Dad in Training: What have you done for me lately?

Lunch break with my beautiful wife

This past Father’s Day Sunday, Sarah and I spent the day with instructor Michele (one “L”) and five other "expecting" couples at Mount Sinai Hospital getting an intensive crash course on what to expect in the next few weeks leading up to our son’s birth day.

Our mothers took Lamaze courses in the 1970s, today our friends have recommended The Bradley Method and our chillaxed OB/GYN said that simply taking “a hospital course” would be good. The decision on which route to take was not guilt-free (oh, goody, it starts already). Were we somehow depriving our boy of his opportunity to become president, Nobel prize-winner and/or an astronaut because we were only taking a hospital course? (Or is his fate already sealed because I have yet failed to serenade him in utero with a Rachmaninoff etude?)

Most folks seem to think Sarah and I will be at least fair parents because 1) I am an ER nurse and generally know when it is best to take your child to the emergency room (almost never) and 2) Sarah has been editing articles about families and children for her entire professional career. Of course, our collective experiences have not prevented us from still being mostly terrified about our next big adventure. And just in case us future-tense parents ever start feeling too confident, we’ve got plenty of present-time parents to sigh, shake their head slowly and remind us that we can’t possibly know anything. Awesome.

Our class, for me, did not start out well. I was fully prepared to give my name and rank (husband, 2nd class), but I was not prepared for the question that came next.

“What kind of reading have you done leading up to this class?”

HuhWHAT? No one told me there was homework due! Does watching back to back episodes of MTV's "16 and Pregnant" count? Sarah’s father, a super big time labor lawyer, used to teach at Cornell University and he always had an assignment due for the first day of class. Catching mere mortals with their academic fancy-pants down. I can’t believe I’ve been “Arthur B. Smith Jr-ed” on Father’s Day!

Ironically, I actually had done some reading before class. But true to form my entire academic career, anytime anything is posed to me in the form of a test question, I fail. I sheepishly mumbled something meant to be funny about torturing my wife with pictures and diagrams from one of my nursing school textbooks. [cue chirping crickets]

Meanwhile, back in a world devoid of brain farts, I just finished a book by humorist and author Joel Stein, called Man Made: A Stupid Quest for Masculinity. In addition to making me laugh out loud at least once per chapter, this book ultimately helped put me at ease as fatherhood rapidly approaches.

Stein confesses, “I should be lighting a cigar, high-fiving the doctor, and grabbing my genitals to celebrate that my sperm are manly, even for sperm. But when I look at the tiny splotch of Doppler weather pattern on the screen and Cassandra’s obstetrician says it means we’re probably having a boy, I do not do any of these things. Instead I have my first panic attack…I am merely picturing having to go camping and fix a car and use a hammer and throw a football and watch professionals throw footballs and figure out whether to be sad or happy about the results of said football throwing.”

I'm not exactly a real guys' guy and so, like Stein, I feel somewhat under-prepared to raise a proper boy. In addition to growing up with two sisters, more than half of my friends growing up were female. The other half were dudes I met while playing Master Charley Bates in my high school musical production of Oliver. They did not give out letterman jackets for being in 2 separate choirs my junior and senior years. I was even in the Orchesis dance troupe. And not just one of the cool guys-only hip-hop dance numbers…I went to practice every day, I caught flying ballet dancers and wore cartoon character costumes too. This earned me exactly ZERO dates with gorgeous dancers. I guess tap-dancing Snoopy, not so much a sex-symbol with the ladies. Shocking, I know.

Marc in the middle, red suspenders to match the girls' shiny red leotards while singing Billy Joel's "For the Longest Time."

Today, when I walk past groves of pre-teen boys hanging out in the parks of NYC, I look at them wondering to what kingdom, phylum and species they belong. How will I prepare my son to interact with such creatures who do not know what a Jazz square is? (Heathens)

Stein’s answer to our dilemma was to set out on a journey of self-discovery, challenging himself to some of the manliest activities known to man. Among other things, there was camping with Boy Scouts, running with firefighters, shooting with tanks, and fighting with mixed martial art legend Randy Couture.

Flipping through my HARDCOVER edition on the subway (take that you iPad, snooky-Nook, Kindle-reading girly-men), my own confidence grew with every page turn. I was an actual Cub, Webelos and Boy Scout. Our family vacations almost always began with us pulling up to a campsite long after dark and trying to erect an enormous canvas tent supported by roughly 1500 separate sections of indistinguishable aluminum poles. And before I started making an ass of myself auditioning for musicals, choirs and dance troupes, my mom made sure I tried the things I was supposed to try.

“Marc, we live in Chicago now. In Chicago, they play ice hockey. You are going to play ice hockey.”

As an adult, I was an EMT, and I am currently an ER nurse (the second most manly kind of nurse there is). And while I won’t be Mr. February on any fund-raising calendars wearing just my drawstring scrub bottoms, I kind of get what the firefighter life is like. 

My son will watch the original Karate Kid, many times. Because there is no such thing as too much awesome.

My few years of Karate study at the West Side YMCA (oh, yes, Daniel LaRusso, make no mistake about it, this is a very real Karate dojo), ensured I got hit plenty of times by men and women who were only referred to as Jun Shihan, Kyoshi and Sensei. Getting hit by people called “sensei” is serious business.

Reading Stein's book encouraged me to consider the truth and totality of my actual life-experiences, not merely my own viscous, ethereal perceptions of who I am.

Stein concludes, “You change not by deciding, but by doing. We fetishize epiphanies, but only experience changes you. Just like the act of smiling makes you happy, climbing a log tower makes you confident, taking punches makes you tough…I’ve never understood what people mean when they talk about spending time alone to find themselves…The idea that we’re each a black box we have to unlock always baffled me. I’m the sum of my experiences and my reaction to those experiences.”

Yes, when I had the choice to play JV football in high school, I turned it down because, in a school that had at least a dozen different plays and musicals every school year, I was still worried that I would miss an audition. I loved me some musical theater. Still do. But today, I’m also going to be a father who is going to figure out a way to make sure my boy is a Chicago Bears and not New York Giants or Jets fan. Right after we act out West Side Story’s “Cool.”

“Boy, boy, crazy boy…stay cool boy…gotta rocket in my pocket…”