New dads and old stories



This young fellow that I play poker with every week is a brand new dad. You can tell he’s a great one, too. He’s quick with a story, lets us know how much he helps out, and even after a few months is eager to show a picture of the little guy. In fact, he almost skipped poker this week because the baby wasn’t feeling good, and he wanted to stay home and do whatever he could to help.

Of course, this earned him some good-natured ribbing from the fellas. You can’t threaten to miss poker and come with an excuse like that.

“What are you, a doctor?” someone asked. “Maybe he’s more like a nurse” someone else said. “Hell, that’s why I got married in the first place, so I wouldn’t have to miss poker when things like that came up,” said another guy.

And that led us all to talk about how when our first-borns came along we would take them to the emergency room for coughing or sneezing, weekend or not. I mean we didn’t take any chances whatsoever.

By the time the second child showed up you still made doctor appointments and everything, but you tried to at least wait out the weekend. No since in racking up that weekend rate. And as they got older you would always try a cough medicine or something yourself before taking them in to see the doctor.

Then those of us guys at the table with three kids admitted that by the time the third one came along, it was way worse. I came clean to everyone at the table that my third kid would have to walk in the house holding a body part in her hand before we saw a doctor on the weekend. Colds and flues weren’t enough to seek medical attention anymore. If you want professional help in my house, you at least have to cough up a lung or something.

One older guy chimed in and said that along those same lines, it also got easier to leave the kids with someone to babysit.

“Our first born was probably a year old before we let anyone else keep them,” he said. “And even then, it was only my wife’s mother. By the time our third kid came along, we didn’t even care who took the baby home from the hospital. We went from never letting the first kid out of our sight to paying whatever it took for a babysitter every now and then just to get out of the house.”

As the poker chips and family stories made their way around the table, I started thinking and remembering stories of my own over the years. And for each picture on someone’s phone or in their wallet, a snapshot in time of one of my three kids came to mind.

It seems like only yesterday that I was that nervous new daddy, willing to drive through a brick wall if her forehead even felt warm to the touch. And now twelve years later…

Who wants to babysit? Anyone? Hello?