice that before the lettered list of options for some blanks, it will say “use corr. Letter”. This simply means that to make the story flow better, it is recommended that you choose the option whose letter corresponds with the option you chose for the previous blank.

I hope you enjoy!

21. THE HORROR (revised)

My wife and I were _______ (A. arguing  B. singing hymns  C. ignoring each other  D. talking sexy to each other)  while I was showering, and she was doing her hair at the sink.

At certain points, my wife would rip open the shower curtain and _________ (use corr. letter:  A. punch me in the face   B. sing the chorus in harmony   C. ignore me face to face   D. admire my physique, and pinch me in the butt)

When she had had enough, she shut the shower curtain for a final time and left the bathroom with a slam of the door.

A few minutes later, I heard the door open again, followed by the sound of the shower curtain being ripped open. But instead of my wife standing there, it was my daughter who had just turned three.

Being a bit surprised I immediately ________ (A. tried to cover myself with a small mango scented bar of soap   B. thought nothing of it because it was normal  C. spanked her   D. hugged her   E. realized that it was my imagination because I had dead-bolted the bathroom door   F. walked out of the bathroom and down two blocks to the local bar, still wet and naked)

After she had left I __________ (use corr. letter:   A. tried a bite of the mango flavored soap because it smelled so good   B. continued to think even more nothing of it   C. told her mother to re-spank her   D. told the rest of the family to come in the bathroom for a hug   E. realized that her leaving must also be my imagination since the bathroom door was dead-bolted and it had been my imagination that she was there in the first place   F. got beat up by a biker gang who didn’t appreciate a wet naked guy in their bar ).

I then stood there in the shower fully expecting a visit from ___________ (A. the child molester cops   B. the Nudist society   C. a Republican politician   D. a Democrat politician   E. extra-terrestrials) who would surely _________ (use corr. letter:   A. arrest me   B. congratulate me   C. ruin the country   D. ruin the country   E. abduct and p
erform experiments and probings on me).

In the end I had definitely learned my lesson, from now on I would __________ (A. always shower with clothes on   B. add a second dead bolt to the bathroom door   C. begin showering as a family   D. stop showering all together   E. never taste mango scented soap again   F. outlaw clothing in our family   G. make the family cover every square inch of skin with some sort of clothing   H. nothing, because this story is fictional and absurd like all my stories).
                                     

22.
SHOWERING GENIUS

Being the intellectual type, I can’t help but try to streamline daily tasks and processes.  Just because something has been done a certain way for long periods of time, doesn’t mean that they can’t be improved upon.

One morning, as I was standing in the shower, I was startled when the cat came flying through the shower curtain in a panic, followed by our dog Pippi. Now, the dog chasing the cat was nothing new around our house, but the dog and the cat ending up in the shower with me was a new development.

The brain of an ordinary man would have been preoccupied with the multiple lacerations that he had sustained on his legs and buttocks during the dog and cat scuffle that he had been in the middle of, but I barely even noticed the pain and blood. Instead, my mental gears began to turn as I stood in the warm flow of water, looking down at Pippi.

I was in the shower, Pippi was in the shower. We were both already wet, so why not give the dumb dog a bath . . . . . or shower as it were.

In the days that followed, I couldn’t help but be proud of my combining my showering with dog bathing, and I began to think of other things that
I could incorporate to make the time wasted in the shower more productive. A natural progression seemed to be washing clothes.

I figured I could just wear whatever clothes I wanted to wear for the day
, while I was in the shower. I’m sure that the scrubbing of the clothes will also seep through to my body and clean it as well. The only dilemma was whether I should use detergent or body wash, so just to be safe, I settled on using a dash of both.

The drying of the clothes needed some adjustment as well. At first, I liked the idea of just showering with the clothes on that I would wear for the day, and then just walking out of the bathroom ready to head off to work. However, I discovered that it takes anywhere from three to six hours for the clothes that you had showered in to dry, which seems to also lead to chafing in “uncomfortable places”. Chafing that my wife delighted in calling diaper rash. So now, I
shower with the clothes on that I will wear for tomorrow, and then hang them over the shower curtain rod, and put on the clothes that I showered in yesterday.

I found that by showering twice a day, I could even help out with some of the rest of the family’s laundry (with the exception of my daughters jeans because I can’t fit into them). But my helpful efforts were not appreciated, and instead, were the subject of anger and ridicule from my wife when she happened to walk into the bathroom just as I was stepping out of the shower, wearing the dress that she would most likely wear to church that Sunday . . . . Freshly laundered, might I add.

As time went on, I continued develop more time saving activities that could be incorporated into showering, and have come up with a daily showering schedule that looks like this:

Monday. .

Morning shower . . . . Laundry (I’ve now gone to a two or three outfit shower by making one or wardrobe changes)

Mid-day
shower . . . . . dishes from previous day.

Tuesday. .

Morning shower . . . . . laundry and dog every other week

Mid-day shower . . . . . dishes and watering of half the house plants (I can’t fit all the house into the shower at once, but I’m working on a rack system that would accommodate all of them)

Wed. . . . .

