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SALT LAKE CITY — I just realized that I can’t give my wife any of my writing to proof-read without letting her know that I am a pushover dad. I am just putting all the proof in a manila envelope, willingly and of my own volition, handing her the list of things for which she should rightfully scold me.
Like not knowing that the kids are playing poker.
In my defense, I don’t know how or where the kids learned to play poker. I don’t play myself, not even for M&M's or Skittles. My wife knows how to play pretty well. In fact, she once bought a Buick she named Poncho with her winnings from her family reunion.
But she doesn't play in front of the kids, and I think she may have given up gambling altogether for Lent. How she did this being as she is a Mormon, I don’t know. Until last week, I thought that giving up Lent was what I had to do because I lost a bet with her to do the laundry for a month.
(If my wife is proofing this, she will yell at me for both the kids playing poker and the Lent thing.)
My eldest daughter — whom readers will recognize, as I have referred to her in the past as "my eldest daughter" or "Myelda" — was the ringleader of the poker thing.
Most of her own friends have moved on to important things like assistant hair-dyeing or junior podiatry (give your feet a hand!) at Eastern State Micro Mini Vo-Tec-U. So, Myelda latches onto anyone who comes over to the house regardless of their age, purpose or valid ID. Last week she caught a multilevel marketer and invited him into the backyard to help her move rocks for a barbecue pit that she wants to line with my mahogany Aztec-ian tabletop because it’s old and ugly.
Said marketer jumped at the chance to help, not knowing that "multilevel" to my daughter meant help moving gravel. To her credit, Myelda then bought some carpet cleaner from the kindly if confused salesman with her winnings from the floating crap game.
That's right, Honey! She can’t keep doing that! If I let her burn everything that is old and ugly, who will we visit on Thanksgiving?
Today I came home and there sat boys from my kid's football team with the professional poker set we got as a wedding gift from the Relief Society presidency. They were sitting around the dining room table sporting green dealer visors, pushing chips around with the fondue forks. And Myelda was making lemon bars and passing out milk and ramen soup like there is no tomorrow.
Yes Honey, of course I grounded her! I'm not a complete pushover!
Yes I am. I want to be their favorite father ever, so I let them bowl me over until the responsibility envelope has been pushed.
OK, I should have returned the poker set (and the fondue forks) to begin with, but I am not going to yell at Myelda.
The problem, as I see it, is not that she took the initiative to create a fun time for the offensive line, but that she should have had a parent's experience and sense of propriety at her side. That would be me. But I was off on a Diet Coke run.
I want to be their favorite father ever, so I let them bowl me over until the responsibility envelope has been pushed.
When she said she was throwing a little get-together, I may have been thinking about how much cherry flavoring I was going to use. When I came back, the house smelled like old socks and cigar smoke, and yes I am exaggerating, 'cause no one was smoking, but one of them was wearing my robe and it wasn’t the clean-cut boy with the glasses, or even the Yul Brynner lookalike who uses complete sentences, but one of the others still wearing cleats in the living room, which I noticed because the feet were perched on the coffee table by a bowl of ramen noodles where I usually keep Myelda's diploma from Eastern State Micro Mini Vo-Tec-U — home of the mighty hair dressers.
The dog was laying on the couch licking a bowl of lemon bars, lemon bars that we continued to see, in one form or another, for the next two days. Glad we had that carpet cleaner.
Yes Honey, the dog was on the couch! On the couch!
And, yes Honey, I am the flunky father that is easily persuaded or influenced. I figure that if they can tolerate me being a less than normal dad, then I can handle them thinking that they run the house. How long can I be a stooge, really? Two, maybe three years max, and then the kids will have to roll me over to push me over, and by that time I will not be their stooge anymore.
I will belong to the grandchildren. Lemon bar, Honey?
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*Mr. Cheney is old, but writes good stuff every week for "The Prodigal Dad" series on ksl.com. See his other writings at davisoncheneymegadad.blogspot.com and Twitter @DavisonCheney**
