Friday, August 19, 2005

...A Very Fast Year

There’s this great “Leave it to Beaver” episode where Beaver and a group of his buddies all buy sweatshirts with pictures of these really grotesque-looking monsters on the front. The guys all promise each other to wear the sweatshirts to school on the following day. Of course, Beaver shows up in his sweatshirt the next day only to discover all of his friends have backed out on the plan, leaving him to take the fall for a glaring violation of the school’s dress code.

I had a very similar experience not all that long ago. I was out with a group of friends celebrating my 30th birthday. Several dirty martinis into the evening I found myself making a drunken pact with two other couples, who had gotten married within the same general timeframe as my wife and I, to start trying to have babies right away. The logic was that it would allow our wives to commiserate since they’d all be pregnant at the same time and our future kids would have built-in playmates (obviously inebriated thinking since none of us live within 30 miles of each other).

Considering the years I spent in a fraternity, you’d think I’d know better than anyone not to take late-night drunken promises seriously. Yet there I was by the end of the month with an expecting wife. What can I say, I guess I’m just super potent. Meanwhile Couple #2, nearly two years later, are still without child, while Couple #3, to their credit, did follow through on the plan, just a little while later (they’re expecting a baby boy this January).

Writing about my first year of being a father is tricky. On the one hand, the connection between a parent and child is intensely personal. At the same time, I’m sure my own experiences are no different than the billions of others who’ve had children before me, making it difficult to say anything about the experience that won’t come off as trite or cliché.

Little Gooch, thank you for the best year of my life. Happy Birthday.

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