... they might have conversations like these:

I walk into the family room, where there are people wearing what looks like 18th-century garb on my television set and a deeply portentous narrator's voice filling my entertainment space. Great. Educational crap.

Me, exasperated: What are we watching?
Him: "Nova"!
Me, amused: I'm sorry, "Nova"? With dramatization? Since when does your beloved "Nova" offer dramatization?

Minutes go by, although let's face it, it could have been just seconds ...

Me: Why are we still watching this? I'm in no mood to learn anything. Can you turn on "Greek" instead?
Him: But this is really exciting stuff. It's leading up to how they figured out E= mc2!
Me: What is that anyway?
Him: It's like the greatest equation of all time!
Me: Yeah, but what is it?
Him: It's the key to ...
Me: No, what does it stand for?
Him: Energy equals Mass times the Speed of Light squared.
Me: But that doesn't make any sense.
Him: I know! That's what is so incredible about it. Think about it: energy, mass and speed of light in the same equation!
Me: No, I mean that "C" would stand for "speed of light." That doesn't make sense.
Him: No, but: Energy is related to mass times the speed of light squared! It's amazing. Doesn't that just blow your mind?
Me: What blows my mind is that they decided that "C" stood for the "speed of light," when there is clearly no C in the phrase. And also, that we're watching this instead of "Greek."

So I was making out my annual grid of fall television shows -- new ones worth watching, days they're on, times they air, returning shows, conflicts in recording, etc. You know, like everybody does this time of year. (What? You don't? Hmmm.) It's sort of my equivalent of fantasy football or baseball, except my opponents are the networks and my DVR. Oh, and time, which, as always, is a worthy and formidable foe in my quest to conquer all my favorite shows in a single week while making sure my children are well-fed and clean. They generally are.

Anyway, I finished my grid, looked up from my work -- a timeline of teenage romps, medical dramas, sci-fi nutjobs and sitcoms about friends who don't have children and spend way too much time in each other's apartments to be platonic -- and gave Randy the news.

"It's looking pretty bad," I told him.
Him: "Yeah?"
Me: "Yep."
Him: "What's the diagnosis?"
Me: "That Monday night at 8 p.m. is where our television dreams go to die. We have Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles, Dancing with the Stars ..."
Him: "Ugh."
Me: "Anyway ... Dancing with the Stars, Big Bang Theory, Chuck ...
Him: "Uh-oh."
Me: "... and Gossip Girl."
Him: [sarcastic gasp of tragedy] "Oh no! Not Gossip Girl! Anything but Gossip Girl! What are we going to do?"
Me: [ignoring lack of appreciation for my pretty, pretty show] "Well, I think it's clear what we have to do. I can dump Dancing with the Stars, I guess ..."
Him: "Please?"
Me: "... but unless two of the other four are available online -- and here I have to exclude Gossip Girl, because you know I love it, xoxo, and I like my teen dramas in full screen, in all their backstabbing glory, as they were meant to be seen -- we're going to need another DVR. What do you say?"
Him: [with a promising note in his voice] "Well, I think we could manage that."
Me: "Yeah?"
Him: "Sure. Just take MJ out of preschool and we'll use part of her tuition to pay for another DVR so we can keep watching all of our shows."
Me: "Awesome. I love it. I'm calling Time Warner Cable tomorrow!"

Randy took one for the team Sunday morning and got up with MJ when she woke at 5 a.m. ... just before MJ prematurely woke up Little L, who has enough trouble getting to sleep with her arm in a splint. (She had refused to go to bed until midnight. Refused, I tell you.) He slogged it out as long as he could, bless his heart, letting me sleep in. And then he tagged me in for duty at 8:30 a.m., dumping Little L on my lap and MJ at my side and crawling back under the covers like a schoolboy with a tummy ache.

"I want to cry," he said as he rolled away from us, beaten down by his own children. We both laughed, but it was only half-hearted, because crying -- if not for the fact that we're supposed to be the grown-ups around here -- is entirely appropriate. I would have gotten him a box of Kleenex, in fact, and shared it with him, given the looniness that has ensued in this house of late. Instead, I got up, put the baby back in her crib for a nap, the toddler back in her bed, and went downstairs to clean up the explosive nightmare of toys and crumbs that our family room had become.

