4. When you and your wife go out to dinner, leaving your baby with the sitter for the first time, please don’t expect to enjoy yourselves.
5. Don’t be intimidated by that older woman in the mall, the one who has long since seen her babies grow into adults. She’ll come up to you with a smile on her face as you stroll proudly with your baby. And she’ll get you to put your guard down when she says, “What a beautiful baby!” And just as you are about to thank her, she will say, “Why is this beautiful baby in a cold mall without proper clothing? This baby will catch its death! You should be ashamed of yourself!” Listen: there is nothing wrong with how you are dressing your baby. There is, however, something wrong with this woman. She’s in an organization called Kooky Old Bats. They spend their afternoons roaming malls, looking for unsuspecting fathers to harass.
6. Don’t leave your dog alone with access to a garbage bag full of dirty diapers. It’s just not pretty what dogs will do to dirty diapers.
7. Don’t listen to your mother or mother-in-law. Both of them are on the same team—a sub-organization of Kooky Old Bats—and that team recently had a meeting and decided that, as capable as you are as a human being, you have no idea what you are doing when it comes to caring for a baby. You’re a man, after all. You need serious help. You need someone to take the baby from you as soon as you start holding it. You need someone to tell you what the baby needs to eat, or how to boil rubber nipples, or how to use a microwave. You need someone standing over your shoulder, clucking away as you change your baby boy’s diaper and he ends up peeing on his own face. But it’s not you; it’s them. They have nothing else to do with themselves. Just turn off your ears and be happy you are not married to them. Sooner or later, your wife will force them to leave the house.
PREVIOUS PAGE
