Story by Tami Coxen
This is a phase I hear a lot around my house. Because I am the lone female in a home overrun by testosterone, I’ve decided that there are some things that I’m just not going to get. Oh, I have the Mom thing, but usually the Mom thing involves yelling things like, “Don’t jump the last six stairs, you’re going to break your neck!” and “Please chew with your mouth closed, I have no desire to see your PB&J in its present state.” When I say that kind of thing, my two sons roll their eyes and I know they are thinking, “It’s a Mom thing.”
Somehow Dad things are different. Dad things are cool, not cautionary. No one rolls their eyes at Dad things. Sock slingshots are a good example. No one in my family excepting the dog and myself can take off their socks without pulling them back and sending them hurling across the room. I’ve even walked into sock slingshot battles between my husband and the boys. “You know, I say as I duck flying socks, this really stretches your socks out guys. If there a reason that you all can’t take off your socks without turning them into missiles?” Then I run from a barrage of cotton as the words, “It’s a Dad thing!” follow after me.
Noogies are another Dad thing. Not a day goes by without someone in my house grabbing another by the neck and grinding his knuckles into their head. I’ve come to believe that this is a time-honored ritual from when men’s knuckles used to drag the ground. I guess they still need something to rub against. You never see girls chasing each other in attempt to land some noogies. My husband walks in the door after work and the kids run screaming from his menacing knuckles. I am exempt from this, I am thankful to say. I get a kiss and a “What have you sacrificed for dinner?”
My sons are at that unfortunate age when nothing is as hysterical to them as bathroom humor. In an attempt to protect my sensibilities and keep from being completely grossed out, I automatically outlaw anything that couldn’t be said to a nun. At face value my husband totally backs me up in this and sternly tells the boys,” That’s not funny.” He’s not fooling anyone. When the occasional gross joke or statement slips out, his lips twitch spasmodically and I know that he finds it as amusing as any pre-adolescent boy. I glare at him and he shrugs and says, “It’s a Dad thing.” I have the feeling that most men never leave the age when fart jokes are a laugh riot, so that also makes it a Man thing.
It’s a secret conspiracy between my husband and my sons, this Dad thing. It’s an area that I will never comprehend and can’t enter by virtue of being first a Mom and second a woman. I might throw up my hands in disgust at most of them, but there are other Dad things that my sons are learning. It’s a Dad thing when one of them opens a door and gestures me through first. It’s a Dad thing when they wait for me to be seated before they charge the dinner table. When they carry bags and bags of groceries in the house after I’ve gone to the store, they are doing a Dad thing. Along with the sailing socks, noogies, wedgies and other assorted practices; their father is teaching them the way a man does things. Every night, long after they’ve gone to bed, their father goes in to check them, dropping a kiss they never feel on their foreheads, and saying a grateful prayer for them. He’ll look back at me standing in the doorway and smile, saying, “It’s a Dad thing.”
