Being a Dad Is Weird: Lessons in Fatherhood from My Family to Yours

PREFACE

I AM SITTING AT my daughter’s school concert. Vivian, my oldest, is just nine years old, and she and all the other kids are lined up singing their brains out in the small chapel that doubles as an auditorium in their school. My wife and I are struggling to actually see her sing because of the phalanx of eager parents in front of us, holding up their phones, recording each and every moment. Some of the parents have their devices fully over their heads to get the perfect angle—it is a sea of phones as far as the eye can see, and phones are all my eyes can see. Every time Melissa and I look for Vivian, we see approximately six thousand devices, but not our kid. I am doing what I normally do when something irritating is happening: I am pretending to be calm while my blood pressure rises sharply.

As I stare at all these phones and finally catch a glimpse of one-sixteenth of my daughter’s head, I am struck by a series of thoughts. When did I become this guy? I’m a full-fledged dad, upset to the point of yelling at the fact that he can’t see his daughter sing on the stage. When did I become a person who raged at a bunch of crazy helicopter parents who are so busy trying to video their kids that they never actually watch them? When did I get this old? When did I get this cranky? Wasn’t I just eight years old and singing in my own school concert not so long ago? Wasn’t my dad just the guy watching me with a dazed smile on his face, much like the dazed smile I have plastered on mine? Did he catch my eye and whisper, Good job, buddy, just as I did to Viv, somehow through the sea of Steve Jobs’s legacy? And I think to myself, When did things get so weird?

Because let’s face it, being a dad is weird. As the father of two daughters in Los Angeles, I am constantly put into weird situations that make me wonder how the hell I got there. The other day, I walked in my door and my dog was wearing goggles and there were two strangers in surgical scrubs holding her.

My daughter Vivian calmly informed me, "Gladys is getting a cold laser treatment. Don’t worry, Dad. She likes it." My dog did indeed seem to be enjoying the attention, so I smiled and walked toward the kitchen to grab some grapes. My own unique set of circumstances being a father is mostly wonderful, sometimes maddening, and certainly weird. Was it all this wonderful and weird for my own dad back in the 1970s and ’80s, as he sat there fresh out of graduate school in Southern Illinois, watching his child sing songs that celebrate the seasons? What would my dad have done if he couldn’t see me sing because everyone had their stupid cell phones and tablets in front of his face?

Of course in the 1980s there were no cell phones. But if there had been phones and tablets at that time, and if people were holding them in front of my dad’s face at my concert, I am quite certain that he would not have remained silent, as I have. Instead, he would have said something subtle like, Put those goddamn things away before I shove them up your ass.

As I stare for what seems like forever at that glowing wall of phones, thinking about my old man, I see the truth.

I AM A DAD. I’m not even a young dad. My daughters are nine and six, and I wasn’t a teenager when they were born. And in many ways, I’m nothing like my old man. I would never tell people to stick their phone where the sun don’t shine, or something equally cutting and frank, even though sometimes (let’s be honest, often) I really want to.

But in some ways, I am a lot like my dad. I have carried a lot of my father into my journey as a parent. He definitely taught me some things, and many of his ideas rubbed off on me.

But how many? Has my somewhat unusual upbringing affected how I raise my daughters? And will I ever have the courage to tell people to shove their electronics, like my dad would have done? All of this requires some examination. Hence, this book.

First things first, let’s start off by taking a look at my father. Here he is:

His name is Steve Falcone and he is a truly great guy. He is fearless, thunderously loud, ferociously funny, and has a propensity for wearing hats. This is a fairly recent photo of him, and I think it sums him up pretty well. Please note that though he is wearing a track suit and a sparkly hat, which would imply that he would not take himself too seriously, he is also holding his glasses jauntily to the side and looking importantly into the camera, which implies that he is indeed someone serious—and not to be trifled with. This simple yet complex essence sums up my father. Yet in another way, it only scratches the surface.

I learned a lot from Steve Falcone—good things, bad things, weird things, and some in between. My dad is seventy-three now, and he’s been a good father to me and an excellent grandfather to my daughters. He’s taught me many things, among them that advice given sparingly is advice likely followed. (When I began to get bad grades in high school he pulled me aside and said, Getting shitty grades is no way to get out of this little town, son. Boom! Good grades followed immediately.) He taught me to always say what’s on your mind, which is advice I actually never took—my mind is a sea of unsaid thoughts sometimes pried loose with too much coffee or scotch. He taught me that being there for your child was the best thing of all—whether times were good, bad, ugly, or just plain weird.

