Man of the House

My wife said the scariest thing to me last night. She used the phrase, "You're the man of the house." It's silly I know, but those six words (seven if you count the contraction as two) scared the shit out of me. The Man of the House? That's something that gets uttered in tragicomic movies about adolescence that's been cut short.

"Son, your daddy died in a terrible boating accident. It's just you, your momma, and your baby sister now. You're gonna need to step up, 'cause you're the man of the house now."

And for some reason, in my mind, the 12-year old receiving these instructions is a skinny black male in a tank top and dirty jeans.

"Yes, suh." He says.

What's scary about this isn't the weird racial association I've made between the "man of the house" and the 12-year old who's stepping into those shoes. I chalk that up to 1990s screenwriting. No, what's scary about it is that the 12-year old boy seems WAY more prepared for being the man of the house than I am!

To be fair, my wife was doing the laundry, when she made a verbal inquiry about when I'm going to hang a pot rack from the ceiling.

"Why is it me who has to do everything with the hanging and the hammers and the nails?"

"Hey, you're the man of the house."

(In point of fact, none of this actually happened. I just think it makes a nice introduction to my fears of being the man of the house. The honest introduction would be...

I was sitting on the couch the other day...

Nope. I went astray. The honest introduction would be...

So I'm sitting on the couch, and a scary thought occurred to me. I'm the man of the house...

But that's not a very fun introduction.)

With a child on the way, the man of the house suddenly takes on a whole new level of importance. And it raises questions. Most significantly: What are the responsibilities of the Man of the House?

I think back to all of the times that I was a young child, screaming in the night because I'd had a nightmare. Michael Myers was going to kill me. Jason Voorhees was underneath my bed and he was going to impale me from underneath the mattress with the sharpened end of a pipe. (As the youngest of four, I watched Halloween when I was six. My nightmares were frequent and vivid.)

And there would be my father. The Man of the House. He would reassure me that Michael Myers would never harm me. He'd never let a crazy killer get into the house in the first place. I would protest.

"But what if he did? He could come in the front room window. He'd just have to break the window!" (It was a big window on the porch. So you could walk right up, smash it, and walk in.)

"I would hear it first. And he'd have to get through me!" My dad would reassure me.

And that worked. My father was invincible. I'd seen the man hammer nails! He built a shed with his own two hands. Hell, he built the entire house! When my biggest nemesis, my brother, punched me, my father restrained him like it was nothing! The biggest bully, the most pain I'd ever felt, had been routinely prevented by my father. Surely this man was impenetrable!

But in hindsight, my brother was a 12-year old. Lots of people hammer nails. And if Michael Myers walked into the living room through the front room window, and my dad got there to stop him, Michael Myers would have destroyed my father. We're talking about a guy who's been in over 10 movies now murdering at will! He's been shot with shotgun shells, revolvers, hacked with knives, stabbed in the neck with a coat hanger, and he still dominates people like they're ragdolls. My father is a powerful guy, but come on.

I go to the gym a few times a week. I'm pretty strong by people who don't go to the gym standards. But at the gym, I am a little bitch.

"Oh yeah, I'm feeling a burn. Yeah, my muscles are getting worked! I love it!" I say to a trainer as I curl a 25 pound dumbbell. "I'm a big man!" Then I look to my left, where a woman who's six inches shorter than my 5' 7" miniature self is squatting 300 lbs, racking it, and telling jokes to her buddy.

To be fair, this woman is a freak. Not because she's a powerful woman. Hats off to her. She's a freak because anyone who is 5' 1" squatting 300 pounds and telling jokes like it’s nothing is a freak to me. In a cool way. She just happens to have a vagina.

So I'm not powerful. I can't take Michael Myers. And it occurs to me that my father would have said anything to soothe his offspring.

“I won’t let anyone murder you in your sleep.” Lies!

“Of course there’s an Easter Bunny.” More lies!

“If you keep making that face, it’s going to stay like that forever!” Scarring lies!

Is this the true responsibility of the Man of the House? Is this my destiny? I have dreamed a dream of living a life of total honesty.

"Daddy! What if a strange murderer like I heard about on the news wants to murder me in my bed while I'm sleeping?!"

"Well, chances are that if someone wants to murder you badly enough that they'll break into our condominium building, choose our floor, break into our unit, and find your bedroom to murder you, there's really not a lot I'll be able to do to prevent it. That kind of will is not likely going to be deterred sweetheart.

"On the other hand, chances of someone wanting to do that are very low. Sleep tight! Love you!"

Knowing the probability of a child murderer coming in the night is next to zero, it's a harmless lie. (Plus, if it does happen, the kid won’t be around to call me on it!) A necessary lie? Maybe. As the Man of the House, I see that my desire to always be honest with my children is going to be at odds with my need to sleep.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe the responsibility of being the Man of the House isn’t necessarily to protect your family. It isn’t that I actually have to prevent child murder. I just have to maintain the illusion that I can.

“Yes son, the world is a wonderful mystical place filled with fairies who pay you for your teeth! And bunnies who reward you with chocolate because Jesus 2,000 years ago! And a jolly fat man with presents too! And no…” I shake my head reassuringly, “nobody’s going to murder you.”

“Everything’s going to be fine.”

And it will be.

What's In a Name?

