For the Cupcakes and Glory

Since becoming a dad back in 1995 with the birth of my son whenever I happen upon a rerun of Leave it to Beaver or any other 1950's sitcom that had some omniscient father in the cast I find myself wondering if any such person could ever exist in reality. During the 1970's when I was growing up, shows like Leave it to Beaver and Ozzy and Harriet and even The Brady Bunch were still mainstays of afternoon television. These shows and a few others were usually shoehorned between the last of the melodramatic soap operas but before the evening news. I guess to babysit kids and because the local television stations had to broadcast something.

With the exception of maybe of the Brady Bunch dad, the only thing greater than the near god-like detachment shown by these sitcom fathers was their wisdom and unflappable nature. In fact, while I haven't watched an full episode of Leave it to Beaver in decades I can't honestly remember seeing Ward Cleaver, the dad, ever leave his den or wear anything more casual than a light sweater over his still pressed white shirt and tie. After a quick jump to Wikipedia looking up the entry on “Ward Cleaver” apparently he did leave his den to go to work, entertain guests, and run the barbecue, although I still do not remember these more adventurous episodes. This of course brings up the gross idea that Ward and his wife, June Cleaver, might have actually had a sex life, an idea that totally weirds me out in ways I didn't think possible.

As I came to grips with being a dad back in the mid-90's I must admit that the idea of Ward Cleaver's fatherly perfection lingered somewhere in the background static of my mind. Yes, the fact that he was nothing but a fictional, unrealistic, one-dimensional character was never lost to me but I don't know a real caring dad that doesn't want to do the absolute best for their kids. A nice sentiment but honestly there are two rather huge problems with trying to pursue that course. The first being that Ward and his fellow fictional male television sitcom creations represented a whitewashed 1950's society that never really existed. Sure, back then dads made the money and ruled their households in a similar manner with the wife doing the required marital obeying as she baked cookies and volunteered for some sort of local charity work. The fact that such televisions families never displayed any deep emotions nor conflict probably put real moms and dads under a great deal of stress to measure up. The second problem dealt with the fact that by the 1990's sitcom dads' position as wise masters of the household had long since become a joke. This is where my reality as a dad intersected with my fictional brethren.

My loving spouse, known by the code name Dragonwife, is a complete and total opposite of the fictional June Cleaver who was a meek homemaker that seemed to never leave the house but was forever wearing a nice dress, pearls, and flawless makeup. My wife is a high-powered tax attorney who, needless to say, makes more money in a year than her glorified blue collared husband does in two. I don't have a problem with my wife making more money than me but where it becomes an issue for Dragonwife is that the demands of the job often require her complete attention. This means I have to take up the slack on many mundane household and family-related chores, among them organizing my daughter's four-year old birthday party.

Back in August of 2007, my daughter, code named Darth Wiggles, birthday was coming up quick but at the same time my wife was getting slammed at work. During this period meetings lasted until way after normal business hours along with some hours spent on paperwork at home during the weekend. There was simply no way she would be able to spend any time or effort on organizing our daughters birthday. This is where dad stepped up to the plate to save the day.

Darth Wiggles loved both the staff and her friends at daycare so I figured it would be the best place to celebrate her birthday. In fact, the daycare openly encouraged parents to use their facilities for birthdays since that generally meant every child in a particular class would be included. This prevented hurt feelings when a child, or his or her parents, discovered they had not been invited to the big birthday shindig at some house or kid-themed restaurant. The two conditions the daycare wanted parents to follow was notify them at least a week in advance and to have the celebrations on a Friday near the end of the day. The latter made management of the kids and cleanup easier for the staff who by then were ready to call it week. All it took to make the arrangements with the daycare was a phone call to the director and that part of my task was done.

The next task was to order the birthday cake, which due to my daughter's interests at that time would come in the form of individual cupcakes decorated to look like ladybugs. It took me digging through the old phone book at home and several calls to various grocery store bakeries to find one that could decorate the cupcakes like ladybugs and have them ready Friday afternoon. It turned out Walmart could do the insectoid confections and have them ready for Friday. I'm absolutely no fan of Walmart, I find their business practices and treatment of their lower ranking employees almost criminal, but no one else in the local area could have the stuff ready on the day of my daughter's birthday party. Moral indignation aside, after getting the order placed I was feeling pretty good having done everything needed to make sure Darth Wiggles and her friends would enjoy the upcoming party.

All that changed as I walked into local Walmart to pick up the cupcakes about two hours before my daughter's scheduled birthday party. Thinking back on the the situation, I often wonder if maybe my life isn't a sitcom in another universe with some stand-up comedian turned actor playing the part of me. Because this is where I seemingly walked straight into a sitcom episode playing the perfect bumbling and confused dad.

