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.