The Daddy Files

We all have dirty little secrets. But with the blog, most of mine are exposed for all to see. And mock. But I have to admit, I’ve been holding out on you guys in one area. And now, I’m ready to face the music. OK, I can do this…

I frequently attempt to commune with the dead.

No, I’m not talking about what it’s like to try and communicate with MJ in the morning before she’s had her coffee. Although that still applies. I’m saying that I’m into ghost hunting. Yup. The paranormal. As in I’m one of those crazy people who go to graveyards at night with a digital recorder hoping to catch the voice of a disembodied spirit on tape.

OK, shut the hell up. This may be the Internet but I can still hear what you’re thinking. Most of you are already sizing me up for a straightjacket. And while I can’t really blame you, I want to explain.

You see, it started with the TV show Ghost Hunters. Well to be totally honest, it started after I saw the very hot Kris Williams on Ghost Hunters, but let’s not get bogged down in the details. If you haven’t seen the show, they’re a group of paranormal investigators from Rhode Island and what got me hooked was they seem to be down to Earth people. Not the weirdo jackasses I imagined would be chasing ghosts. They go on investigations with cameras, digital recorders, thermal imagers, etc and sure, they hope to catch physical evidence of a ghost. But their main goal is to explain what’s happening, even if it’s just a creaky door hinge or electrical problems in the house that might make the homeowners think there’s ghostly activity occuring.

I was intrigued, so I started looking more into it. And that’s when I found other shows such as Ghost Adventures, Ghost Lab and Paranormal State. Pretty soon I was devouring as many episodes of this stuff as possible, because I was captivated by the “evidence” they were capturing.

The only problem is I’m a natural born skeptic. I’m a newspaper reporter for God’s sake, so there was no possible way I could take these people at their word. Hell, elementary school kids these days can edit sound recordings and manipulate videos, so imagine what professionals can do. I quickly surmised there was no other way to prove this stuff was legit than to try it myself.

Just before Halloween I had an opportunity through work to go on an actual ghost hunt with a local paranormal group on the Cape. You can check out the resulting story here. But I gained some tips and basic how-to information from the group’s founder and some members. I immediately went out and bought a digital recorder (a good investment because I also use it on a daily basis for work) and I was ready to go.

I know some people get freaked out in cemeteries, but not me. For some reason cemeteries have always interested me greatly. I like to walk around and check out the stones because you can always find some pretty interesting/sad/noteworthy people and gravestones. Especially in the older cemeteries, of which there are many on Cape Cod.

But when I got there I felt like a complete ass. I had my digital recorder and I was accompanied by one of the professionals, but I just couldn’t walk around asking questions to thin air. So I just ambled around and read some stones, all the while keeping my recorder on and letting her do the talking. We were out there for an hour that night in November, but after the first 15 minutes I felt so dumb I just wanted to leave. I asked myself what the hell I was thinking partaking in such a ridiculous activity. And when I got home I almost didn’t want to listen to the tape because I was so embarrassed.

But I’m glad I did.

I had donned headphones and was sitting on the couch with MJ, just listening to the tape, when all of a sudden I literally jumped out of my seat. I heard a voice that wasn’t mine and wasn’t the woman’s I was with. I couldn’t tell what it was saying, but it was surely saying something. It sounded like singing or humming actually. And it freaked me the hell out. Have a listen, it’s toward the end.

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Like I said, I don’t know what that was. But I know it wasn’t me or her. Neither one of us did any singing that night. No one else was within earshot, that wasn’t caused by any nearby traffic and it sure as shit wasn’t the wind. Now I’m not saying that means it was a friggin ghost, I’m just saying I can’t explain it.

However, it was enough to pique my interest. Kind of like golf in that one good shot can keep you coming back for more.

And come back I did. A couple months later I took my cousin Shelby to the same cemetery. And while there was no singing, there was a soft, unidentified voice saying something I can’t understand. Have a listen and tell me your best guess. It’s about 4 seconds in.

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Again, I want to be clear, I do not believe in ghosts. Not yet anyway. I’ll need a lot more proof than a couple of weird voices caught on tape before I go around claiming to have evidence of existence after death. So why do I do it? To be honest, it’s a cheap hobby and it’s interesting to me. As an added benefit I’ve actually picked up a lot of cool local history by visiting area graveyards and talking to the people responsible for cemetery upkeep, who know all the interesting historical tidbits and back stories.