The vacuum cleaner definitely didn't sound right as I pushed it around the room, but because I'm an idiot, I didn't think to check out the reason. And then came Randy down the stairs, bleary-eyed, still in his underwear, clearly not done catching up on his sleep but on a mission nonetheless. I stopped vacuuming and looked at him, amused. He walked over to the vacuum cleaner -- aka, "The Boss" -- flipped the switch from "hose attachment" to "floor" and turned to go back upstairs.

"Oh," I said, "uh, thanks."

That's me on an almost full night's sleep, people. If I'd been the one who got up at 5 a.m., I would probably have been using MJ's toy vacuum without realizing it.

"Mommy, I could help you," says MJ, climbing up on a bar stool and inspecting what I'm up to. She says this, most of the time, before she even knows what it is I'm up to. I feel like I could use this to my advantage somehow, but that's for another day. On this particular day, I'm chopping onions, which she, as always, pronounces to be "beautiful."

"That's OK, baby, I've got this one," I tell her. But she stays and watches and critiques, until she gets bored with watching and critiquing, and then she gets creative. With the chopped onions.

The husband likes his ice tea maker almost as much as he likes his clothes hamper empty and his dresser drawers full. Unfortunately, he likes to leave it sitting around, too. So, I mean, I can't really help it if a few of the tiny little chopped onions might have ended up in the filter basket. It wasn't my idea, after all, and I did say, "Oh, MJ, onions don't belong in the ice tea maker. Do you want to make Daddy's tea taste icky?" I may have been laughing at the time, or smirking conspiratorially, but I tried, people. I tried.

And she may or may not have been bowling earlier today with the apple he's currently chomping on. It's hard to say.

"Mommy! Mommy! Could we watch Lightning McQueen? Mommy! Could we watch Lightning McQueen? Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!"

MJ says this to me from her breakfast perch this morning, where she is running her miniature red No. 95 Lightning McQueen car on the table between bites of syrupy waffle. You may know LQ as the "lead character" in Cars, a movie we have only just begun to watch. And watch. And watch. A movie that, I daresay, is rivalling Madagascar as my "new" (it's new to me) favorite animated film. It's a tale of friendship, small town vs. big town, the big picture vs. the big idea, winning and losing and how losing sometimes means winning ... plus it has all that great music, especially the Rascal Flatt's version of "Life is a Highway" and the sweetly sad "Our Town" by James Taylor -- which anyone who comes from a small town would love. And I do.

So, when I went to turn it on for MJ this morning, and the sound wasn't working, I was a little bit sad myself. Which, in and of itself, is sad. But I digress ... to the Bat Phone!

Ring!

Randy: "Hey."

Me: "Yello. 'Sup?"

Randy: "Not much. You know ... working. Earning money for your keep. Trying to get this project finished up so I can spend time with my parents while they visit this week. That sort of thing."

Me: "Sweet."

Randy: "What's going on there?"

Me: "Bit of an emergency. The sound won't come on the TV."

Randy: "Hmmm. Well, that's no good."

Me: "Yeah. That's what I thought. What did you do to it?"

Randy: "I didn't do anything to it."

Me: "Then why won't it come on?"

Randy: "I don't know. I didn't touch it."

Me: "Well how do I fix it?

Randy: "I don't know. It should work."

Me: "Well this is unacceptable. I can't go through a whole day without sound on my TV! Who will babysit your children? Do you know what I have to get done today?"

Randy: "I can't imagine."

Me: "Yeah, well. I'm frustrated."

Randy: "I can see that. Sounds like it's going to be a long day. OK, well, gotta go work now."

Me: "Yeah, OK. Fine."

It's times like this when I realize I've lost all control of reality.

The good news is that I did get the sound fixed. It turns out that our television, with all of its myriad systems and dozens of remotes for hundreds of functions, responds surprisingly well to cursing.