It occurs to me that giving my unborn baby a name is probably the most power I will ever yield in my life. "What's in a name?" says Shakespeare's Juliet. "A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet." (I'm paraphrasing, but it's something along those lines. Piss off.) True. but riddle me this, Shakespeare. How many Adolf's have been born since the 40s? No, there's a lot in a name.

Unlike the President, I will never make a decision which directly impacts the lives of millions (billions?) of people. Unlike a CEO, I will never send hundreds of jobs overseas. As much as my 20-year old self would hate to hear this (or even my 25-year old self), I will affect very little change in this world. My dream has never been to wield power, but oh have I dreamed of subverting it. Alas, I do not have the energy for activism. BUT! At least one human being will spend his/her entire lifetime being called a collection of syllables that my wife and I have strung together.

It's a lot of responsibility. I wonder if when Mrs. Hitler assigned baby Hitler the name Adolf, she had any sense of the fact that she would be responsible for the death of the name Adolf. Probably not. Interestingly, fate has been much kinder to Mrs. Stalin (I'd be interested to hear if Asian people are still named Pol). But she did. If names don't matter, Adolf would be around a lot more. Think about it unemotionally, it's a pretty strong name. Addy for short. Yet there are no Adolfs.

Similarly, there are no Jesuses. It's far too much pressure to put on a child. You might as well name him/her Captain Perfect. It's too bad that Hitler's mom didn't name him Jesus. At least that way, there would have been a lot of confusion in the world.

"Oh Jesus! I stubbed my toe!"

"You called? Is it time for the blitzkreig?!"

"Not you Hitler! Jesus Christ!"

"Scheisse."

Some fundamentalist Christian, "The Jews killed Jesus!"

A confused passerby, "No man, Jesus killed the Jews. It's called the Holocaust, moron."

On a related note, I have to give it up to Hispanic people. No other ethnic or racial group can (or tries to) pull off an Adolf or a Jesus. But Hispanic people seem to be impervious to these restrictions. I have never met an Adolf, but I have met at least two Adolfos and a handful of Jesuses (Heyzeuses).

Another pivotal moment in the history of names: Enola Gay. I've never understood why you would name a flying genocide machine after your mother.

"Happy mother's day mom! 70,000 Japanese civilians were killed in your name!" What? Why would you do that?

But I digress. It's a lot of responsibility. My wife and I have already gone through thousands of names. It's hard to believe, but it's true. And more or less all of the Italian names are out. We can't really get behind naming our child Vinny Dagostino. Not that Vinny is a bad name. But again, I think a name carries with it a stereotype. Dagostino is ethnic enough. (And easy enough to make fun of. How many people got punched in the face for calling 8-year old me "Fagostino" or "Dogostino"? A lot.) I don't need my son or daughter to get pigeon-holed because of a name. 

It's not just that. Ethnic names make me laugh, because I am childish and immature. If my son's name was Lorenzo Dagostino, I would make fun of him.

"Ay, I'ma Lorenzo. I like a spicy meat-a-ball!"

Sidenote again... I realized about a month ago that all my child will be more Irish than anything else. Oh man, am I going to hate my children.

 Aside from ethnic names, we've also eliminated the names of countless people we don't like. Surprisingly, my wife's hate count is much higher than mine. And she's such a sweet woman. You'd never guess by her disposition, but she really doesn't like a lot of people. Oh man, she's not going to like that I just said that. Mostly because it's not true. (Or is it...?) But anyway...

We've never considered going the route of just making up a name. Mostly because whenever white people make up names, they are fucking ridiculous. There are the hippies who went with names like Happy or Sunshine. Then there are the celebrity child names. 

Kal-el? Really? You named your son after Superman? Go make a shitty movie.

Apple. Maddox. Moon Unit. Come on white people.

When black people make up a name, it kicks ass.

D'Brickashaw. Fuck yeah! There's rhythm there, and it isn't a fruit.

Latronius. Latin. African. Creative. Again with the rhythm. Again with the not a fruit.

Of course, if we went the creative African/Latin route, our child (being more Irish than anything else, and therefore having very little rhythm) would likely be mocked. So made up names are out. Plus Latronius Dagostino sounds like the name of a futuristic serial killer.

Please excuse me if that was racist. Wait, no. Fuck you. It's true. Black people made up names kick ass. White people made up names are ridiculous. I stand by it. No apologies.

So we're not making up names. But I do worry that we'll go too old school. I'm really into old names. And distinct names. Distinctiveness is a predecessor to character I think. Ellen and Lou are pretty distinctive. I've know as many Lous as I've known Adolfos (two). And while I really didn't like being Lou early on, I'm pretty stoked on it now. And there was a pretty natural progression to Lou.

When I was very young, I insisted on everyone calling me Louis. My aunts would call me Louie, and it drove me nuts. "My name is Louis!" I would tell them. Lou was never an option. And somehow it became Lou. And when it did, Louis was forgotten. I remember it occurring to a high school girlfriend that my name wasn't just Lou.

"Wait a second. What is Lou short for?"

"Louis."

"Louis?" And a round of hearty laughter.

I don't know if my wife has ever called me Louis. So maybe Shakespeare was right. What's in a name? Louis. Louie. Lou. Any way you slice it, I'm a rose. Am I right?

Who knows, maybe we'll go with Adolf.