My husband is a fun dad. He’s the kind of dad who loves to play with his kids – and everyone else’s. He never sits down at the beach, thinks no ice cream cone is complete without at least two toppings, and has coached multiple sports teams and loved every minute. A weekend morning without pancakes? Unthinkable.
Naturally, this puts me in an awkward position.
Oh, I do find it heartwarming. And restful, which is even better.
But “Fun Dad” often accelerates to “Disney Dad,” who sanctions fun even when it’s time for fun to be over, or when the fun is unnecessary. (Who is the best judge of that? Why, me, of course.) My patience gets worn a little thin. The tickle fests at bedtime. The parties, sleepovers, and concerts that he not only endorses, but sometimes even suggests.
You get the picture.
This came to a head last summer, when I took the kids to the Montgomery County Fair. (I have fun impulses, then quickly regret them.) My son headed straight for the arcade games, which had prizes. Plush ones.
My fun tolerance index immediately plummeted. Our house is overrun with stuffed animals. Mountains of them tower from baskets in my kids’ rooms. Litters of them cover the floors of their closets. Entire zoological phylums crowd their beds.
In fact, I had issued a strict mandate last spring: No more. And then my son lost his heart to a Rastafarian banana at the fair.
And of course he won one.
He stared longingly at the large version of it — they were the size of a small human – and was clearly dreaming of trading his in. I managed to get him out of there by distracting him with blue cotton candy.
In most families, that would have been the end of it, but a couple of weeks later, my husband dropped my daughter off at a concert at another fair.
Are you surprised to hear he “wandered over” to the arcade games?
Or that he won a Rastafarian banana?
A huge one.
I asked him later if he didn’t feel even a teensy bit self-conscious walking through the fairgrounds at his age – alone — carrying a giant, dreadlocked banana. Silly me.
No, I think when he looks back on his life, that victory lap might be a high point. The crowds parted admiringly before him (so he claims), and bystanders clapped him on the back. It’s a moment he’ll never forget.
I know what I’ll never forget — the scene when he brought it home. I heard the shrieking when my kids saw what was coming in the door. I saw a vision of bright yellow. I saw my husband grinning from ear to ear.
And why wouldn’t he? He’d just hit the Disney Dad trifecta: Succeeded at a game of “manly” skill, thrilled his children, and horrified his wife – all at the same time!
I considered clobbering him with it, but I had to laugh. It was so ridiculous.
So now the children fight over the banana — and fight with the banana.
My husband has moved on. We’re headed to the beach next week, and he’s on a quest to find the best possible sand carving tools.
I hear the sand castles are going to be amazing.