I especially like the stories about the people who met their end suddenly and tragically. Not because I enjoy the suffering of others, but because I believe if there are people who want to remain behind as spirits, it would be these people. The people whose deaths went unsolved while their killers went unpunished. The people who died in freak accidents before their time who still had unfinished business. A husband who died unexpectedly shortly after getting married and wasn’t ready to leave his beloved. I’m in it for the background stories as much as anything. And this is an inexpensive hobby that allows me to get out of the house, get a little exercise and learn a thing or two. I’ve actually become halfway decent using editing software because of it.

Yet my friends, family and my wife think I’m completely nuts, but I’m pretty sure that was the case before I started all of this business. But what about you guys? Are you dead set against it? Curious? A total believer? If enough of you are interested we can start our own TV show. I can see it now. I’d be the front man because it was my idea dammit. Badass Geek would be the nice guy who everyone likes who also serves as the electronic guru of the group who handles all the equipment. JEE could be the wise-cracking skeptic who keeps everyone grounded and laughing. And nearly all of these shows seem to feature a hot girl with a nice ass as a requirement to hook male viewers. My wife won’t cooperate so I’m looking at you, Cape Cod Gal, as eye candy.

Who’s with me?

CHECK OUT FATHERHOOD FRIDAY OVER AT DAD-BLOGS!

One of the first rules of being a journalist is you must have a writing utensil on you at all times. Newspaper reporters are constantly fielding phone calls, and therefore taking notes. So anytime you see me, even when I’m “off duty” (as if there’s such a thing), I have a reporter’s notebook in my back pocket and a pen behind my right ear.

I was tying away on the laptop yesterday while sitting on the couch. Will was on the floor flipping through a book. Suddenly he glanced up at me and smiled, and then began pointing excitedly and shouting “Pezza, pezza!”

At first I thought he was asking for pizza, so I went to the fridge because I thought he might be hungry. But as soon as I stood up he immediately started saying “No dadda, no.” It took a few more rounds of me asking him what the hell he was saying before I figured out he was trying to say “pencil,” and reaching for the pen I had behind my ear. I figured because he’s become so fond of drawing and painting lately he wanted to hone his skills, so I got him some paper.

But he wasn’t interested in drawing. Instead, he took my pen and promptly wedged it behind his right ear. And then he flashed me the widest goddamn grin, pointed to the pen and said “See? Like Dadda.”

Apparently he wants to be overworked, underpaid and see all the fruits of his labor get hijacked by online news aggregators who steal content and give it away for free.

But seriously, it’s overwhelming and flattering when your son copies you. We all know how religious I am, and Genesis states, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him.” Of course, in that scenario I’d be comparing myself to the Almighty, which I think we can all agree is pretty accurate. But if you doubt my abilities as Creator, you could also draw parallels to Frankenstein’s Monster. Then again I’d be a mad scientist and Will would be the grossly disfigured, 7-foot-tall reanimated corpse. He is a pretty big kid, so maybe I’m onto something.

Either way, there’s this little being in my house who I am in charge of shaping and molding. And for some reason (most likely because I’m one of two adults he sees on a regular basis) he is going to strive to be like me and act like me. Just like I derived so much of who I am from my father, I now have a 3-foot-tall toddler who’s copying my every move. And this time, instead of repeating an errant swear I accidentally let loose, he was doing something incredibly cute and heart-warming. And in that moment, me looking at him and him smiling back at me, I was nearly moved to tears by the enormity of it all.

Then he threw the pen at me.

Oh well, I’ll take my moments however I can get ‘em.

I was talking with another dad a few days ago who has a daughter Will’s age. We bantered back and forth about fatherhood, diapers, our wives, etc, but specifically we were talking about babyproofing a house and how we keep our offspring contained long enough to do things like cook dinner and take showers.

I was surprised because he told me he doesn’t take showers unless his daughter is napping during the day.

I’m totally on the other end of that spectrum. I take a shower first thing in the morning and I let Will have free reign of the house, because MJ is already gone. I used to keep him contained in the bathroom but when he learned how to open doors and turn knobs, there was nothing to stop him. That and he broke our baby gate.

