I am about 12 weeks away from
becoming a dad. Though I suppose I really already am one. The strange alien
presence inside my wife is moving around, so it has to count as a person. I am
trying to familiarise my baby with the sound of my voice and I chat to it
through the bump-ophone (as I have never called it until now and never will
again). Yesterday the whelp responded to my meandering stories and fatherly
advice by kicking me in the face. Some deep symbolism about our relationship
right there.
I am starting to consider the changes that this bizarre miracle is going to
bring to my life and I don’t mean the obvious ones like having to deal with nappies
and sleeplessness and terrifying responsibility (there must be are some good
things as well…. erm). I am going to have to start behaving like I am someone’s
father and become a role model. Which means changing pretty much every single
thing that I do. I will have to cut out the swearing that peppers my weeing
language pretty much without me even cocking realising I am bumming doing it. I
won’t be able to spend all day playing on my phone or watching TV during
mealtimes. I will have to openly state that carrots are better than chocolate.
I can’t carry on being so messy and disorganised and I’ll have to snap out of
awful habits like nose-picking, nail biting and farting. I certainly won’t be
able to punch the air after a trumpeting guff and proudly shout, “Aaah, sniff
on eeee!”
I must pretend that I don’t find all
bodily functions and childish nonsense amusing. Because if you laugh at your
baby when it deliberately tips a plate of food over its head then it will never
stop doing that. But how can you not laugh at that?
I basically have to spend the next
18 years pretending to be someone I am not and lie to my first-born about everything
that I really think and do.
All for no discernably good reason.
Because as soon as my child grows up and leaves home it will slump into the
same awful patterns of behaviour that I had lived my life by, until this
interloper turned up demanding milk and to have its arse wiped. Surely my
relationship with my child should be based on love and honesty, not with me
pretending to be something I am not for two decades. Not that they will be
fooled after the first five years. Do parents get so deep into this deceit that
they start to believe it themselves?
Will I forget who I once was?
Like Schwarzenegger in Total Recall I am leaving myself this message to remind
me of who I really was before my own brain was washed and I took on the
identity of be someone worth looking up to. One day my child will find
this article or the books I’ve written about my hopeless life and realise how
hypocritical I have been.
The truth is that we’re not teaching
our kids to be good citizens, it’s they who are teaching us. Let’s face it, our
parents never had a chance of instilling selflessness or decency into us. But
our children manage it without even really trying.
It’s pretty clear that having
children is the punishment for having been a child. I managed to evade justice
for a long time for crimes against maturity, but it’s all about to smack me in
the face, much more forcefully than these preparatory little baby-kicks.
