The first few months of being a dad weren’t quite as odd as I’d imagined. Of course, nothing can truly prepare you for the reality of parenthood. A lifetime worth of television, movies and literature depicting the endless sleepless nights and ear splitting screams are no less a primer than the endless procession of people who line up to tell you the same things in slightly different words, “Just wait,” they sing with a satisfied smile, “everything changes!”

And they’re right, everything does. Though not exactly how I expected.

Cindy and I would experience the soul siege of sleepless nights two and a half years later with the birth of our son, but we were spoiled with our daughter. She came, at least for the first couple of years, with her batteries included. She gave us little trouble and allowed us to believe we were some sort of super parents.

This parenting gig was easy, we thought. We’d spent nine months with Mia as our constant companion, even though she had been stuck on the side of the womb which carried an echo. She was no less our confederate once confined to the car seat.

She accompanied us on every adventure, sat with us during every meal, and was included in much of our everyday conversation. She had her mother’s giant eyes, her father’s giant smile, and seemed to have an old soul aware enough to constantly evaluate her surroundings.

I know I was obnoxious as a first time father. Three months into being a dad, I acted as though I was the first person to ever become a parent. I often spray my puppy dog slobber all over the place, even on those things I am not terribly excited about. When it came to my offspring, I was as giddy as gremlin after midnight. Yet, my enthusiasm wasn’t entirely blind.

I was immediately dedicated to being the best dad I could possibly be. A large part of that was in the way I communicated with my daughter. Just because she didn’t understand every word, didn’t mean she wasn’t trying. And how was I to know she didn’t? What if there was a tiny part of her brain, one chip amid the circuitry, which truly did understand it all; something deep in the recesses of her brain granting access to our collective unconscious.

I could feel the curious looks from outsiders as I spoke to my baby in full and rather robust sentences. And yes, I did occasionally feel odd beneath the stares. But I kept right on marching along with the nouns, verbs and dangling participles. I was positive my effort would one day explode forward in a torrent of accumulated language. Every word I’d slammed against the backboard alone would one day be part of our volley.

And they were.

Sometime around 18 months of age, our daughter started marching through the house spewing both questions and answers in long, elegant sentences. Within a couple of months after that, her favorite word was actually, which she used as the start for every other new sentence. But it was a full year before that when I got my first taste of the fun which would one day accompany the constant banter with my baby.

It was during a game of, My Turn, Your Turn.

Mia was six months old. I was laying on the bed beside Cindy, with Mia between us. I rolled over, lifted Cindy’s shirt a few inches above her innie and blasted her belly with a zerber loud enough to rattle the windows in the apartment below.

“Stop it,” Cindy said, even though she didn’t mean it.

“Did you hear what she said?” I asked Mia. “She said it’s your turn.”

A smile spread on Mia’s face; a big, giant colossus of a grin. She crawled over to Cindy, climbed on her belly, lifted her shirt exactly as I had, pursed her tiny lips, and blasted her belly with a zerber which barely fluttered the thin cotton of Cindy’s tee-shirt.

“My turn!” I blasted Cindy’s belly a second time, even louder than the first. “Your turn!” I turned to Mia and smiled.

We continued to trade turns as Cindy patiently watched me and Mia abuse her belly as blasting pad.

Mia was not yet speaking, but she understood exactly what was happening and knew precisely how to play her part. I felt as warm and connected to my daughter that day as the sun in the sky exchanging places with the passing moon.

I knew things would change when I became a dad, though I could have no idea how much or why. I did not know what sort of father I would be because I could have no true idea what the job required. It didn’t take long for me to realize that being a father would simply require me to be my best self as often as possible, providing my child with the constant opportunity to observe and absorb.

Soon enough, all those observations will gather to something significant. Your child will take all she is, blend it with all she came from, then mingle it with every little lesson learned to finally reveal a brand new personality for all the world to see.

Yes, having a child means everything changes, but it isn’t just sleepless nights and endless feedings. Your child will change you as well, especially if you allow it. Children will change your expectations of who you are and who they might one day be.

Allow these changes to happen, nurture the incremental bits of evolution, and allow each day to shape you.

Idon’t want to dip too far into hyperbole here, so I’ll say my mom is the 47th most annoying person to ever live.

