Recently, I dragged my daughter along with me on what I can only describe as (gulp) an illicit rendezvous. By the time this column comes out, this Stay-At-Home Dad may very well no longer be a Stay-At-Home Dad, but instead just some guy, just some anonymous dude, just one more A-hole out on the street who pissed off his wife.
The rendezvous in question took place in New Jersey of all places (which should clue one in on my apparent, and somewhat distressing, sense of desperation). Was I in New Jersey because I am (as has been previously described) a sex-starved maniac? I mean abstinence can do strange things to a person, it can make a person do things a person might not otherwise do. All the same, there we were, daughter and father, in New Jersey, doing a little…how shall I say it?…well, shopping, so to speak.
And we found a “good one.” We found a cute one. But, after all, I’d come to New Jersey knowing what I was looking for in the first place.
Earlier in the week, I had mentioned my secret intentions to one of the other mothers with whom I typically hang out, and she, a cute one herself, had found my plans “scandalous.” Later in the week, when I first told my editor of this very column (yet another cute one) what I was going to do and how I planned to write about it here, she told me that this forum was no place for scandals or scandalizing or scandal-mongering or whatnot, and that I should go and find some other topic on which I might spew snarkily upon.
Well…Oops.
Now, it should be noted here that my (cute) wife is a vegetarian. And perhaps this was at the crux of the problem. We feel differently about certain things. I have little problem with dead animals. When she was a kid, my wife’s mother gave her a rabbit fur muff. She never wore it, of course, but she does recall petting it often like it was still alive.
The fact that the wife and I don’t see eye-to-eye on everything, though, had little effect on my executive decision. I had been mulling it over for quite some time, for a long time in fact, for months, for years even, so off I went and I did it, I didn’t tell her about it, I didn’t tell her I was going to do it, I just did it. I did some research, I made some inquiries, I called the garage, I got our car, dragging my little one along with me to witness my depravity, and I went through the Lincoln Tunnel and onto the New Jersey Turnpike and past Newark International Airport and off of the Turnpike and into the parking lot and I did it, I walked into IKEA and I bought a two-tone cowhide rug.
By the time this column appears, I will certainly be well aware of my wife’s response to my executive decision. And maybe, just maybe, this Stay-At-Home Dad will still be a Stay-At-Home Dad (although, admittedly, I may just as easily be just some random guy, just some dude tossed out on street, sheltering himself against the chills of a bitter world and a hostile universe with his brand new two-tone cowhide rug).
I guess that we’ll just have to wait and see how things turn out.
(P.S. I also bought a $29 sheepskin to insert in our dog’s bed, and I’m fairly certain that he won’t be all that terribly miffed about my executive decision. But then again, who can say? He, the dog, does tend to be something of a temperamental little beast most of the time.)
