Our night out



I’ve had better parenting moments.

My wife and I made plans to go out this past Friday night. My two daughters wanted to go with us, and started pouting when I told them no. You would have thought that we told them they were never leaving the house again.

Now, every kid pouts every now and then so that isn’t what made me mad. What set me off was the “we never get to do anything” comments. Oh, please.

“Let me tell you something,” I told my oldest daughter, who was pouting the most. “You’ve gotten to do more in your twelve years than I got to do in my first twenty-five. You’ve got friends coming over all the time, you have your own cell phone, you can go swimming anytime you want to, day or night. We are a month away from taking you to the beach- for the sixth straight year. Hell, I was almost thirty before I ever even saw the beach. So little girl, don’t whine to me about you never get to do anything.”

Then I really lost it, and couldn’t stop myself.

“For the past eight months, it’s been all about you kids. Kids this, kids that. Kids, kids, kids. Every single night, one of you little parasites has had baseball practice or softball practice or volleyball practice. If you didn’t have practice, then you had a game. If you didn’t have practice or a game, you had five hours of homework that we had to help you with.

“So no, you can’t go tonight. If you don’t mind, I’d like to take your mother- who by the way is still my wife- out on a nice, romantic date.”

Evidently, the word “romantic” is the magic word that makes little girls say “eeww!” like I just swallowed a bug in front of them.

“We’d like to go eat at a nice restaurant for once. One that doesn’t have a drive-thru window, styrofoam cups, or crayons with their menus. I want to pay the check at the table with one of those fancy black notebooks instead of standing at the register. And speaking of menus, there won’t be any chicken strips, chicken wheels or chicken sandwiches at the restaurant where we are going. Nothing chicken.

“There will be a candle on the table, a couple of glasses of wine or other adult beverages, and we’ll be playing footsies the whole time. I might even kiss your mother square on the mouth at some point.”

Again there was a loud “eeww!” Sadly, this time it was from my wife.

Because this is a family newspaper, I left a couple of choice words that I said to them out of this column. As we left, I wasn’t sure who was more upset- the girls because they couldn’t go or my wife because she thought I might try to kiss her.

So I guess I lost the Father of the Year Award again this year. Due to the new chore lists, I’m not sure I was in the running for the award anyway.

Well I guess there is always next year…



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