She’s not mean or evil or anything. In fact, my old lady is about as nice as they come. But that and two dollars will get me a single cup of Venti black and not one drop more. It isn’t so much that she’s annoying, it’s that my mom is entirely delighted with her unique nature, and every small or large annoyance it may bring.

My mommy dearest feels she is above the boundaries of “boring” society. Asking her to adhere to these fundamental laws is the same as asking her to “fit into a little box;” an accusation she’s made more times than I can count or care to remember. Examples of my shoving her into said box would be requesting she show up on time (which she now does more often than not!), handle her finances in a way that doesn’t continuously lean on the goodwill of those around her, or maintain a house that doesn’t require the use of a Hazmat suit for even the briefest visit.

My mother’s house, both inside and out, looks as though the surrounding boroughs were flipped upside down, with their contents shaken and strewn hither and tither, with about half  landing in and around her plot.

Though my mom has always been a big giant bag of happily crazy, and as much as it drove me nucking futs for my entire life, getting upset was like shaking my fist at the sun for making me hot. I naively assumed that becoming a grandmother would soften some of her loco, but my mother is a performer. She did not see a grandchild as an opportunity for personal evolution, or a new chance to set an important example for. Rather, she saw it as an extension of the stage where she could do her song and dance before a brand new set of eyes.

“Please Mom,” I’d beg, “Can you just try and bring a little less of your crazy?” Yet my mom would merely give vent to her cackle and fuel me with the same frustration I’d been feeling for years.

My mom is the type of visitor who will knock on your door at completely random times, with no warning beyond the telltale sound of her giant fistful of jingling keys. ”Hi Mom,“ I’d say, looking past her at the full moon in the sky. “Couldn’t you have maybe…I don’t know…called first?“

“Oh, you know I’m not a planner,” she’d say, with a dismissive wave of her hand to let me know that I am simply too uptight.

I’d hoped, and even dared to believe, that a marriage would mute some of my mommy’s foggy manners. Instead, it seemed like it only made her consider them especially funny. Again, new eyes to my mom have always equaled new audience. I wish I could tell you the first words she ever said to Cindy, just twenty seconds after their introduction, but they are rather unbelievable and I’d hate to damage my credibility.

Getting married hadn’t moved our relationship forward in the way I had hoped it would, but I was still willing to believe that having a child would bring new behavior all the way home.

Sidewalk can stay frozen all winter long, but eventually the sun melts the snow. Right…right?

Wrong.

My mom would still show up in the middle of dinner, at bed time, or on a random Sunday afternoon. Sometimes to ask for money, occasionally to drop off something special she found at the thrift store (or along the side of the road), and every now and then just to say hello. Often, she would call me up to share whatever random thing was floating through her head.

Right about now you may be thinking that I’m an ungrateful son with no interest in talking to his mother. I assure you, this is not the case. I’d like to submit as evidence to the esteemed members of the jury, Exhibit A: an actual sample snippet of conversation between us.

“Hello.“

“Hi, booger baby. I just heard the acoustic version of Hotel California on 93.1. They’ve been playing such great stuff lately. Glen Frey had the best hair in the 70’s. I don’t know why he had to go and get all butch with those Holiday Health Spa Commercials. He and Jackson Brown always had the best hair. Your father and I saw them both one time in concert, but…“

“Um… yeah, Mom, I’m kinda busy,” I said, a crying baby splitting the silence in the background. “We’re in the middle of dinner, just like we are every day at this time. Did you need anything specific?”

“No. I was just driving and heard Hotel California….

&$$#*^(@$^$(*&#^$(@#*$^@#&*$^&#*($&@#^$&#)*_#@*$#@&!”

After yelling a string of profanities in my ear, aimed at another driver but loud enough to make me hold the phone away from my head, she returned to the conversation.

For about a second.

“Hold on! I think there’s a cop behind me!” I waited through the longest minute of silence ever, while my baby daughter continued to cry. Then, finally, “You there?”

“Yeah, Mom.“

”What was I saying?“

”You were talking about Glen Frey’s hair.“

”Oh yeah, he’s such a cutie-pie!“

After she finished her girlish little giggle, “I’m going to finish dinner now, okay.”

She released a rather large and overly dramatic sigh, then said, “Fine!” in a tone suggesting I’d denied her a loan or perhaps ran over her puppy.

