I wish to apologise to my children and confess I am a complete hypocrite. I recently a blog post about the random things my kids like.
Shortly after writing that post, I found myself wandering round the kitchen pretending to be a robot while looking for my daughter’s school shoes. It occurred to me that my kids may have some ramdom interests, but as a dad, I can be just as crazy, if not more so.
Take bed time, for instance. Finding it a bit of a chore, I decided to liven it up a bit several years ago…by pretending to be a fork lift truck.
I seem to recall Helen was lying on the sofa and so I slid my arms underneath her, made some stupid pneumatic noises and carried her to bed. This has remained a staple of the bedtime routine for both Helen and her sister ever since.
The inspiration for this comes from my misspent youth. Prior to returning to college as a mature student, I pursued a number of dead-end jobs.
One of them involved picking and packing in a warehouse and I was one of the select few to undergo training so I could become a licensed fork lift truck driver. This turned out to be massive blessing.
When I did return to college, holding a fork lift truck licence meant I was always able to get temp work during the holidays. Not that I’ve driven one for years, but it also left me with a bizarre fondness for the fork lift (A Manitou M26-2 with Perkins diesel engine? P-H-W-O-A-R).
The punchline? I’d been doing my fork lift truck routine for about two years before Helen turned around and said: “Daddy, what is a fork lift truck?”
Pretending to be industrial machinery is just one of my specialties. Performing bad magic tricks under my stage name The Great Ovavoo? Guilty. Pretending I can’t find something while it’s balanced on my head? Yeah, I do that too. Speaking in a high-pitched voice to my kids pretending to be their mother? Yeah, although I’ve never once convinced the kids that I am Mrs Adams.
The added difficulty is that her accent was forged in Glasgow whereas mine was formed in the Cotswolds. I can be as high-pitched as I like but I know in truth I will never quite manage to impersonate my wife.
My children may have one or two-off-the wall interests. When push comes to shove, however, I think dad is craziest of all, certainly in this household.
2 thoughts on “Crazy: It’s part of a dad’s job description”
our kids often talk about the crazy stuff we did when they were little, it’s much better than remembering all the boring times, they give us nothing to talk about
Now that’s the kind of thing I wanted to hear. Mucking about and having fun with your kids is so, so important. I think your comment demonstrates the point.