“Please remember that while you’re feeding the buffalo,” the lady at the front of the rickety wagon said, “not to touch the big bull. He will get aggressive and charge.” I looked around at the 16 kids and 4 other dads I had with me. Some were just beginning their teen years and others were in late elementary. I thought they had understood the warning. However, it was the five 3-year-olds that we had with us that I didn’t trust.
Big fluffy animal. All cute and adorable. Just a little bit over a ton of death. I wasn’t feeling very confident.
Every year, my stay-at-home dad’s group and I take a trip. This was the 7th trip we had taken together. I found a place in Northern Nebraska where we could hand feed buffalo from the back of a covered wagon. At the time, it sounded like a fun adventure, so I put it on the dad’s trip itinerary. It was advertised in small print in the back of a travel magazine. It seemed like a good idea.
We’ve done 10 other trips since I’ve been home with the kids. 16 kids, 5 dads, and a direction is all we need. The only requirement seems to be to find the goofiest, weirdest stuff we can and go see it. And for the most part, even with the buffalo, it’s worked out pretty well.
I’ve seen 3 different large balls of twine with the kids. The world’s largest pair of overalls and underwear (unrelated.) I’ve met a guy that stuck boats upside down in concrete and also raised peacocks for some reason.
There’re very few rules for the dad’s trip, except that moms are not allowed to go. Not that they would particularly want to cross an 88-year-old wooden suspension bridge. This is not to say we wouldn’t include the moms, but the truth is that they probably wouldn’t have a very good time. That, and they are working.
When I usually tell my stories of the dad’s trip, I give the highlights like the buffalo. The suspense kind of hangs in the air. And as a humor writer, I twist the scene and let it sit to heighten the punch line a little bit more. People expect this, and most assume I take these trips for the joke. And that may somewhat be true. I mean, when you play baseball on the Field of Dreams with a couple of nuns, the joke kind of writes itself.
But no one seems to really understand WHY we do the dad’s trip. They expect us to be goofy, and so that is what they see in the stories I tell about a bat sleeping an inch from our heads in a chalk mine. Yes, it is goofy, but that is not the reason we take the trip. It’s not even close. There is a ton of stress and planning when it comes to the trip and would I really go that far for a joke?
Yes, of course I would. But it’s more than that. I started going on the dad’s trip because it was a way to build the memories that my kids and I would need for the rest of our lives. It really is that simple. These are the moments that they are going to go back to when life is hard. It’s going to bring a smile to their face. It’s going to remind them that the world isn’t all cruel and that most of it is pretty sweet. There’s a guy that built a Dungeon and Dragons Playground just for his son. Those are the type of people that I want my children to remember.
Those are the ones that I want to remember. I take the dad’s trip to bond with my kids and my friends. To give us all something to look back on and know that the time we spent together was worth it. And that when life gets hard, that memory will always be there for them and for me.
By the time you read this, I will be on the road again with my dads. We may be on the world’s longest go-kart track, or at the birthplace of the Happy Birthday Song. But where ever we will be, I’ll be watching my kids with their friends. They’ve been doing these together since they were babies and have grown up together. They aren’t so much friends anymore but closer to brothers and sisters. All 16 of them. Our oldest now is driving. Our youngest, the ones that wanted to pet the buffalo, are heading into third grade. They’ll laugh and play, and when you listen, they will retell the stories from the other trips. About the time they jumped 20 feet into a quarry or when we found a castle tower in Iowa.
And I’ll sit back and remember with their stories, and I’ll smile. I’ll remember why I chose to stay home with the kids in the first place and sacrificed my career to do so. I’ll look at my teenage son and daughter and remember the first time they saw the capsule from Apollo 13 when they were little. And I’ll look at my youngest son, 8-years-old now, and recall how for a very stressful afternoon, he and his little friends tried to pet a huge buffalo while I remembered that I should make better decisions in the future.
See the Publisher’s Weekly Review and buy Shannon’s book here:
The Ultimate Stay-at-Home Dad: Your Essential Manual for Being an Awesome Full-Time Father
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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