The husband and I, that is. Yes, these 13 habits are very annoying, but we've also decided that, because they've become standing jokes, we'd probably miss them if they went away.

Well, probably, anyway.

Starting with how I annoy him:

1. "Are you incapable of putting the cap back on the toothpaste?"
It's true: I'm a living cliche. Which is why we have his and hers toothpaste.

2. "Your car looks like a junkyard."
Well, that might be overstating the case just a bit. A teenager's cluttered room, maybe.

3. "If you kick all the covers off of you at night, how do you still manage to steal them all?"
One of science's great mysteries.

4. "You have a gum problem."
I do not have a gum problem.
"You are so fixated on the gum that you refuse to throw away the wrappers."
Well, that's a gum wrapper problem, now isn't it?


5. "You fold clothes, but leave them in the laundry basket ... downstairs."
Guilty.

6. "What's with the 'anymore syndrome?'"
It's true: I have a tendency to talk like a crotchety old sourpuss at times. For example: "You just can't get a good order of McDonald's french fries anymore," or, "They don't make any fun cartoons anymore."

6.5 "You never finish the milk in your cereal bowl."
It's true. I never finish the milk in my cereal bowl.
"Is it because you pour too much, or you don't like it after all the cereal is gone?"
A little of both, actually.



... and then there is how he annoys me:

7. You taught MJ to drink the leftover milk in her cereal bowl.
"So?"
So if she ever has dinner with the queen, I hope she skips the soup course.

8. You leave the baby monitor on when she's in the room with us, and turn it off when she's upstairs, out of hearing range. Defeats the purpose, no?
"The buzzing sound annoys me while I'm watching TV."

9. While most people would turn the radio up when the emergency alert signal comes on, you actually turn it all the way down, causing me to wonder if we might be driving unwittingly into a tornado.
"It's too loud. I can't hear the baby in the backseat."

10. Cabinets? Drawers? You could close those once in a while, right?
"I'm in a hurry."

11. Nothing is ever true -- even if I have researched it -- until you have researched it yourself.
"Yeah. So? What's your point?"

12. Every home improvement project that you've ever started is currently only 94 percent complete.
"I always like to have a little bit left to do."

13. You like to stand over my shoulder while I type.
"Uh, yeah. That's because I never know when you might be typing something about me. Like now, for instance."
You make an excellent point.
"Obviously."

"Beth, did your daughter have jammies and a diaper on when you put her in bed?" Randy is calling to me downstairs, from upstairs, where he is standing in puddles of pee in MJ's room.

"Yes," I blurt out, with dread.

"Well," he says, "she doesn't now."

And he wonders why I want to watch "The Secret Life of the American Teenager," a show we had seen preview for a couple nights ago. I need a release from toddlerhood. Something more grown-up. Something more like teenagerhood. (Adulthood would just be going too far.)

"Is it so wrong that I want to watch a show with Molly Ringwald in it?" I had asked Randy, after having him tell me -- upon seeing my eyes grow big as saucers at the prospect of a new show -- that we were not adding it to the DVR.

"No more shows about teenagers!" he insisted, pulling the remote closer toward him, as if protecting the TV -- his baby -- from my insanity. "No more! I'm cutting you off. You have a problem."

OK, I don't have a problem. This is the same phrase I hear about my "alleged" chewing gum addiction ...



... and the fact that I am 75 percent combustible from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. (actual husband quote: "Did you know that your coffee creamer is flammable?"):



The problem is with producers of shows like "Gossip Girl" and "Greek" (which I may or may not have been watching at the time the preview came on) who keep making immensely entertaining shows that star and revolve around teenagers and make me long for a return of the fabulously kvetching "Party of Five." I mean, I love "Grey's Anatomy," but I'll take the bratty, spoiled chicks on "Gossip Girl" over real-life brat Katherine Heigl any day of the week. Granted, I haven't seen "Secret Life" yet (it premieres July 1), but I'm more than willing to give it a spin.