Morning shower . . . . . laundry, and second half of house plants

Mid-day shower . . . . . dishes

Evening shower. . . . . .Drapes and linen
, alternate

Thurs. . . .

Morning shower. . . . . .Laundry and attempt at washing one of the cats . . . if I’m feeling ambitious

Mid-day shower . . . . . dishes

Evening shower. . . . . .Bathroom throw rugs and scour the shower walls.

Friday. . .

Morning shower . . . . . catch up on any laundry or dishes

The system seems to be working well
, in spite of spending most of my days with pruned fingers. And I continue to look for new ways to improve on my system. One idea of mine, is to build a shower that you can drive your car into, so you can shower and wash your car at the same time. I would call it the “car wash” . . . . . . . Well, ok, I know that someone already used that name, so maybe I’d call it the “car shower”.

23.
BUCKLE UP FOR INSANITY

When you really think about it, who rides in back seats? I'll tell you who, children who are being driven by their parents, and teenagers who have too many other teenagers in the car with them to all fit in the front seat. That's who rides in back seats. Of course, grandma rides back there occasionally, but it's generally small children and teenagers. Knowing this, why wouldn't the car company's design the safety restraints to accommodate small children? Adults never ride back there, teenagers are too cool to care about seat belts, and grandma,. . . well she’s not gonna be around forever anyhow. But no, it requires several pounds of machinery and a PHD to safely restrain a child in the back seat.

Car seats are like a Rubik's cube for a young father. They are not in the slightest bit self-explanatory, and usually this is not apparent until the mother has already driven off with her friends to the "Pampered Chef" party, and the young father is left standing with a chi
ld in one arm, and the car seat with its seventeen buckles and straps, in the other. This is where the fun begins.

My maiden voyage with the car seat, after being left holding it in one hand and Hannah in the other, had me scratching my head and swearing for no less than an hour.  The first challenge being, getting the car seat secured in the car.

I had no idea which way the stupid thing was supposed to be facing. Should the child be facing the front of the car, or the back? Or maybe they should be strapped in like an astronaut, looking at the roof of the car. I tried to imagine different accident scenario's in hopes that I could then figure out the safest position for the seat and child. But there are too many different possibilities. A head on collision, a car hitting us from the side, a garbage truck hitting us from behind, a car hitting us from one side and a garbage truck hitting us from the other at the same time, a jetliner crash landing on top of the car, or even one of those giant worms from the movie TREMORS bashing us from underneath.  This line of reasoning was getting me nowhere, and soon had me wondering if it wouldn't be easier and safer to just place the child and seat together in the trunk.

I finally decided to strap the seat in facing forward so I could at least see what the child was up to, and moved on to the more challenging next problem; strapping the child in the seat.

For this process, I had straps, buckles, clasps, and something that looked like a noose coming from every corner of the seat. And again, it was not self-explanatory as to how each binding should be attached to the child. Growing impatient, the thought crossed my mind that it might be easiest to unstrap the seat, set the child down and then place the seat on top of the child with a bag of groceries on it as weight to keep the seat in place. At least this way, when the accident happened and the child went hurling towards the windshield, the bag of groceries and the car seat should create a large enough hole in the glass, to let the child pass through without getting scratched on the jagged edges. But surely, there would be some nosy “perfect parent” complaining as I walked up the road to retrieve my safely ejected child, so I decided against that method. So the next best thing to do was to jump into the task head first, and just start binding the child down like a pile of logs on my work truck.

Within a few minutes, I had bound each arm and leg independently by buckling and tying it down with whatever lashing happened to be nearest the appendage. But there still remained three straps that had no home. I was able to use one as a chin strap, and added a second binding to her left leg because my knot on the first strap looked suspect. With the third and final strap, I did the old once around the whole seat and child for good measure. I guess it wasn't so hard once I had gotten down to it.

Unfortunately it's not long before the child begins to outgrow their car seat. This is when a whole new set of challenges arise. The largest of which is the stupid shoulder strap that inevitably ends up across the face of the child.

At first, I would make the child keep the shoulder strap in place (I enjoyed the fact that it muffled their high pitched little voices). Unfortunately, their developing brains prevented them from realizing that they should not blow bubbles with their gum while the shoulder strap is
blocking the area needed for bubble blowing. It took half an hour and a pair of scissors to undue the knots of gum, hair and seat belt. So between that, and the whining, I soon realized that leaving the strap across the child's face wasn't going to work.

Thinking I had the perfect solution, I tried to take the shoulder strap and give it a good wrap around their neck, leaving it positioned perfectly out of the way of the child's face. However, my wife, rolling her eyes, told me that this idea "wasn't too bright".   So I ended up simply safety pinning the strap to their shirts, and out of the way, and gum is outlawed while in the car.

The hassle and stress that seat belts have caused me, has without a doubt, taken time off the end of my life. Now that my kids have gotten older, and know what seatbelts are, and what their function is, they have become as annoying as the “ding, ding” of the car’s seatbelt alarm. Only they don’t ding, they yell in squeaky, tattle-tale voices, “DAD ISN’T WEARING HIS SEAT BELT!!!”  Sometimes, I can’t help but wonder if the mangulation of a wreck isn't worth not having the seat belt insanity. I suppose not, but it's a close call.