I've been trying to get focused and pay some bills, organize my office, etc. but I keep getting distracted by my friends on Facebook. I've chatted with several of them tonight and each time the conversation ends up in the same place...with me talking about Mae. I've seemed to tell each person the same thing, so I thought I would bring everyone who reads this blog in on the conversation.
More than anything, this post is a warning to men out there. To be more specific, it's a warning to men who might have a daughter one day. Here's the warning: YOU ARE GOING TO BE RUINED WHEN YOUR LITTLE GIRL GETS HERE. Plain and simple. You are done for.
I like to think of myself as a tough guy. I like to shoot guns, build stuff, fix stuff and break stuff. I've done things like pull the motor out of a classic muscle car without an engine hoist. That's right, we (my cousin Patrick and I) didn't need a fancy tool like that. Nope, his dad had a backhoe and it worked like a charm. On that same note, I've done manly stuff like operated heavy machinery...when I was 11 years old. My dad owned an excavating business when I was a kid and one day I jumped up on a 30,000 pound trackhoe and pretended like I was driving it. Dad motioned for me to turn the key and I thought he was joking. That is until he jumped up in the seat with me and told me what all the joysticks and pedals were for. Before I knew it, I was driving around the job site digging holes and knocking down trees. Needless to say, that day was the highlight of my 11 year old life.
I've done other things like jump cars over mounds of dirt, crashed motorcycles and jumped out of airplanes. I've been punched in the face, had a tooth knocked out while playing football and I once broke a window with my fist (it was on accident but, hey, I broke glass with my fist).
For these reasons, and many others I don't care to list, I consider myself a pretty tough guy. Recently though I've began to second guess my tough guy status. If you were to live at my house for a few weeks, you would see some things that would make you question this claim. You might hear me singing the theme song of The Backyardigans as I walk around my house. Maybe you walked downstairs and saw me sipping invisible tea out of a pink tea cup and asking for "more" in a high pitched English accent. You might have even seen me with half a dozen of Mae's bows in my hair. Seeing and hearing these things can't be undone and, no doubt, you would say, "Yep, Cody has lost his edge. He isn't nearly as tough as I thought he was." To this I would have to disagree.
Playing tea party, singing dumb songs and letting my daughter put bows in my hair are all things I expected to do when I became a dad. It's the things I didn't expect to happen that has me questioning my toughness. Like when I get really frustrated with Mae because she isn't listening to me when I tell her to NOT go up the stairs. "MAE. GET OFF THAT STEP NOW." To which she replies (in her sweetest voice) "Dadda." No matter how frustrated I am, I can not help but smile. There are many nights when I'll tip-toe into her room just to hear her breathe. Seriously. In a day and age where I have access to pretty much every song ever written, all I want to hear is her quick little breaths as she sleeps. The other day I was getting ready to go to work and I grabbed my sunglasses. Mae saw this and said, "bye" puckered up her little lips and walked over to give me a kiss goodbye. It took everything I had not to cry like a little girl.
So as it turns out I can handle getting punched in the face, crashing a dirt bike into the lava rock covered ground of Central Oregon and taking a forearm straight to the teeth without a problem. But a 25 pound little girl from China gives me a kiss goodbye and I'm wrecked.
Well, so much for being a tough guy. It was fun while it lasted.