One of my biggest pet peeves is having to rush, call it a relic from my military days working under the philosophy of what one of my senior NCO's called the “Five P's.” The Five P's stands for “Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance” and in truth, it is as near an absolute truth as humans can come. While being pretty self explanatory, the philosophy boils down to the idea that as long as a person plans out whatever activity he or she as to perform frak ups can generally be avoided. During my adult life as long as I have adhered to that truth I have avoided most of the pratfalls that can befall someone like me who I freely admit isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer nor made up from stuff at the deep end of the gene pool. Call the Five P's not only a philosophy of life but a bit of a temporal insurance policy because after talking with the nice lady behind the Walmart bakery counter I quickly realized that I had royally screwed up the situation.

It didn't take much in the way of investigation for me to realize that while my intention was to place the cupcake order with the local Walmart which was directly on the way to my daughter's daycare, I had in fact miss read the phone number on the crumbly phone book page and called the one clear across town. Given the time frame I was working under, I had inadvertently screwed myself and probably ruined my daughter's birthday party.

Once you live in Columbia, South Carolina for a while you soon realize that while the city and the general surrounding area doesn't have that big a population it is a sprawling, cancerous mass connected by badly designed roads that are just a degree or two above third-world status. I've driven through some truly big cities and while they all have traffic problems, I honestly believe Columbia has them beat. Of the two interstate highways running through Columbia all it literally takes to shut both down for several miles is for one semi to overturn on one of the slopping off ramps that connects them. Throw in several rubberneckers slowing down to see how bad things are and you can start multiplying the minutes it will take to get anywhere.

Boiling my situation down to simple terms, I had go across Columbia in middle of lunch time traffic to a Walmart just outside Fort Jackson, the local military post. Then take another route that in all likelihood would be even more congested to get the cupcakes to my daughter's daycare before her party was scheduled to start. The stakes involved just wasn't a disappointed daughter and a couple of dozen irate kids upset they didn't get a afternoon sugar buzz. While my wife said she probably wouldn't be able to make the party because of work, I was sure as bears leave steamy piles of poop in the woods that she would be in the classroom mumbling something to herself as minutes ticked by with no cupcakes.

When I ran out of the Walmart I did a quick mental calculation and figured I had just under two hours to pickup the cupcakes and then make it to the daycare. Given the conditions I was dealing with there was chance I could save my sorry ass but it was going to be really close. By all rights I should have been pulled over on the first leg of my warp speed journey to the other Walmart. For reasons I can't really explain, the South Carolina Highway Patrol seems to me to have a heavy presence in the Greater Columbia area, as compared to other parts of the state, but that early afternoon as I weaved in and out of the slower traffic they were no where to be seen. This is where if I wanted to be snarky I could make a comment about there must have been a buy-one-get-one-free deal at a local doughnut shop. But given my previous and unfortunate encounters with the Highway Patrol I will refrain from such attempts at snide humor. Trust me, I've had the misfortune to be know a little over ten Highway Patrol types and while they have a really hard job I consistently say they could tone down the robocop/Nazi-like attitudes. Out of them all, I only knew one Highway Patrol officer that I acted like a human being.

My visit to the Fort Jackson area Walmart was so quick I only have a vague recollection of what the place looked like. No real disappointment since nearly everyone of those huge retail edifices are near carbon copies of each other but I must admit to being a little unsettled as to the fact that my memory doesn't really kick in again until I'm driving out of the parking lot with the box of ladybug cupcakes on the front passenger seat next me. As expected, due to the distance and traffic it had taken over an hour to reach my first destination and as I checked my watch a sense of doom filled my soul as I knew the most difficult part of my trip was about to begin.

My route to the daycare had me on secondary roads that while being four lanes were nevertheless still crowded with people going for late lunches or on the way back to work. So while the actual distance I had to travel was smaller, the nature of the slower traffic came close to giving me a heart attack a couple of times out of frustration. At some point though the traffic magically cleared and I made the jump to emergency warp and literally slid into the daycare parking lot with five minutes to spare saying a silent prayer of thanks that I hadn't killed anyone.

One of the lessons I have truly learned is that when life throws a world of shit your way never let the riff-raff see you sweat. During shit storms, it's best to act like a duck, seemingly all cool and collected above water while paddling your feet underwater as if you are being chased by hungry alligators. Playing the part of the unperturbed duck, I calmly walked into the daycare as if my arrival was just as I planned. Inside, I was greeted by my daughter and her friends like a hero while I saw my wife down the hall talking with one of the teachers. She gave one of her looks that I have come to learn says she knew something was wrong with the situation but just didn't have any evidence to make an accusation.

Dragonwife did eventually ask some probing questions in an attempt to get me to inadvertently spill the beans. But like the mythical father figures from the 1950's I just gave her one of those omniscient smiles and said everything was perfectly okay. Come to think of it, maybe Ward Cleaver and the others like him were doing the same thing all along.