Sunday, June 11, 2006

This week's column:
Calling all clueless fathers ...

I got an e-mail from a new-father friend of mine recently that ended, "By the way, thanks for telling me how much work kids are. Sheesh!" The irony is, I'm sure I did tell him, but he was probably too busy doing those things childless people do -- having conversations, going out at night, sleeping -- to pay attention.

But now he has an infant, which means he spends a lot of time making bottles and trying to type while someone drools on his keyboard. And I, being the sympathetic person that I am, just laugh and laugh and laugh. It's a maniacal laugh, like a cartoon supervillain.

But that doesn't mean that I don't have my own challenges as the father of a 7- and almost-5-year-old - I'm a man, after all, meaning my nurturing abilities are theoretically limited to charcoal fires and unruly patches of lawn. But I have garnered a few tips that might someday be useful to fathers who haven't yet reached this point, if they survive. With that in mind, here are this year's Tips for Clueless Fathers:

For the rest of this week's AT LARGE by Peter Chianca, click here.

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