And, well ... if you really want to blame someone for my love of teenager shows, blame MJ -- not for the previously mentioned freestyle bedtime peeing, but because I once had nothing else to do while holding her 3-month-old self and waiting for her to fall asleep, so during the spring and summer of 2005 I watched every single rerun of this stupid show, from pilot to finale, on TBS. And oh, how I grew to love that stupid show, and all of its stupidness.

Back to the other night:

"We're watching it," I told Randy, with great determination, standing up for oppressed housewives everywhere who secretly worship teenage television. Yep, this must be how late nineteenth century women in the western United States felt after they first won suffrage. (See Pearl? I'm trying to raise my blog reading level.) We've come a long way, baby.

"Do we have to?" he asked.

"Yes," I said. "We must. It's highly relative. One day we will have teenagers, and I think it's important we keep up with trends in the industry."

"Well," he allowed, "it's true. We'll have two of them, in fact, for something like seven years."

"Exactly," I said. "And ... I mean, dude: Molly Ringwald!"

When I was younger, my dad had a penchant for the cannonball on our annual family beach vacation. All the kids in my family would beg him to do it, and then stand back and wait for the splash. It really wasn't a beach vacation unless the pool had been christened by the bruising thud of Pop-on-Water.

But this year, my dad didn't even bring his swim trunks. He hasn't executed a cannonball in years. I guess he figures it's time to pass the torch to a new generation of goofballs.

And while Randy isn't one to make a big splash, he's an expert at finding fun in the simplest places. On our last night at the beach last week, we came across a deeply dug hole in the sand that I paid little attention to at first. After all, there were no impressive spires or moats involved in this artwork, no drawbridges or towers to avoid because some parent child had worked hours on it that day. It was just ... a Great Big Hole.

But to Randy, well, it was the torch. Soon, he was stepping back 20 feet, running and jumping into it with all the glee of a 7-year-old -- which was convenient, since the 7-year-old nephew on our walk followed him with his own acrobatics. And then MJ, her little legs wobbly like Bambi's as she tried to slide down the bank of the hole.

After several minutes of the best kind of fun a little kid (and his or her uncle or dad) can have, a simple kind of fun, we noticed an older couple sitting on the deck of their beach house just up from the Great Big Hole, chuckling like we used to at my dad. This was their idea of a cannonball.

"Glad you're enjoying it," they called out to us, raising their red Solo plastic cups in our direction, as if in tribute to goofballism everywhere.

It was bound to happen eventually. When you have a blog feature with the acronym BBQ, you're going to have to get the menfolk in your sphere involved, yes? Yes. So, what better way to end FatherBunker Week and head into the Father's Day weekend than to let the dads answer this week's question.

I give you:

If you could invent a Sharper Image-type contraption to make fatherhood easier, what would it be?

Randy, a.k.a. "Mr. MotherBunker," by dictation: "I'm definitely going with some kind of cloning device."

"Why, Mr. MotherBunker?" asked his dictator the person taking his dictation.

"Because bedtime would be easier. One of me for each kid. Or, better yet: One of YOU for each kid. Yeah, I like that better." {ed note: Uh-huh. Why don't you clone us both; that way you can -- I mean, my clone can -- have that third kid you mentioned.}

Kevin, a.k.a. "MotherBrother-in-Law," who, it might be relevant to know, is an air-traffic controller at Pearson International Airport in Toronto. The cool kids call it YYZ:

OK. Here it is ..."noise cancelling" cell and home phones. They make noise cancelling headsets for pilots to null the effects of engine sounds to make flying quieter so why not null the effects of screaming kids when you are on the phone to the bank, schools, work etc. You know, that really important call you have to make or else complete and utter disaster ... That would definitely make fatherhood (and motherhood for that matter) much easier and although not Sharper Image, it has a sharper sound-type contraption written all over it.

Dave "The" Drake (you know he just loves being called that all the time): I’d invent an alarm clock with a 15 second snooze button. It could be set to remind my 8 and 10 year olds to do their homework or chores. When they ignored it the first time, they’d get reminders every 15 seconds. This would save me having to ask them to do everything 9 times before any action was taken.