This type of exchange was common, and frustrated me to no end back when it was just her and me. Yet no amount of my words could ever succeed to convince her of this. Deep down, my mom always believed that since she thought her behavior was cute, then everyone else did, at least on some level, as well. Of course, once Cindy and I were together, my deeply rooted feelings became a result of the new woman in my life who had “succeeded in changing me.”

By the time we were married with our first child, Cindy had been together for nearly five years and I was still running in the same circles with my mom that I had been since pre-adolescence.

Old dogs may not be able to learn new tricks, but fortunately they can sometimes learn enough to at least pretend. It’s now eight years since the birth of our daughter, and though my mom is still the 47th most annoying person to ever live, she has come a long, long way.

Being pregnant with my first child was one of the best periods of my life.

Yes, I am and always have been a dude, but with both of our children, Cindy and I were unabashedly pregnant together. She stopped drinking and started eating for two. So did I. I even quit caffeine, which for me is only slightly less painful than surrendering sunlight.

Our daughter had her name within a few days of us knowing we were pregnant. Like most things between us, it took Cindy and I little more than a minute to agree. We had two names decided; one for a girl and another for a boy.

We did not, however, have any desire to know the sex of our child.

Keeping the gender a mystery was non-negotiable for us. We loved playing pretend and what if?, but that was merely shaking a box beneath the tree. We never truly wished to know what was waiting inside. My grandfather declared Cindy’s swollen belly a girl, approximately sixteen seconds after he saw it for the first time. Most everyone else was certain our first born would be a boy.

Mia Maxwell, as she was instantly called, was our constant companion and we included her in many conversations throughout each day. We sang her songs, read her stories and loved her with every molecule we had. Beyond the constant adoration, we fed our daughter well.

Cindy and I love to share food. We courted one another across many a restaurant table and have always considered breaking bread as one of the best possible ways to strengthen our bond. Pregnancy, for us, was a first class, guilt free ticket to a nine month long buffet.

We were married in Vegas. Even though our daughter attended the wedding, we figured she probably couldn’t hear too well from her side of Mommy’s tummy, so we told her all about it over chocolates later that evening. We also told her how we said “I do!” in a gondola, and about the nice people at the restaurant that afternoon who had given us half of our check, in addition to a rather large and completely free desert. We told her about the Cirque de Soleil performance at the Bellagio, how the dancers took our breath away, and all about the Krispy Kremes we had in lieu of wedding cake.

We became legally one in the final week of summer, a couple of weeks before Cindy would return to school with a new class of students, this time as Mrs. Platt. We would watch the season change just one final time before we would be Mommy and Daddy out loud.

We did all we could to prepare for our baby, both emotionally and with all the necessary and unnecessary things which first time parents do to baby-proof their homes and prepare for their new lives. Yet there is nothing that anyone can truly do to brace themselves for the inevitable seismic shift that comes with being a parent. Not really. No matter how many things you read, hear or see, nothing can truly prepare for the endless fatigue and euphoria which comes with nurturing a new life.

On some level, I believe this is something most every new parent understands. It is not merely the discomfort of the swollen belly which makes it so difficult to truly relax.

Imminent fate followed us like a shadow. We were eager for our new dawn to break, yet every day seemed to harbor more gravity than the one before. Months of preparation had readied us only for uncertainty. Avid enthusiasm coalesced with a slight sliver of melancholy as we marinated in the thought that life as we knew was nearly over; a unique feeling we would not experience again until the weekend before the birth of our son.

That final week drifted by in a fog. We held hands tighter, slept harder, and spoke softer.

Then, one bright winter day when the year was still fresh, we welcomed Mia into our world.

“You’re pregnant!”

“No, I’m not.”

Though I was only 10% sure when I first started to chastise Cindy, I was 100% right in the end. Pink lines tell no lies, at least when they materialize in the middle of white boxes.

I had been adamant that she was pregnant, but more for grins and giggles than anything else. Cindy denied it, but only because it seemed impossible to believe. Though we had many times discussed the inevitability, neither of us felt we were quite ready for a child. Though our daughter was planned, she appeared in our lives about two years earlier than expected.

When I met Cindy, she was working out of a research laboratory in Seal Beach, California. She had been working there about a year, transplanted from Texas after being honored as Teacher of the Year for the Houston Unified School District. A cutting edge reading curriculum, based out of Johns Hopkins University but with limbs all over the nation, was looking for her precise skill set. They recruited and quickly moved her out to the Gold Coast.

