Daddy Don't Hit Me - May 2, 2007

By BC Woods

by bc woodsWhile most of my friends were enduring the rigors of adolescence, I found myself otherwise occupied. I spent middle school learning how to make bottles, give baths, and change diapers. Each morning, I arrived at school tired from a sleepless night with a crying baby, and caught the bus home each afternoon to repeat the process. To this day, I know how to heat formula milk as well as special-forces soldiers knows how to reassemble their guns from its dismantled pieces.

While my friends were beginning to explore alcohol and the party scene, I was at home rocking a crying baby, and listening to "Loveline" for advice on how not to grow up crazy. In the seemingly never-ending series of cries, the whining voice of Adam Carolla and the guffaw of Dr. Drew was my only assurance that there were in fact, other rational people in the universe other than myself.

All in all, I think I took to brotherhood more naturally than could have been expected. I did not become angry at baby Karen when she cried, and realized she was not messing her diapers to spite me.

I watched Karen's tiny lips part, as she emitted small murmurs that were the predecessors of speech. I held her fragile hands as her chubby legs marched around the room, kicking the air and stomping the ground with every primitive step. She grew, under my watchful smile, until she finally learned to speak and my mother became pregnant again.

I repeated the previous process, this time with fewer mistakes than before. I had become an adept. As a teenaged boy I was a better mother than the Harpies on "The View." When Jacob came it was the most natural thing in the world. He was my little brother and Karen was my little sister. I loved him just as I loved her. Though I never had friends or after-school activities, I had the children and that was more than enough.

The selfishness of childhood washed away. I learned to see the entire world in terms of how it affected children. Never before, it seemed, had there simultaneously been so many strollers and so many imminent dangers. Society became more concrete than just some loose ideological term discussed in class. Society became the very fascinating piece of machinery instituted by men to produce and raise other tiny men, so that those tiny men could one day institute it again.

I took my responsibilities very seriously. When the children asked me to demonstrate something, I always made sure to take my time and explain every aspect in slow, crystalline terms. When they found themselves in sudden danger, I dove in like Superman to untangle their problems. When asked the why of anything, I strove to find and answer.

Once, during the last few months before she became potty-trained, I was changing Karen's diaper. Jacob ran up beside me, wanting to play. It was the first time he had ever walked in on me changing Karen's diaper. He had been speaking for almost a year and wanted to know the why of everything. His head loomed up over the edge of the bed. His eyebrows rose halfway up his forehead, concerned.

Jacob's eyes looked to me. They looked to Karen. Never before had he been so fundamentally mystified. "BC?" he asked.

I smiled. I had been expecting to have this conversation with him for some time. The day had finally come. "Yes, Jacob. Ask your question."

His chin fell to the top of the mattress, and he sighed like a tired porch hound. "BC, why is Karen's butt-crack so long?" As I said before, I took the job of child-rearing very seriously... however, it made me laugh a lot too.