The Night I Screwed Up

Ok, I did something this week that I had hoped I would never do as a dad. I seriously screwed up.

First, let me tell you that your emotions seem to grow when you are a dad. You feel things more deeply. When my little girl smiles at me, it melts my heart. I can’t wait to get home from work each day to see that smile.

Other emotions are more intensified, too. Particularly, the feeling of pain. If she hurts, I hurt. Believe me, when I tell a teenage Sydney “This hurts me more than it hurts you” as I punish her, she will scoff and call me a Mo-Fo under her breath, but it will be true.

I recently took her to the doctor’s for her monthly shots. I had to look away. I hate shots anyway, but this tiny girl barely has enough skin for a needle prick. I had to fight back the tears as they used her as a pin cushion.

Of course, Sydney did not. They heard her cries three blocks away. She has lungs like Bette Midler and the pain tolerance of Barry Manilow.

Have you ever really thought about the crying thing? I can understand crying from pain. But how do they learn that crying will get them fed or held? How do they know to cry those crocodile tears, the kind that pull at your heart strings and cause you to pick them up, which somehow miraculously ends the crying?  Do child care centers teach babies courses on parent manipulation?

My daughter is to crying as Herman Cain is to sexual harassment. A master. She will melt your heart when she sticks out her lower lip and turns on the emotion. She might be trying to manipulate, but daddy falls for it every time. When Sydney hurts, daddy wants to rush to the rescue.

Which makes what I did all that much worse.

Brooke was having one of those days. She deserves to have one of those days. When it comes to parenting, she pulls 85 percent of the weight around here. Part of it is my incompetence, part of it is my laziness. All of it is Brooke not trusting me to know what I am doing.

So it was one of those days. I was late coming home from work, so she had Sydney and dog duty to herself. She’d had some issues at work. She had more work to do from home. The house was a mess. (By the way, why didn’t anyone ever tell me that, along with a child, parenthood brings a house that perpetually looks like a tornado touched down inside?)

So when I do get home, she is starving. She puts a pizza in the over. As she is pulling it out to cool, the dogs surround her, bump her and she drops it on the floor. Pizza ruined.

For five minutes, Brooke becomes the Tazmanian Devil. I mean, she loses it. Not in an angry way, but in an I’m-so-frustrated-I-could-cry way.

That’s when hubby came to the rescue. I quickly seize my chance to be Superman for a change. First, I calmed her down. Second, I got dinner. Third, I offered to take Sydney upstairs with me for the night so she could finish her work and get a break. Reluctantly, she agrees.

So, I head upstairs and set Sydney up on the bed, propped against a pillow. I need to pay some bills, so I figure she can hang out next to me and watch television. For some reason, my daughter is fascinated with TV. I know…big surprise. But who would think TV watching would be an inherited trait? More likely, it is the vivid colors.

So I am sitting on one side of the bed paying bills. She is beside me. I get a little too interested in the bills and suddenly hear a PLOP.

Holy shit!!! My daughter has rolled off the bed!

Now, I generally move with the speed of a sleepy sloth, but I can tell you I would have passed Jamaican world record sprinter Usain Bolt if we had been racing to Sydney. I was there quicker than a Kardashian marriage and had her scooped up in about a tenth of a second.

But, this was too late. My wife had heard the thud and the immediate cries of her daughter, and she was standing in the bedroom yelling at me before I could get out the words “She’s OK.” She grabbed Sydney from me and rushed downstairs so she could comfort her away from my negative influence.

Now, the child was indeed ok. Thank God, she happened to land on a dog bed that is about four inches thick. It probably startled her more than it hurt her.

But I felt like the Jerry Sandusky of fathers. I had hurt my child! Like I said, your emotions are much stronger. I spent the next few hours mentally flogging myself.

Brooke made sure to rub it in. She claimed that Sydney’s inability to sleep that night was probably due to internal injuries. She made sure I felt like the Grinch who stole Christmas from Sydney Lou Who.

Side note: the night before, Brooke had cut Sydney while clipping her nails. The baby cried more from that then she did nose-diving off the bed. Did I make a big deal out of that? Well…yeah. But not as much!

She couldn’t make me feel worse than I already did anyway. This is one of the things I never wanted to do as a father. I know it won’t be the last time I screw up, but you never forget your first.

I hope she forgives me.