He questioned how I could leave Will to his own devices for that long. Now granted, we live in a ranch style home so there are no stairs for Will to fall down. And I told him we babyproofed the house enough that Will can’t really get into anything that can hurt him. Hell, usually he just pops in and out of the bathroom saying “Hi Dadda” or he watches Mickey Mouse on TV. Honestly, Will is pretty good and can entertain himself without getting into too much trouble. And when I told the other dad this, he was very impressed. And I, being extremely competitive, felt pretty damn good about myself and my parenting ability.

Then came this morning.

I took my shower, as usual, and turned on the TV for Will. Usually when I shut off the water in the shower he runs right in and says “Dadda, out!” But when I turned off the shower this time, I heard nothing. I called out his name, but received no response. Worried, I rushed out sopping wet wrapped in just a towel to my bedroom. The TV was on but no Will. Quickly gearing up toward a full blown panic, I ran out into the hallway and into the living room. And that’s when I saw it.

Will was standing up on the couch. He had a stainless steel pot on his head, and was holding a fork in one hand and a hammer in the other. He looked like some sort of whacked out handyman superhero, the only thing missing was his cape.

“Hi Dadda,” he said, as if nothing peculiar was happening.

I still don’t know how he got the hammer. I really don’t. I have no clue where it could’ve been stored that it was within his reach. When I realized he was OK, I started looking around for collateral damage he may have inflicted upon the walls or our furniture, because he loves swinging things. And a swinging hammer might put a hole in the wall. Or a cat, which wouldn’t be so bad.

Needless to say, I’m no longer planning to brag to other parents about Will’s self-sufficient nature or my own parenting skills. But if he does become a hammer-wielding superhero, you better believe I’m taking all the credit.

It’s Friday morning, 2:30 a.m. Will is crying. Hard. I drag my groggy ass into his bedroom and smell something nasty. I shrug it off and pin it on the bag of diapers that I just took out of the diaper pail but hadn’t taken out to the dumpster yet. Then I reached into his crib to pick him up and…

Puke. Everywhere.

Will threw up all over the crib. And the sheets. Not to mention all over himself to boot. It looked like a crime scene. And if we learned anything from the time I stepped in Will’s crap, it’s that I don’t fare well when exposed to bodily fluids. So I did what any good dad would do: I put my screaming child back down in his vomit covered crib and woke my wife up.

I wasn’t a total ass. I stripped him down and gave him a bath while MJ removed all his bedding and cleaned up the crib. But unfortunately he wasn’t done. Not by a long shot.

He proceeded to upchuck every 45 minutes for the next 5 hours. And did I mention he was in our bed because we were concerned about him? That meant having a plethora of towels at the ready, all draped around him to catch any splatter. The poor guy would fall asleep for short stints, but even though I tried to catch some shuteye it was not to be. Because every time he moved or coughed, I shot up like a rocket and reached for the towel while simultaneously swinging my feet over the side of the bed to escape the potential projectile vomit. One time I jerked up so suddenly I wrenched my back.

After a few hours he had nothing left to throw up, and he was just dry heaving. It broke my heart. So I called in sick to work to stay home with him, and he improved. Or so I thought.

When he hadn’t thrown up for 6 hours I gave him a little yogurt and some milk, because he was begging for it. And he kept it down…for an hour. At 3:30 p.m. I was sitting next to him on the couch and I heard an all-too-familiar grumbling sound, that quickly turned to a wet sounding hack. Like lightning I reached for the towel and got it up to his mouth just in time for him to expel a steady stream of half-digested yogurt and milk. Except it was so fluid it just ran down the towel like a kid going down a water slide. It went on the couch, it went on Will and it got on me.

My poor son sat there, face contorted in agony, looking at me for comfort. So I did what I always do when someone close to me gets sick.

I threw up in my mouth.

Will had a few more aftershocks as I ran to the sink and tried not to lose my lunch right there on the living room floor. I cleaned up the couch, Will and myself but not before nearly puking a second time. Will didn’t throw up again, but instead it started coming out the other end. He traded projectile vomiting for explosive diarrhea. I’m not kidding either, you could hear him exploding from across the room. Since then he’s improved steadily on a diet of water, Pedialyte and Kix.

