They’re Trying To Kill Me

They’re Trying To Kill Me

Last night I was working late, it was about midnight, sitting at the computer typing away, in deep concentration, totally lost in what I was doing when…AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! My son scared the  S#@T out of me by suddenly appearing in the glass of the window that I sit next to. It was his reflection standing in the doorway to my office clutching his teddy bear.  HE had the bad dream but it was a couple of YEARS of My life that were lost. Screw cigarette smoking, I’ve shortened my life span a lot more by having kids. 

The gray hairs on my head and in my beard didn’t start until after I had my kids. If any of you doubt my rapid aging just take a look at my most recent picture posted on the “ABOUT ME” page of this blog. I’m getting old fast.

Scaring the crap out of me isn’t the only way they do it. How about all of the times I’ve been awakened early in the morning just because they wanted me to get up. Anyone who is a parent has probably experienced the pealing back of eyelids by a child. Little fingers stretching eyes open and hearing the following question.

“Daddy? Daddy are you awake?”

“I am now.”

Then there are the times when I catch my children doing something that could seriously hurt or even kill them or somebody else.

One morning my kids were acting particularly crazy. My wife was still trying to sleep, it was her turn to sleep in, and I suddenly smelled smoke. My son Joseph wanted more sunlight in his bedroom so he pulled his curtains open and made them stay that way by stuffing the bunched up ends into a lamp shade that was on a small table by his bed. The light was on, the curtains were cheap, Disney character, Chinese made, and synthetic with “spontaneous combustion” written all over them. I got in there just before the smoke alarms went off. Add about a thousand more gray hairs.

 I can keep going on this, but you get the idea.

Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher who said “God is dead,” also said, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger”.  He obviously never had children.