You Are Going to Be Touched (and I Don't Mean Emotionally)

Most men at some point in their lives eventually stop playing backyard football, stop wrestling with their buddies, stop hitting each other on the shoulder, stop cramming six guys into a Chevette or Omni, stop sitting five to a couch. They start leaving a heterosexual seat between them in movie theatres. They are careful not to be a "middleman" when choosing which urinal to piss at. Over a period of years, most guys gradually stop having physical contact with their buddies. Even earlier than that, boys start pushing away their moms and grandmoms and sisters when they try to kiss them, they like to shake hands with their dad instead of hugging them.

By the age of 22 or 23, most guys, if they touch other people, touch them with their hands.

Now, of course, most guys that are 22 or 23 are trying desperately to replace the loss of physical contact that most of their body is experiencing by vastly increasing the amount of physical contact that one particular part of their body is experiencing, with varying degrees of success.

But most guys become creatures that just don’t touch other people all that much.

As a father, this is going to change.

When your wife is pregnant, you are going to have to touch her. And not just more hugs, although that certainly is part of the equation. You will be expected to give her massages, and touch her in weird ways, like rubbing her belly and sometimes just resting your hand on her belly for, like 10 minutes, and waiting for the kid to kick. If your wife bent over and touched your ankle for 10 minutes, that would be really weird. Every once in a while, you'll be touching her belly and you'll realize "hey, I'm touching another person in a very nonchalant way. This is really fucking weird and is creeping me out and I hope my emotions are not showing up on my face right now." So you're touching your wife a lot more, but not in the good ways.

When your kids are born, you are going to be touching them all the fucking time. Even if you’re working outside the home, you’re carrying this kid around for an hour or more a day once you get home. If you’re home it’s a hell of a lot more than that.

Previously you might’ve shaken people’s hands for 2 minutes a day or made out with your wife and did some baby-making for, what, about 14 minutes a week, so that’s another 2 minutes per day. So you’re going from people touching your body 4 minutes a day to, like, 60-120 minutes a day. It’s a lot of extra touching.

And when your kids get older, they are going to be touching you, they are going to be following you around, requiring that you carrying them places, climbing on top of you when you get home and sit in your favorite chair, getting in your bed in the middle of the night and cuddling you up, your limp wussy son is going to be requiring you to hold his hand all the freakin’ time, your daughters are going to affectionately rub your arm and shoulder so much you’re going to start to wonder whether that style of touching is kosher, but telling a 5-year old she's being overly affectionate seems like a drastic overreaction as well.

Lets just say there is going to be way too much touching. You're gonna be sick of it.

And the extra touching doesn’t only include your kids touching you with their bodies! They will touch you with fluids their too! Wiping noses on you and puking on you and pissing on you. You’ll feel so lucky.

You need to practice this shit or you aren’t going to be ready. Borrow a friends’ cat, rub dirt and old food on it and then piss on it and carry the cat around inside your shirt for 24 hours in the same way that 7th graders in sitcom health classes have to carry around eggs to simulate parenthood. At work, make sure to sit touching other people during meetings. Hug everyone you see. Make your wife sit on your lap during dinner.

It's the only way to prep yourself for all the touching.