This book is a collection of stories about the great, albeit strange adventure of fatherhood. Some of the stories are about my experiences as a dad, and some are about my experiences with my dad. There are recollections from my childhood in Southern Illinois and my life now in Los Angeles. I will try to capture the things I’ve learned from my dad and about being a dad through stories—many of which are embarrassing. Did my father used to semi-regularly fall asleep on the roof of our home? Of course he did, dear reader. Why? Because he had imbibed a few Jamesons and wanted to see the stars, of course. Have I personally ever peed in a closet? Yes. Of course. Why? Because I was so exhausted as the father of a newborn that I was convinced it was the bathroom. You see, I am willing to embarrass myself to help out my fellow dads, so they feel less alone in their own weirdnesses, as we all should. I’d also like to help mothers, because I am not sexist. I’m just not. So I truly hope that some of the parental advice found here will be useful to all the parents out there. But mostly, I hope that you, dearest reader and my new best friend, will laugh a few times as you read these pages. At the very least, know this: if you are the guy with the phone held high at the school concert, chances are there are parents around you who want to shove it up your ass.

1

Have Good Times

or The Value of Adult Friendships for the Sanity of Parents and Children Alike

MY DAD LIKES GOOD times. Good times are important to him. His idea of a good time is being over at a friend’s house, laughing and drinking with all of his other friends. He likes to sit around, listening to his friends tell stories and telling stories of his own. If someone has a new story worth telling, all the better. If not, someone will tell an old one and get laughs like it was the first time they told it. That seems the perfect recipe for a good time with friends, if you ask me.

I grew up in this series of my parents’ friends’ houses, in the Little Egypt section of Southern Illinois (why they named it that, I do not know). These houses were full of laughter and booze. I remember my childhood as being at someone’s house every weekend, sometimes on weeknights too, and being surrounded by loud and funny adults. For a quick review of the cast, we had Dan Seiters, who would write semi-erotic short stories and sign them Rosemary Finnegan because she was the only member of the group who thought the stories were a bit too lewd. Everyone laughed and told Dan to stop, as they simultaneously hoped to hell he never would. (He never will. My favorite story involves a female character who constantly is drawing rabbits on her boobs. I forget why. Maybe I’ll ask Rosemary Finnegan.)

My parents met all of their friends while they were in graduate school in the English Department at Southern Illinois University. They met some of them at a great bar in Carbondale named The Pinch Penny Pub that was perfect for poor grad students. After a short, disastrous attempt at living in Texas, my parents put down roots in Carbondale, and most of their friends from grad school did the same. This group all led the simple yet fun lives of educated upper-middle-class people who lived in a liberal college town in a semirural conservative area of the state. In a land in which gun racks adorned the back of many a truck, these were the people who read The New Yorker, drove small Hondas, loved Greek food, and knew which bars had jazz bands on a Tuesday night.

They hung out together, partied together, saw movies together, and celebrated the birth of new kids in the group. When a family in the group had a new baby, they didn’t disappear as parents today tend to; they simply kept going out with giant bags underneath their eyes and a tiny baby in tow. I admit that when the girls were first born, I disappeared for a while. Melissa and I didn’t really see friends for a few months, but through grit, determination, and the desire to see the sky, we got back on track. But for my parents, there would be no hiding. The group was the social outlet that made the rest of life better. These people counted on each other for support, but mostly for fun.

My dad emerged as the de facto ringleader of this group and he revels in his role to this day. When he senses that the group needs to get together, he plans a party, which my mother then of course executes. When the party inevitably occurs, he will laugh loudly and often. If no one else has a joke, he’ll laugh at his own.

One time I distinctly remember was when we were over at our friends Kelly and Cheri’s house. Kelly, a big Chicagoan with a wonderful mustache (basically, he had the big, bushy king of all mustaches), worked for Budweiser and had a vending machine full of beer on his porch. It was a hot late-summer afternoon and we all sat on the porch as the adults drank beer and the kids drank soda. My father was wearing shorts but no underwear (he couldn’t be bothered with underwear) and he was telling a very long story about growing up in Philadelphia. Cheri, a funny red-haired lady with a quick smile who married Kelly after they met working at The Pinch Penny, casually looked over at my dad and said, while he was mid-story, Hey Steve, your ball’s out. Dan Seiters, the wonderfully weird gray-haired writer whose greatest claim to fame was that he could balance a fifty-pound owl on his cock (I’m not sure how he came upon that discovery. Some things are better left unanswered), immediately broke into hysterical laughter. Dan Finnegan, Rosemary’s husband, a quiet, kind, and dry man, said, I just assumed that we were all supposed to have our balls out—I was concerned that I was late to the party. Everyone kept laughing and piling on. Dan