Sharper Image always has a massage chair in their stores. I’d love to see a massage chair that was also a riding lawn mower. You see, mowing our lawn always takes at least 2 hours. At a local spa, I’ve paid for 60 minute massages that seemed to last 5 minutes. With this kind of math, I could get the whole lawn mowed in what seemed like 10 minutes... and I’d feel great by the end!

JoJo Almario: Well I have thought of enough inventions to make for kids to make my life a little bit more selfish or overly convenient. I have even thought of some that in the end are extremely far-fetched and would not get past the first evaluations of patenting. In other words take the real work out of what makes a parent a parent. Hmmmm ... I’ve even thought of some sort of short release harmless sleeping device that will automatically put the kids to nap so I can just lounge around, watch TV and play games on the computer, but like I said ... selfish and not good parenting. SO I have a couple of things that might be good ideas.

Toys that actually do grown up stuff – mainly like a toy vaccum cleaner that will actually vaccum. (I wonder what kinda child endangerment hazard that will present?) I hear my wife complain about the toy vaccums so this ones for you sweety!

Holograms – Whether they are of me or some other pre-school character to keep my kids occupied long enough to go to the bathroom, or cook dinner (HA! See I can do unselfish parenting stuff too) Maybe they can even be educational! (Man I'm on a parenting role).

And last but not least a very far-fetched device (but ultimately a bonding resource for my kids and I), something that can translate their toddler/baby movements into mouse and keyboard inputs so they can join me on the Nintendo or my computer games. Fun for the family yeah? {ed note: I think you mean "Fun for the family, eh?"}

Paul Kalin: I will confess that I am a sufferer of temporal narcissism. My gadget-based lifestyle has allowed me to seemingly alter the space/time continuum to watch commercial-free television programming when I
want; take podcasts with me on the road and pause, rewind, and fast forward to seek out the best portions of audio programs; and clean my house while I'm not even at home through a scheduled Roomba run. {ed note: Is that really what those things do? OK, I'm getting one.}

However, my affliction gives me certain dysphoria when child-rearing tasks occur in real time – beyond the control of my gadget controllers.

So, I will be the first in line to when Sharper Image releases their Time Shifting Remote Control for a Child. This simple gadget will allow the parent to:
• Pause the child to take a phone call in the middle of Candyland to
avoid the attention seeking scatter the cards consequence.
• Enjoy the pleasant initial 10 minutes of bedtime routine. Then, fast forward through the anguish of the next hour of negotiation. Total relapsed time: 10 minutes and 30 seconds. Bedtime has never been so easy.
• Rewind to undo the mistake of placing a full coke next to a laptop computer on the floor. Turning your back for just 10 seconds can be catastrophic. But with time shifting technology, wrongs are righted after the event.
• And loop over your daughter's first jump in to the pool again and again to make a blissful moment last as long as you want.

Such a simple device would have many uses. In fact ... am I late for my
publishing deadline??? << RW << RW << RW << There we go, it's all
about timing.

Marc Smith -- that's Marc with a "c": Often Ema tells me that she wishes I could be there during the day. If someone is mean to her or she just wants to feel safe. I would like to have a device that I could pre-load images of me with little notes to her so she could see me whenever she wanted. I leave her notes in her lunch, but I think she would love to hear me say things and see me. {ed note: Awww. So very sweet.}

Carter "I went to the French Open" Toole: Simple. I want eyes in the back of my head. I've doubled my roster of kids so I need to double my ability to keep them (and by extension...me) out of trouble.

{Ladies and gentlemen, settle in:}

Matt Rehm: Although a just and merciful God long ago "invented" the nubile Scandinavian au pair, the Sharper Image stubbornly refused to offer this miracle product, focusing instead on Radio-Controlled Squirting Gunboats, Turbo Nose Hair Groomers, and of course LoveHandlers. Thus it came as no surprise on May 16 when a bankruptcy court approved the sale of the Sharper Image's assets at auction, sparking pandemonium among those eager to procure pallets of AcuVibe Rechargeable Personal Variable-Speed Massagers at bargain-basement prices (and you know who you are, sinners).

