Parental Advisory: Dirty Words Below

I know I am posting a lot. But I am trying to catch you up on the past eight months. Soon, I will have nothing more to say, or I will be too busy with the kid, and I will only post when something important happens. Do they have wi-fi in the delivery room?

One of the themes of this pregnancy has been “Brian isn’t excited enough.”

This mostly comes from my wife, but a few other people, too. It seems that since I don’t jump around every day like a Price is Right contestant, I am not really excited about being a dad.

As I’ve gotten older, excitement seems to be an emotion I experience less and less. Anger: Yeah, I can go Kanye West on someone in a minute. My grandma once tried to get me to switch from alcohol to water at a wedding where I had a little too much. The words “F-You and grandma” should never be used in the same sentence.

Sympathy/sadness: I cry at Hallmark commercials. The other night, I watched Marley and Me and bawled like John Boehner.

Excitement? Yeah, every now and then. When I got married. When I win a huge pot in poker. When my wife makes meatloaf. 

I’m excited about having a daughter. But that excitement is tempered with thoughts of sleepless nights, training bras, fending off lustful boys and paying for college. People call me a pessimist. I call me a realist. I always look at all sides of an issue.

Anyway, because I haven’t pinned the ultrasound picture to my chest and strapped myself to the fountain on Fountain Square, my wife feels I might not be excited enough. She even said that I should be more like my brother.

Now let me tell you about my brother. His name is Richard. But for the sake of this blog, we will call him Little Dick. This is his name because our dad was also named Richard and everyone called him Big Dick. They did this because he was a big guy, like me, and because he grew up in a time when it was commonplace to call people named Richard by the nickname Dick. He was well known, and it was not uncommon for us to go places around my hometown of Massillon, Ohio and hear people yell “Big Dick!” Like they used to do with Norm on Cheers. It made for some weird looks from the ladies

How could this have ever been acceptable? As far as I know, dick has been a slang term for penis forever. So how was it ever acceptable for Dick to be a good name for a young boy? Do you think the first Richard to ever be called Dick was just a big-time jerk and everywhere he went people called him that and it stuck, causing every Richard thereafter to bear that burden?

Can you imagine preparing for your son’s baptism and telling people, “This is Christopher, but we call him Cock.” The only person smiling would be the Catholic priest. How about introducing your daughter to the teacher as Tina “Tits” McGee? What were people thinking?

So Little Dick (If you ever see him, call him that. He likes it.) had a son about three years ago. Great kid named Landon. But before Landon comes along, my brother reads every parenting magazine you can imagine. He checks out books by the ton. He is super dad. Every conversation he has is about his son. “Little Dick, do you have any aspirin? I have a headache.” “Brian, did you know a newborn baby's head accounts for about one-quarter of its entire weight?”

After the kid is born, it gets worse. One day I visit him and I am sitting on his living room couch. I decide to count the pictures of his son just within my eyesight. 75. People think I am lying when I tell this story. I swear on my grandma’s grave. (Yes, the same grandma who tried to cut me off!)

That 75 number takes on some significance because, at Christmas, Landon also got 75 presents. My brother was buying three pairs of Nikes in three different sizes so his son could rock a color-coordinated outfit and have room to grow at all times.

He is a tremendous dad, but to say he is obsessed is an understatement. So, when my wife says, “You should be more like your brother,” I know what she means. I counter with, “You should be more like Megan  Fox. Or Jennifer Garner. Or Penelope Cruz. Or that Nasty Nikki in that Prince song.”

Ok, I really don’t do that. I might be 45, but I am not ready for dentures.

I haven’t glanced at one parenting magazine. If something goes wrong with my kid, I can Google it. Kid turns green? Punch “baby is turning green” into Google and I will have every answer I need. Most likely, someone rubbed cheap copper all over her or she rolled around in daddy’s secret stash of “parsley.”

I’m not going to match my brother. The truth is, I can only be me. I am EXCITED about my daughter. Price as Right EXCITED!!!! But I will approach her like I do everything else in life…by examining all angles, weighing pros and cons and planning for a successful outcome.

That works with kids, right?