Dr. David B. Adams

I was thinking about the things that are...er...a bit different since I became a father:

There are no labels on canned foods because the labels were needed for a school project
Your favorite bowl is stuck to a computer work station, and you dare not ask why it is stuck
Your Harley coffee cup now contains cat food
Your favorite Viper t-shirt is now stretched into someone's night shirt
Your high end stereo is used to play low-end pop music
If you could even see your plasma TV, you would see the latest xBox360 game on the screen
TIVO is filled with fragments of various Nickelodeon shows
In their rooms, you can find nothing; they can find everything...except homework that you have to sign
Every crevice in every car contains a hair brush
All glove boxes contain eye liner and lipstick
Your gym was once a sanctuary; now it is a place to practice cheerleading
You know more about Zack and Cody than you do about Standard and Poors
The car carpeting contains gum
You are indicted for anything you throw away, but this arrangement is not reciprocal
Hot Rod and Motor Trend are replaced by Allure and Seventeen
Your desk drawer contains back up diapers and pacifiers and all cabinets still contain safety locks, ten years later
You have to watch other people eat ice cream
There is no virus circulating that they do not bring home
You have hidden your guns so well that you can no longer find them
As you begin having trouble recalling your own schedule, you become responsible for remembering theirs
The kids begin picking out your clothes
Your jokes are now funny only to you
Your stories now have repeat in parentheses, and the smiles are no longer polite
Adult TV cannot begin until you have been kissed goodnight four times by each child.
You vow that you need more time for yourself and then feel empty when they go to bed

Being President must be much like rearing children. You have this group of largely inappreciative and ill-informed indivuduals who are in continual rebellion. You attempt to assist them in their own development, but they are quite convinced that you are old, out of touch and simply not in tune with what they really need.

The President has an enormous household, expensive to operate and filled with millions of impulsive and naive children. He presides over a family that sets no limits for itself, chaotic in thought and protesting virtually anything done for them. This family expects to be rewarded for even the most modest of accomplishments, often rewarded for the conspicuous absence of accomplishment.

Members of the family are not expected to know why the country or world functions as it does. They erroneously believe that other households are as permissive as their own, and if there are conflicts with other families, we can merely go over there and talk to them.

Dad builds a fence around our pool. He does this because it is, indeed, our pool, and he works to keep it clean and safe. His children notice there are neighbors without pools, and immediately feel that we should not only let everyone swim in ours but that we should provide refreshments.

Our father tells us about bad people and how to avoid them. He asks that we understand that many bad people intentionally seek to be bad. Dialogue will not make them good nor honest. Indeed, they think such peace-seeking values are silly-at-best. Nonetheless, the kids still feel we should bake brownies and visit their neighborhoods. They are not bad, merely misunderstood, often fatherless themselves. Again Dad simply is clueless as to how to make good friends.

Dad wants kids to earn money and be self-accountable and responsible. They, however, tell Dad that life is all about fairness. Dad insists that life actually has absolutely nothing to do with fairness. Life, he says, is about the option of doing for ourselves without guarantees of success. Dad says that there is nothing about life that is based upon fairness, but much of life is based upon motivation, ambition, effort and consistency.

The work of a father is very difficult. Having children is a daunting and largely unappreciated task. The better you do the job, the less likely you are to receive approval ratings from your children. They will, in fact, rat you out to others. Initially, you feel betrayed and bewildered..."how can I work so hard and be so unrecognized for the work I do?" Having two children is overwhelming if you do it correctly. Imagine what it must be like to have 300 million of them.