Only one product could have saved the Sharper Image without prompting a tsunami-like rise in divorces and/or a resurgence in ABBA's popularity in North America. It's a revolutionary innovation that would eliminate our ongoing dependence on foreign oil, eradicate the threat of global climate change, and rescue us all from the looming specter of $7/gallon gasoline.

I'm referring, of course, to Mr. Fusion.



Before delving further into this, it's necessary to explain that I've historically underestimated two forces of nature. One is the longevity of Bill Kristol's career, which has degraded more slowly than styrofoam despite the fact that, technically speaking, he's been wrong about every single thing he's written for the past seven years. The other is the potency of a substance strikingly similar to Kristol's punditry, one that is colloquially known as "babysh*t."

Sheriff Buford T. Justice once proclaimed, "Bank robbin' is babysh*t!" -- concisely stating his view that babysh*t is merely a minor annoyance, ultimately as inert and nonthreatening as N.C. State's athletic department.* Indeed, babysh*t appears harmless to the untrained eye, like a peaceful manta ray floating in the placid waters off Australia's coast. But approach it with casual indifference and it will strike with a primal fury normally reserved for oblivious Animal Planet hosts.
This simple but painful truth became evident during my newborn son's first visit to the pediatrician last week. Much like the voyage of the Hindenburg or Howard Dean's 2000 presidential campaign, everything progressed smoothly ... at first. But upon being weighed, Charlie began contorting his face as if re-enacting the asphyxiation scene in Total Recall.



The carnage that followed eerily resembled the end of Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" video, both situations having arisen from the unanticipated wrath of a highly agitated child. Except in lieu of a frozen classroom awash in blood, everything in the offices of ABC Pediatrics -- the nurse, the scales, the floor and, yes, the wall -- appeared to have been splattered with a generous helping of butternut squash.




(Charlie then treated us to fountain show so reminiscent of Bellagio's, he might as well have choreographed it to "Luck Be a Lady." But I digress.)

This, friends, is an explosive phenomenon that commands respect, yet one that must be harnessed for the good of all mankind. We must somehow become the masters of this force -- which I refer to as "Diaper Obliterating, Overtly Kinetic Internal Energy, or "DOOKIE" -- and channel its awesome power. Like in the days of the Apollo program or possibly "Hands Across America," we must come together as a nation to achieve what our ancestors would not dare imagine:

Not a diaper, but a DOOKIE containment system that creates a perfect vacuum when applied to the baby. All matter -- gaseous, liquid and especially solid -- expelled from the baby must be suctioned away from his skin and held in a protective chamber to avoid environmental contamination.

An efficient and affordable Mr. Fusion capable of converting DOOKIE containment systems into clean, renewable energy.

A DeLorean or other sweet '80s sportscar that runs entirely on DOOKIE. Bonus points for monster tires.



It is imperative that we develop this technology for the betterment of our our environment, the strengthening of our economy, and indeed the preservation of our national security. Also, not having to change any more dirty diapers would totally kick ass.

{*MotherBunker has no issues with N.C. State, for the record. Duke, on the other hand ...}

Daniel: Wow. That’s too high to get over. Too low to get under. I feel so ... overwhelmed by this well-reasoned and lengthy discourse. Here I was thinking that the perfect invention would be a machine that plays non-stop Spongebob videos while simultaneous blowing bubbles, making funny fart noises and shooting out cheetos and chocolate chip cookies to the delight of 6-year-olds everywhere. Guess we’re in two different phases of fatherhood, Matty.

{Oh, he's in some kind of a phase, alright. I think it's called "lack o' sleep."}

Like most parents (I would guess), I try to imagine what traits the Bunker Girls will acquire from Randy and me. Not just the straight hair vs. wavy hair bit, but whether they will be cool under pressure (him) or freak out when something doesn't go according to plan (regrettably, that's me). I always hope they'll get the best of both worlds, which is something I touched on for Triangle Mom2Mom, a local parenting site I contribute to. (Maybe you've seen that little link up there called TM2M?) So, because it's FatherBunker week, I'm going to take the liberty of reposting it here. (But Bunker readers get bonus pictures with it!)