Eventually, Cindy found her way into my family’s flower shop. We met, flirted, and fell in love. In that order and all rather immediately. Less than a year passed before we were living together in a tiny corner lot of our own happily ever after.

Cindy spent her days either traveling across the country, visiting an endless stream of schools, or behind a desk in a mahogany office overlooking the verdant green grass of a golf course just a mile from the sea. What she had once considered a rather glamorous life had turned into a ball and chain which pulled her far from our cozy existence for about two out of every five days. And those times when she wasn’t in a far off hotel room missing me, she was stuck in her office nursing the dull ache of no longer having a classroom of her own where she could spend nine months bonding and bettering a single group of children.

Her new career had great pay and even better benefits. But still, the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze. So Cindy said sayonara to the posh office and landed a position teaching 4th Grade at a small elementary school about a mile or so from my flower shop.

Though the birds and the bees were still responsible for our baby, it was the change of hives which made the honey happen. More specifically, it was Tigger, the cat.

Tigger was the unofficial mascot of the school, and fell under the fierce protection of both the majority of the faculty and the administration. Yet, Tigger and Cindy were ultimate foes from day one. Cindy has asthma and an allergy to cats, a set of soft spots which must have hung like a scent in the air, for Tigger played on her weakness at every opportunity.

The cat would saunter into her classroom, undaunted, arrogant, and entirely dismissive of her reprimands. He’d pace the room waiting to capitalize on the first opportunity to launch himself onto her desk, bookshelf, or overhead projector. Though she would try to shoo him away, nothing worked. Sometimes Tigger would hiss. Occasionally, Cindy would slip into a torrent of wheezing.

Despite her difficulties, the cat was a permanent fixture. Even after Tigger sank his teeth into the arms of a student and animal control was called to carry the cat away, it returned to a warm reception in no time.

About midway through Cindy’s first year at the school, her allergies grew so bad that she had to leave school early one day, a closed throat and swollen eyes sealing the deal. Being the new girl on campus made her mute for any sort of change, so she made an appointment for the allergy doctor instead. It was a new doctor, three freeways away. I got off work early so we could drive to the office together; vibe on some good music and awesome conversation.

We held hands as the doctor diagnosed Cindy, mumbled a prescription and, without so much as glancing up from the clipboard, said, “This medication will dim the effects of your birth control.”

We looked at each other and smiled, each remembering our side of the previous evening’s conversation. “Okay,” we shrugged our shoulders and said.

A few hours passed and we were pregnant.

Then, six weeks later…

“You’re pregnant!”

“No, I’m not.”

The back and forth had been going on all week. Cindy was sick as a dog… and somehow different. I had no true frame of reference of early pregnancy outside of television, film or the pages of a book. I’d never actually seen it up close. But I’ve always enjoyed teasing Cindy and pregnancy for some reason seemed like something especially funny to rib her about.

“You’re pregnant!”

“No, I’m not.”

The final time I said it was just a few seconds before we’d both know for sure. It was five after six in the morning. I was already late for work. “Are you scared?” I said.

“Terrified.”

“Me too.”

I held the answer in my hand. I looked down, then at her. I swallowed. “We’re pregnant.”

A swollen face detonated in tears; a sudden, heaving torrent. Because I did not know what else to do, I joined her. We cried together. For five forever feeling minutes, we did nothing else. We wept with happiness and fear and hope and panic and joy and fright and elation and worry and anticipation and angst and bliss.

We cried, but we were truly happy.

“We’re pregnant,” she finally echoed.

“Yes,” I agreed. “Are you ready?”

“No…” she shook her head, then started to hack laughter through her tears, “…and yes. Are you?”

“No, and yes,” I said, not only matching her sentiment from the moment, but from every time we’d played What if? during the preceding few days.

I lifted her chin and stared in her eyes. Cindy’s eyes are enormous, especially early in the morning before they are covered in contacts. I stared, slightly dizzy. “This is perfect,” I said. “We’ll go to dinner tonight.” I squeezed her hands. I may have bruised them. “This is exactly how this is supposed to happen.”

My heart beat double time for the rest of the day. I left work early to pick up the engagement ring I’d had custom made a month earlier. Fortunately, the jeweler had called the week before to tell me it was ready.

We live our lives waiting on the extraordinary. I was lucky enough to live through a day where I discovered I’d be a daddy and a husband, all between sunrise and sunset.

