Yesterday, my wife Hilary got a chance to deviate from her regular course of life as a stay-at-home mom to experience a little bit of what it's like to be dad.
As I walked into my regular post-lunch team meeting, she called me, panic-stricken.
"You need to come home NOW," she proclaimed.
Immediately, thoughts of toddlers with broken bones, blood at the bottom of staircases, electrocution, and consumption of poisonous substances with torn-off Mr. Yuck stickers came to mind.
"Why, what happened?!!" I asked.
"A chipmunk fell in Natalie's pool and can't get out."
...Pregnant pause....
"And?"
"And how the hell am I gonna get it out??" She asked me.
"Try the pool skimmer. "
Funny, that answer worked pretty well. Now, I will be the first to admit that Removus Rodentia is certainly within the domain of The Dad, right up there with burger grilling, centepide squashing and the use if any tool in the garage, but I figured that little Chippy surely wouldn't survive my commute home. Too bad. I wish I could have been there to watch Hilary do the ol' Skim-N-Flick while the kids cheered her on from the deck. It turns out that with her brave assistance, Chippy made it safely to solid ground. After the extraction, he was a bit stunned and exhausted from what was perhaps hours of chipmunk-paddling, and he didn't move for quite some time. But after some CPR (Chipmunk Poking Resuscitation) he scampered off.
So, on this day, the Mom got to experience what is one of the top glories of being the Dad. That list, of course, includes:
-Grilling a mean side of beef to perfection
-Knowing the brand and model number of the power nailer the neighbor is using simply from the sound it makes as it echoes down the street
-Keeping the family safe from harm, under a well maintained roof
-Throwing that pitch that becomes the kid's first home run
-Driving the kid to that first college interview
-Graduation day picture-taking
-Varmint removal.
Maybe this weekend will teach her to use the table saw.
Maybe not.
