“Dad, I don’t want to embarrass you,” my twelve-year-old son said from the backseat of the van as we headed to the school picnic. I laughed, although he was trying to be sincere. I shared a look with my wife, one that clearly indicated a mutual understanding.
I have three kids. The idea that I can be embarrassed by them is a joke. It’s laughable. It’s not possible. Because it has already happened so many times that I have no shame left.
When my daughter was six-months-old, she threw-up at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. And not cute little spit-up. We are talking full-on Linda Blair Pea Soup Exorcist barf. The kind that is mixed with old breast-milk and chunks of rice cereal. It hit curtains. Very expensive curtains. And she did this in front of a bunch of people and store clerks. Dumbstruck and inexperienced, I tried to clean the spillage up on the floor with my shoe. I considered taking off a sock. That was pretty embarrassing.
My middle son, when he was a toddler, had the classic meltdown at the grocery store. Why was he upset? Because he was tired of walking. We had been there ten minutes.
By this time, it would take more than just a normal toddler meltdown in public to make me embarrassed. I knew by then to let him go nuts, and that I wasn’t budging. I can’t shop and carry at the same time. Suck it up, buttercup. Everything was going fine.
“Son, you can scream all you want. I don’t care,” I said. Ha, victory is mine.
Then my son dropped an F-bomb. In front of all the other parents. An old lady gasped.
That was embarrassing.
I thought I had potty training down. I used a tarp in the living room. Easy clean-up, very little mess. We were on a mission.
My daughter was just under three. Everything was going well. I gave her very clear instructions. Pee in the potty, that is where it goes. As we were on our way to potty victory, the doorbell rang.
At the time, I was a nice parent. I was patient and had a lot of shame. There was a salesman at the door, and I was trying to let him down easy. I don’t need your steaks that you are selling from the back of your Honda, but thanks anyway. And then behind him, I see my pantsless daughter running down the driveway. She still had her shirt on.
She took my distraction as a chance to go streaking in the neighborhood in broad daylight. She went out the back door while my back was turned. You know what, it’s pretty embarrassing for a grown man with a beard to be chasing a naked toddler down the street. I got a lot of looks from the stay-at-home moms that day.
A couple of weeks later, when I thought we had potty training down, we were at the park with a lot of friends. I found my daughter’s underwear in a tree. She had an accident and put them up there to dry. She was going commando on the slides.
And on that subject, she once flashed a Mormon at some sort of holy site because she wanted to show off her underwear. I’m not Mormon. I didn’t know it was a religious shrine. We left shortly thereafter.
Public meltdowns are no longer embarrassing. A public meltdown where my youngest son pulled dishes off of shelves because I wouldn’t get him a stuffed animal was very embarrassing.
My middle son told the ticket taker at the movies that “Dad has very stinky poops in the morning.” I have never gone back to that particular movie theater.
I’ve been pantsed at public functions because one of my kids wanted to climb up on me. I was wearing my sexy underwear. I don’t even know which kid did that because by this time I figured they had come to some sort of pact. It has worked.
Those are just a few, and I mean a few, times that I have been embarrassed by my children. That doesn’t even take into account the things that the kids have done to my wife. Let’s just say that if you live in the Midwest, you have probably seen her boobs by accident by now.
I believe that this is all evolutionary. This way, by the time our children become teens, parents are no longer able to feel embarrassment. That term no longer exists in my lexicon. It is a foreign concept, as is going to the bathroom in the morning without one of them getting on their phones and texting their friends how “Dad is ripping it up again.”
“I cannot be embarrassed,” I told my son as we got out of the van to the school picnic. “Too late, you’ve already done the damage. We could be walking in here naked while singing The Hills Are Alive, and I would be just fine.”
At that point, my son ran ahead of me.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“To see my friends,” he said. “Don’t come.”
“Why?”
“Dad, it’s embarrassing,” he said.
Not yet it isn’t. Give me some time though, and I can make that happen. Payback is a bitch.
Where’s my daughter?
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