The Good Life – March-April 2019

FATHERS
You Might Be A Parent...
WRITTEN BY: BEN HANSON / MR. FULL-TIME DAD
I’m as indifferent as it gets towards Jeff Foxworthy, except on one
account: the guy has managed to turn a single joke into a multi-million
dollar, decades-long career. I’m not here to disparage anyone who likes
his particular brand of comedy, but I am here to shamelessly rip him off
with my own take on his now classic routine.
Over the past three-and-a-half years of parenthood, Macklin’s mama and
I have been casually taking notes on the multitude of lifestyle changes
taking place one might otherwise miss if one weren’t paying attention.
It’s easy to mark the bigger impacts of parenthood like lack of sleep, the
emergence of grey hairs in your beard or the total and absolute loss of
privacy. But every parent is well acquainted with that list.
Today I offer a more subtle roundup of the amusing tweaks to your life
as a parent. Scanning our list prior to writing this column, I came to an
embarrassing realization: we may, in fact, be rednecks ourselves, overly
concerned with snack foods. You’ll see...
You might be a parent when… you have to keep the subtitles on while
watching TV because you need to keep the volume at near imperceptible
levels in order not to wake the sleeping child in the adjacent room. But
it’s not so much the child, it’s the fact that you’re eating all the chips and
junk food you can now only break out after said child goes to sleep.
You might be a parent when… your candy stash suddenly becomes the
potty treat stash. As soon as your kid knows where you’ve been hiding
the treats, it’s game over. Those treats are now their reward, and while
they can’t remember what you were just talking about five seconds ago,
their recall when it comes to how many M&Ms were in the jar is bafflingly
Rainman-esque.
You might be a parent when… you have enough random snacks on your
person to feed an entire work meeting when the vending machine breaks.
Snacks in your purse. Snacks in your car. Snacks in your backpack. Most
any meltdown can be averted with the right snack at the right time. One
stick of minty gum alone has been known to save an entire
road trip.
You might be a parent when… you’re no longer annoyed by
your parents’ inability to work their original model DVD
player. Instead, you’re legitimately concerned
that they won’t remember how to operate
their grandchild’s car seat and you’ll come
home to your 3-year-old watching cartoons
in the garage still strapped in.
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