A Brief History of Dads

If you've tried looking me up, the DSM IV doesn't have a place for my kind. So here it is, succinct susceptibilities to explain my predilection for the older gents. By no means complete, but some of the features that make me complete, birth to present.


1985

Pushed out of the uterus on the early morning of Mardi Gras. Adapts well to the notion of being naked and ogled by elders in exchange for beads.

Spends crucial mental- and pulmonary-development months starring as The Lucky Baby at Babylon Lanes, a tobacco-tarnished talisman passed around her parents’ bowling circle.

1986

Dad introduces his wobbly, clapping daughter to the Amazin’ Mets in a victory against Houston on July 3. Apt preparation for the coke-snorting, room-wrecking, egomaniacal jocks who would hit on his wobbly, clapping daughter in fraternity houses 20 years later.

1987

Demands to dress up as “Chinese food” for Halloween, prompting her mother to tailor a politically incorrect interpretation of a Japanese geisha and forevermore equip her with an alias to entertain businessmen at tea houses in Kyoto.

1988

Imaginary boyfriend, Billy, debuts. He is 21, drives a red Cadillac, lives on Mexico Island and does not win Mom’s imaginary approval.

Learns how to play poker in Atlantic City, and is thereby inducted into one of the largest of old man milieus before entering kindergarten.

1989

Develops first pseudo-sexual crush on Mike, her public pool’s swim instructor. Foreign to effectual flirting, takes to splashing at inopportune, unrequited moments. Never advances beyond the level of Guppy.

1990

Develops first pseudo-puppy crush on Steven, the oldest kid on the school bus. Vaguely familiar with the biological concept of peacocking, she is drawn to his Reebok Pumps and his ability to consume a whole cupcake in two bites.

1992

Sees her grandfather for a final visit before mandatory estrangement, the direct result of him trying to strangle her grandmother with a telephone cord. The first of the familial males to isolate her, she mourns a Dennis the Menace-watching and soft-boiled egg-eating partner-in-crime.

1993

Seeks counsel in her five-years-older BFF on How to Write a Dirty Letter. Drops a note that alludes to “playing doctor” in the sweatshirt hood of yet another schoolbus crush—Sean, the freckled, brace-faced and ribbed sweater-wearing elder statesman of Hobart Route 9.

1994

Takes the amateur pornography short story circuit by storm with an offering penned by herself and a sleepover accomplice, in which protagonist Sydney Cartwell, an Australian with a BIG PENIS, decides to HAVE SEX while using A CONDOM with a girl who says MMM. For an entire paragraph. Her mother finds the story on loose leaf paper in her bookshelf. The accomplice is, undoubtedly, never invited to sleep over again.

Harbors an improbable crush on Rob, the affably misunderstood community college professor who runs an astronomy course in her enrichment workshop. Quickly learns that inflatable starlabs are the most romantic place to meet your fellow air sign.

1995

Copes with the stroke of her non-estranged grandfather, a pitfall that renders the mental and physical faculties of her biggest fan completely non-responsive. Noticing the incalculable vacancy in his eyes when she floats her softball sportsmanship trophy before his face, she internalizes this as her symbolic death of patriarchs.

1996

Wooed by the wondrous world of America Online chat rooms in a hot, dial-up minute, she lures such luminaries such as SirSexySam, Shlngboy99 and KingSc0rp with pictures of girls cut from magazines and promises of future nudies.

1997

Develops the most inappropriate, never-to-be-seen-or-mentioned-again crush possible on her brother’s uncle—no, not her uncle—at her brother’s understatedly tragic funeral. Um. Don’t judge her grief.

1998

Male history teacher wins her over with such lines as, “You’re much too fun for the Ivy League,” and “Yours was the second-bloodiest diorama I graded this year.”

Fine-tunes the finite identity of Julee Wellington, her promiscuous 23-year-old Manhattanite artist Instant Messenger alter ego. Forms lasting correspondence with Brian from Seattle, with help from a picture of her friend’s skate punk older sister. And promises of nudies.

1999

Reads Lolita. Claims to not see “what all the fuss is about,” but curses her rearing and genetics for not allowing a nymphet pre-pubescence to take hold.

Watches Robin Ventura hit his legendary Grand Single in Game 5 of the National League Championship Series on television, in a 15-inning game lasting five hours and 46 minutes. Masturbates for the same length of time immediately following the game.

2000

Remains completely undaunted when mother gives birth to a miracle baby and the hometown populace immediately assumes it’s hers.


2001

Wins first prize in a poetry contest for an entry with graphic references to statutory rape. Reads prize-winning free verse in a hotel banquet room before her parents. Oh, joy.

2002

Watches the movie Beautiful Girls. Not Timothy Hutton’s best role, but it basically. explains. everything.


2003

Male English teacher writes in her senior yearbook, “Don’t let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy.” Swoon.

Loses virginity to a junior after senior prom. Never sleeps with a younger guy again. Ever.

2004

Assumes a three-year-long crush on The Boy in the Study Lounge, the lone of her dormitory contemporaries to use a trucker hat to hide male pattern baldness and wear old man slippers to solve problem sets.

Finds a minefield of dejected dads when she starts working the overnight shift at Home Depot. Just sayin’.

2005

Creates a football home game T-shirt slogan that attempts, for the first time, to elucidate her long-standing unnatural proclivity in a Big Ten forum. Ahem: Thank Your Dad for Parents Weekend.

2006

Nearing blackout, puckers up for the kiss that lives in Evanston infamy—her coordinates, Bill’s Blues, and her victim, a 50-year-old golf course groundskeeper unflatteringly dubbed “Mike the Irish” by his cohorts.

2007

Tiring of peers, opts to date a 37-year-old part-time tennis instructor, beach bum, drunk driver, progeny of an electrical engineering professor and Mike the Irish acquaintance. Breaks it off after he texts her a picture of a rainbow, but not before employing his brute strength to help her move to a new Lakeview apartment.

Joins an intermediate-level co-recreational slow pitch softball team in Roscoe Village. Embraces her veritable-ringer status as the cookie-baking, sock-wearing, youngest 20-something on a 30-something squad.


2008

Forms the band Weekend Dad with Kay and Espe. The Hawaiian shirt-and-Doobie Brothers concept never makes it past the first rehearsal.

Finds unhappiness with a 34-year-old reformed heroin addict and ex-convict bartender who is evicted during their courtship. What else is new.

Tries to semi-retire the term “dad” in favor of the acronym “IUs” (Irresponsible Uncles) to better describe her conquests. “Dad” rebounds as the irremovable colloquialism when she considers the probability of her trysts’ seeds’ whereabouts.

Forms a fleeting penpalship with a 43-year-old NASA rocket scientist and microbrewery stakeholder from Maryland. His Julie Newmar fetish take correspondence to a taxing level, then a very terminated level.


2009

Sensing distance from her roots when she takes to dating guys within ten years of her own age, registers “worldsgreatestfather” as her personalized Facebook URL. Blessed be.