Speeding up I-40 and out of town for the Memorial Day weekend, I was reading a story to Randy in Sports Illustrated (Fun fact: I worked there for about six minutes in the mid-90s*) about IndyCar driver Danica Patrick. "Her father ... had raced snowmobiles and midget cars in his younger days, and he instilled the thrill of speed into his daughters Danica and Brooke, buying each a go-kart when Danica was nine and Brooke seven."

Randy's eyes lit up from the driver's seat; he interrupted me mid-sentence. I knew what was coming.

"Can I buy my daughter a go-kart when she's seven?"

I shot him a look.

Here's the thing about my husband. He doesn't do team sports. He does thrill sports, the kind where you can be killed or maimed or paralyzed in some fashion. He, too, raced snowmobiles and go-karts ... if by race you mean flying into icy trees in the Canadian outback or crashing into friends on an indoor track. He was the kid who successfully petitioned the local government to build a municipal BMX park so he and his pals could take their lives into their own hands in a designated area, instead of flipping on their heads in front of the Canadian Tire store while innocent customers dodged their soaring bodies. Over his left eyebrow is a scar he doesn't like to talk about, but I'm certain he didn't get it in a knife fight on the mean streets of suburban Ontario:

(Yep, that's him, rockin' the socks.)

Meanwhile, my older sister had to bribe me to learn how to ride a bike when I was 10. I was bringing down her neighborhood reputation.

I want my girls to be fearless, I do. I love watching women like Danica Patrick redefine the strength of their gender. And if MJ or Little L were to find themselves in the winner's circle at the Indy 500, I would be their most obnoxious fan. It's just that, before they start the race, they'll have to climb over my dead body to get into the driver's seat.

This also goes for jumping out of airplanes, flying off ramps of all kinds, scuba diving, riding really tall ferris wheels and boxing. I guess that leaves the kind of fearlessness displayed at desk jobs and on stationary bicycles:

(My kind of danger: Eating Utz potato chips with lunch, circa 2001.)


The truth is, I love risk ... from a distance. In fact, when we were expecting MJ, we tried to think of names that would sound good when introduced at the X-Games, names with instant star quality and a hint of edge, like Picabo and Piper. Dirt-biking names. Skateboarding names. Names that could be adopted to describe a particularly radical water skiing move that she had invented and perfected en route to winning a gold medal. We even thought about Danica ... but decided we would be pigeonholing her.

And then I went through 23 hours and 46 minutes of labor to deliver a surprisingly blue and completely terrified 5-pound, 10-ounce bald baby girl who couldn't eat, sleep or grow hair without my help. So much for risk.

When it comes to child-rearing, Randy and I agree on most things. But thresholds of physical danger are not among them. He's dauntless, mostly; I'm paranoid, mostly. He turns MJ upside down in a good-natured romp and I cringe. He puts her on his shoulders and I walk behind him like a human safety net. I suppose that balance is good news for our children, who will probably experience just enough thrill in their lives without losing any appendages.

Back in the car, I continued reading aloud, this time about a makeshift racetrack Danica's father had set up for his girls. "Moments later her brakes failed, and she crashed head-on at 25 mph into a concrete wall ... Danica's body slammed hard into the steering column, and she slumped over, her head smacking the ground as her coat caught on fire."

It turns out she was unharmed. But I shot Randy another look anyway. "Ahem," I said. He wasn't listening. He was too busy looking at something in front of him.

"Maybe I can buy her a motorcycle when she turns 9, like that one, on the back of that truck. And we can go dirt-biking together."

Absolutely. In a sandbox out back, and on a bike without a motor.

***

More exploits from the father of my children:

Building a Go-Kart:

(That outfit, by the way, is what 11 year old boys used to wear. Now it's what 11 year old girls wear.)

Scuba Diving:

(As for me? As Professor Pizza on "Curious George" says, "I don't like it when fish look at me.")

Ski-Dooing in the Atlantic Ocean: