Babysitting
I might not be the best babysitter, but that you would accuse me of losing your child simply because I can’t find your child at this very second---well, that hurts me.
First off, I just woke up, so I’m a little groggy. You can’t expect me to pull together every detail about an entire night of babysitting the moment you guys wake me up on your pool table.
Second, I feel like maybe I was set up to fail on this one. Because, your child is very small. It could be in this room with us right now, and we wouldn’t know. It could be under the couch, or it could be inside an over-sized vase, or it---
Pardon? Yes, I’ll stop calling your child “it.” She, alright? If labels are so important to you, she’s a she. She could fit into nearly any empty space in the house. The dishwasher for instance. Or the inside a piece of luggage.
Thirdly, why are you so worried about where your daughter is? Are you guys helicopter parents or something? Y’know, that kind of constant, hovering attention can really screw a kid up.
Fourthly, there are a ton of reasonable explanations as how I might not know where your daughter is at this precise moment:
Maybe we were playing hide-n-seek, and she cheated by crushing an Ambien into my scotch.
Maybe there was a tornado, and I told her to climb under the pool table for safety, and then I got up on top of the table to bat away any falling debris, and I got hit on the head in a heroic attempt to save your child’s life. And, now I have that type of amnesia that heroes have in movies.
Maybe an evil stepmother you didn’t invite to the christening came and put a sleeping spell on me and turned your daughter invisible. Did you ever think of that?
Any of those things could have happened. There’s literally no way we can know… AH HA! There she is! See? She’s poking out from inside the awesome fort we made! Now I remember that we made an awesome fort and pretended it was a castle, and she asked if she could sleep in there. I promised to keep watch for monsters from an elevated position, which is the pool table. Boom, that’s what happened.
See, I told you I’d remember once you gave me a minute to wake and for the scotch to wear off. So, who looks foolish now?
What do you mean, “That’s the neighbor’s kid.” That’s not your daughter? Well, that’s the kid I’ve been playing with all night. If that’s the neighbor’s kid, then where’s your daughter?
Our Daughter’s Unique Name
When we named our daughter Juniper, we thought we had found something cute and unique. That is until the nurse said, "Oh, that's the third Juniper since Monday!"
My wife and I tried to move forward and enjoy being new parents, but something about it got under our skin. So, we went to the Social Security office to change Juniper's name to Manitoga, which in Algonquin means "Place of the Great Spirit." Well, wouldn't you know it? The couple ahead of us was changing their daughter's name to Manitoga.
We slumped away dejected. What did it say about us as parents that we couldn't find an adorable, unique name for our daughter that could also double as the name of a boutique eyewear shop?
Colleen was the first to snap out of it. She said we could always come up with the perfect nickname for little Juniper. How 'bout Button? No—too obvious. Begonia? No. Buckingham? We settled on Piggly-puggly-doo-dah.
"Piggly-puggly-doo-dah?!"
That's a quote, by the way. You might think it was shouted by Juniper's grandmother when she heard the awesome, unique nickname. Nope. It was a lady at the playground calling out for her son. Same exact nickname. Hearing that was literally the worst moment of my life.
I wanted to give up, lick my wounds, and drift into life as some average, uninteresting father. Someone doesn't take their baby into ironic dive bars. A father who doesn't buy onesies with tattoo iconography. A dad who doesn't even use the word "iconography" at all.
That's when I thought of it. Baby costumes. Yes, Juniper might have a boring name. Yes, her Piggly-puggly-doo-dah sobriquet might have been taken. But, could anyone else say they had a daughter named Juniper Ross, a.k.a. Piggly-puggly-doo-dah, who also only wears space cat costumes?
Turns out a guy on the Internet can. He has a Tumblr devoted to it. Every day he posts a picture of his baby daughter, Juniper "Piggly-puggly-doo-dah" Ross, holding up a drawing of that day's Internet meme while wearing a space cat outfit. Yesterday's meme was Lego ukuleles.
The world is a cruel and unforgiving place devoid of meaning or hope.
Also, Lego ukuleles? That's genius. I wish I had thought of that.