Sean Platt is an author of books about life and professional ghostwriter.

You’ll shoot your eye out kid!

For most kids my age, that line is immediately followed by a flash or two from a distinct series of images. Perhaps a fishnet stocking covered leg lamp fashioned from plastic, a tongue frozen to a light post, or the main character sitting on a stool, bar of soap in his mouth after having said THE word, the big one, the queen-mother of dirty words, the “F-dash-dash-dash” word!

I’m not sure how successful “A Christmas Story” was when it first hit theaters, but it was an instant classic among everyone I knew at the time, as well as everyone I’ve ever asked since. Out of many famous lines in that film it was that one, more than any other, which echoed around my house.

You’ll shoot your eye out kid!

That was what my mom said when I first asked her for a BB gun. When I first saw “A Christmas Story,” I could have cared less. But for some reason when I was fourteen I wanted one, with a sudden, fierce hunger. My mother was adamant – You’ll shoot your eye out kid! she said, referencing the film, but meaning every word all the same.

I didn’t want a Red Ryder rifle like Ralphie dreamed of getting in the movie. I wanted a handgun. I’d seen them at the sporting goods store. They were black and looked just like the real thing. The glass case had a couple of imitation .9 mm Berettas, the same gun John McClane used in Die Hard. I wasn’t an especially violent kid, and didn’t desire a BB gun for any nefarious deeds. I just wanted to feel half as cool holding it as I was sure Bruce Willis felt mowing down a skyscraper full of terrorists.

I begged and begged. My mother said NO and my father stayed quiet. I knew without doubt that my father was my best shot. He had after all been a boy at one time himself, and I knew that he knew my days of childhood were waning. That Christmas, much to my mom’s horror, there was a long box waiting for me behind the tree. It was the last present opened that morning and the only one I remember from that year.

I didn’t get an imitation Berreta, a .45, or any other type of handgun. Not that I expected to. I would have been less surprised to open a giant box of Playboys. The long box I unwrapped was the same as Ralphie’s; a Red Ryder,You’ll shoot your eye out kid! model rifle.

After my mom muttered under her breath, we picked up the torn paper and put it in the trash. Then I went to the back yard to shoot cans off the top ledge of the brick barbecue. This activity held my interest for 10-20 minutes on maybe two occasions. I didn’t want the BB gun for target practice. I wanted to feel cool.

This was a good year in our family history. My parent’s business was doing well and we’d moved out from the tiny house we’d lived in for the first fourteen years of my life to a much larger one in one of the city’s nicest neighborhoods. The house came with an alarm system, which it was my job to disable as soon as we opened the front door.

One early evening about two weeks after Christmas, we came home and unlocked the door to the usual bray of the alarm. I opened the closet door, punched in the three sets of two digits, and headed directly for the phone. At 14, the phone could have been fused to my palm and it would have gotten only slightly more use than it already did.

Ten minutes later I was pacing the den while my sister played Nintendo on the floor. I held the phone in my left hand and the rifle in my right, aiming the barrel right at the back of my sister’s head.

“Stop it, Sean!” she said.

I didn’t do anything obnoxious like shoot her with BB’s or pretend to kill her, but I continued to stand behind her, talking on the phone and keeping the rifle pointed at her. I’d been in the room for about ten minutes when I heard the beep of call waiting.

“Hold on,” I said. Then, “hello?“

“Hello, Sir. This is the Long Beach Police Department. We need you to come out with your hands up.”

“Nice try.” I clicked back over to my best friend Jimmy and explained that someone was trying to crank call the crank call king. Another beep. “Yeah?“

“This is the Long Beach Police Department, Sir. We need you to put your weapon down and step out of the house.”

I paused, no idea what to think. I looked at the rifle in my hand, still pointed at my sister, and swallowed. Rich confusion and mild fear mingled in my mind. “Is this for real?”

“Yes, Sir,” she said. “Is there someone else in the house we can speak to, or are you the one in charge?”

“Hold on.”

I crept into the kitchen. “The police are on the phone.” I said, slipping the receiver into my mom’s hands, which were still dripping with uncooked dinner. “They say they need to speak with you.”

“I don’t have time for this, Sean.”

“I think it’s serious.”