I, however, and still very much scarred.

The funny bastards over at Dadwagon created quite a stir recently when one of them copped to being a drunk, shitty parent being a dad who does not shy away from occasionally heading out to a bar with his baby in tow in a recent CNN article. It received more than 2,700 comments and seemed to ignite a controversy regarding whether or not babies should ever be at a bar.

I won’t say it got heated, but a commenter named “Fuck You” advised the author to “leave his crotchfruit at home.”

There are really two factions doing battle concerning this issue. On one side you have drunk people at the bar. They want to get plastered without dealing with children. Hell, half of them probably came to the bar to escape their own offspring. They want to smoke outside and not feel guilty when strollers go in and out of the bar. And if someone is going to be crying, screaming and vomiting, they want it to be them and not a kid.

But young parents see it a different way. They see nothing wrong with having 1-2 beers at a family-friendly watering hole. As long as their kids aren’t creating a disturbance and they’re not getting sloppy drunk, why shouldn’t parents be able to get together at a local bar and shoot the shit over a pint?

I don’t think it comes as a surprise to anyone, but I see nothing wrong with it.

In fact, I took Will to an Irish bar called Tommy Doyle’s in Hyannis on Wednesday night. It’s not the first time he’s been there either. I was meeting a group of friends to celebrate a buddy’s birthday and the bar is on the way home from work for MJ. It was 5:30 p.m. and the bar was sparsely populated to say the least. We were there for about an hour, during which time Will said hi to everyone, hit lots of buttons on the Big Game Hunter video game and randomly played “Whiskey in a Jar” on the jukebox (for which I was immensely proud).

He screeched a couple of times at which point I took him in the other room and told him to quiet down. He ran around a little bit but was never out of control. I got one dirty look from a 50-something uptight bitch, but other than that everyone was very accommodating and gracious. He was out of there by 6:30, well before the bar got crowded, and that was it.

Some jackasses critics out there claim kids don’t belong at bars. Period. End of discussion. They think once you become a parent you should stop “clinging to youth” and, I don’t know, go do “parent things.” Instead of killing brain cells the old fashioned way, they want our minds to turn to mush while listening to the strains of Capt. Feathersword and The Wiggles singing Fruit Salad. Because shit, once you’re a parent you lose the need for adult contact. You should suddenly ignore the happiness you once derived from simply sitting with people who aren’t in diapers and sharing a cocktail. If you have a baby in a sling it might as well be a scarlet letter.

But that’s bullshit. As long as parents use a little common sense, there is no problem with bringing a child to a bar. But there are some rules:

• It shouldn’t be a nightclub or a hardcore punk bar with lots of people and loud music
• It should be early in the evening before people get too trashed
• Your kid needs to be fairly well behaved and if the baby is throwing a fit, take off
• No smoking
• Kids like whiskey in their sippy cups, not beer. It’s something to do with the carbonation.

But seriously, the bottom line is that I like to go out to bars for a beer with some friends. I liked doing it before I became a dad, and that didn’t miraculously change after Will was born. Sure kids change your life quite a bit, but they don’t alter your personality completely. You don’t stop enjoying a beer with friends simply because you have a kid. You don’t stop being yourself and you shouldn’t be forced to feel confined to play groups and parent meet-ups.

Besides, babysitters aren’t always available, and when they are, they’re expensive. So why not take the kid with you? Some of my best memories are from when I was a kid and my dad would let me tag along to the bar after selectmen’s meetings. The town officials would have a few beers and I’d sit quietly and listen, or I’d play video games and the jukebox. It wasn’t weird. I didn’t make anyone uncomfortable by being there. And no one frowned upon it because it was a neighborhood bar and restaurant where families were welcome.

So parents, I say go forth and invade your local corner bar. Pack the stroller, put the kid in the backpack if you’re a babywearer and suck down a beer while your kid knocks back a bottle or a sippy cup. And if a curmudgeon gives you attitude, tell them to go screw. As long as you’re drinking responsibly and looking after your kid, you have just as much of a right to be there as anyone else.

Because let’s face it, there’s only so much Wiggles you can watch before you start considering eating a shotgun.

CHECK OUT DAD-BLOGS AND FATHERHOOD FRIDAY. AND THEN GET DRUNK WITH YOUR KIDS.