Actually, Someone Gives a Damn

I write the other day about my inability, and the inability of new fathers, to figure out what is interesting to other people. I suggested that the problem was that you want to talk about your kids, and tell some stories about your kids, but because of your genetic connection to you kids, your buddies think you’re bragging, and not being fathers themselves, they don’t “get it” anyway and don’t relate to your stories.

How to solve this problem?

If the problem is you have a genetic connection to your kids and they don’t, then I guess you should find someone with a genetic connection.

Call your mom.

One unanticipated consequence of having children is how the at-times unstable and shallow relationship that I had with my parents immediately improved in a significant way. I hadn’t had much to talk about with my parents. Statements like “Hey Mom, Straub is this great new beer I just tried last night” would be met with “I drank half a non-alcoholic beer yesterday and I got a buzz!” "Mom, I was talking to this really hot girl last night" also wasn't a popular saying. Oddly, they were not interested in who I was partying with or what bar I went to, and I wasn’t interested in telling them about which classes I skipped and which woman didn’t like me. We had sports, we had other family stuff and I got along reasonably well with my parents. I just didn’t have all that much to talk to them about.

All this changed with kids. Having kids gives us a topic of conversation that we both give a damn about. This is doubly true since no one else wants to talk to me about the kids. All those other things in my old life were things I already discussed with one or two or five different friends/classmates/co-workers and really didn’t want to go over it again with the folks. But on the topic of my children, my parents get first dibs on the latest story of who threw what into the toilet today and who is sick, and who claims to hate pizza, since none of my friends or co-workers gives a good goddamn about that stuff.

Add to the mix the fact that you aren’t leaving the house much anymore; instead of being out three or four nights a week, now you’re out once a week. You’re at home. You’ve got nothing to do. You have little of general interest to talk about with normal-style people. If the kid is real young, you probably aren’t getting enough sleep and aren’t coherent. Under these circumstances, really, your mother is probably the only person that will find you remotely interesting and want to put up with your ramblings.

And also add to the mix that your parents eat this stuff up for another reason. It is practically a cliché, but like most clichés, it became a cliché because it’s true: grandparents love to see their kids struggle with their grandchildren as a delayed form of payback or revenge or what-have-you. “You cried too much as a kid and it drove me crazy, and so now I secretly love the fact that your kid cries too much and drives you crazy.” So when you call, your parents are picking up the phone every time without fail. They don’t want to miss the latest disaster.

This really works for just about anyone. My mother reports that my brother, who hasn’t always had the easiest relationship with my parents, and who previously called around 10 times a year, now has a 7-week old and had made 10 calls home in the last two or three weeks.

Your mom becomes your new best friend, or at least one of them.

Now read the above sentence again and tell me that fatherhood isn’t creepy.