Just as she put her ear to the receiver, I saw a half dozen officers, guns drawn, sidling across the lawn and toward the wall of glass that divided outside from inside. It was pitch black outside, but the officers were illuminated by the steady beams of their flashlights. Suddenly, a bullhorn blared from outside, drowning the pulse of my own pounding heart.

“COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP!”

Seconds later, my mother, sister and I were opening the door to our house and descending the long set of stairs that would take us to street level. There were 13 cop cars in total. Nine from the LBPD, another four from the security company. A chopper thwapped in the sky overhead.

Though the situation was terrifying, something in the moment struck me as ridiculously funny. I started to laugh.

“BETTER WIPE THAT #$%&@!* SMILE OFF YOUR FACE,” the bullhorn said.

At the bottom stair, I was grabbed by an officer, shoved against the brick wall, and frisked from head to toe. My mother kept yelling, “What are you doing? We live here, we live here, we live here. I can prove it!”

After he calmed my mother and wiped the smile from my face, the officer in charge started to articulate just how dangerous the situation had actually been. While I was wandering a well-lit den with a BB gun pointed at my sister’s head for all the world to see, the Long Beach Police department was witnessing what they considered an escalating hostage situation.

The alarm, it turned out, had been the problem. Our code was something like, 33-34-43. That code meant, “All systems go. Everything’s A-OKAY here, good buddy. Thanks for asking!” However, I had accidentally entered something like, 34-33-43, which meant, “Please help me. Get here as soon as you can. We are being held prisoner by an intruder who is wielding a weapon and is right now at this moment making me disable the alarm. If you do not get here in the next ten minutes, we will all be dead.”

As the officer spoke, my mother’s eyes met mine with the raging inferno of every I told you so! from the last year rolled into one.

“Wait till your father gets home,” was an often used, yet rarely effective threat. But I spent that next hour, huddled in terror and waiting for the inevitable to murder me. When my father finally arrived, dinner was unmade and my mother was in a huff. He listened to the story, weighed the evidence, and finally declared that it was just one of those things.

At least I hadn’t shot my eye out.

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DAD!

was the title of one of my favorite posts from last year. Judging by traffic and emails, it was one of yours as well.

If I were to make a list of my ten favorite tales ever told on Writer Dad, I imagine that list would be filled with stories of a similar stripe. I’ve always loved the posts about fatherhood best; yarns similar to those we all have and sometimes share.

Not just fathers, but mothers, brothers and sisters too. Family, for better or worse, is something we can all relate to.

These stories are always fun to write and wonderfully natural, they often fly from my fingers as fast as my thought can push them. Sometimes there is a point to prove, other times I’m trying to show you the movie in my mind with words instead of film.

More than anything, these stories are for the record. Not exactly the reason I started Writer Dad, but what made me first fall in love with the site, then later resolve to never leave it.

My children will one day grow up and then away from us. Cindy and I will feel the ache of a lingering silence; the same silence which these days we would sometimes do just about anything for. In those moments, it will be these pages I will want to return to.

Photographs are wonderful. My iPhoto library is filled with five digits worth. Pictures are perfect for capturing a moment and providing that ideal second of recall. But stories whisper in your ear, take you by the hand, and lead you deeper into a personal history, memory or experience than you could otherwise go.

These are the stories I wish to hang on the hallways of my personal forever.

I write these stories for Cindy, myself and my family. Most of the time in that order, though sometimes it changes. More than anyone, I write them for my children.

There is only so much of me that my children can see, at least right now. Their perspective is fenced by age and episode. I hope that one day they will look back, read these words and be able to know their father in a way that was not possible then, but has been effectively bottled for later.

The bond I build each day with my children is powerful. One day we will stand on equal footing, break bread, exchange words and indulge in the delights of adult conversation. On that day, they will know the me that I will one day be.

But that is not the me that I am now.

How could it be?

People change each day, even if it is only by barely a degree. Perhaps I will be better, I hope I won’t be worse. But there is no doubt I will be different. I want to try and capture the me that I am now as well as the me I once was so that my children will know him as well.

I write all over the Web. It’s what I do, day in and day out. It’s how I make my living. Yet this domain is sacred. In some measure, everything that hits this site is for them. But with the DAD! stories this is especially so. These tales are part of my personal time capsule.

Rather than burying them in the backyard for later excavation, I am sharing them here with you.

DAD! stories are not only the ones I wish to never forget, they are the stories I want my children to one day remember.

Tomorrow I’ll publish the first one.

See you then!

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