Becoming a Family Man

In the 20th century I was a typical bachelor living in a typical bachelor pad, which is defined as “an enclosed space that looks like a federal prison cell, except not as pretty”. I had no sense of decor. My walls were covered with rock band posters, food particles, and dirt from the Pleistocene era. The furniture layout could be best described as Early American Goodwill, and no two pieces matched. When I let my dog in he would put a paw over his eyes. The house was so dirty that I had to wipe my feet before I went outside. My car was no better. It had so many rust holes that it whistled on the highway. As I drove I could actually hear the theme from Sanford and Son.

I had always said that I would never get married, raise kids, or buy a minivan. Well, that prediction turned out to be about as accurate as Enron’s financial reports. I met a cute, intelligent woman by the name of Cathi, who captured my heart with her sense of humor and creative pursuits such as dancing in the hallway wearing nothing but a shower cap and singing at the top of her lungs. A year later she and her two wonderful sons, Joseph and Adam, moved in with me, despite the fact that my house was so ugly it could make an onion cry. We also acquired another dog, and the six of us somehow managed to live for a year in a one-bathroom house that was so small, the roaches fled to the nearest phone booth. We envied sardines.

Well, enough was enough. Lack of breathing room, plus the fact that the local middle school was so dangerous that the school newspaper had an obituary column, convinced us to seek living quarters elsewhere. So we enlisted the help of a real estate agent. Every place this woman showed us was, according to her, “just perfect” and a “great deal” because she had only “our best interests” in mind and didn’t care one bit about her “commission”. The places in our price range were inhabited by people who had more arrests than college degrees, and the only way we could have qualified for a loan in any of the nicer areas would have been to put the kids up as collateral.

Then we found an affordable house. Okay, it wasn’t really affordable, what with the Stock Market crashing and my portfolio being reduced to the value of a lottery ticket, except without the possibility of winning. But the price wasn’t out of reach. The house was a vast improvement over our last place, with ample room and indoor plumbing, and the neighborhood was (and still is) very pretty and well-kept, so we were sold immediately. We made a bid that day, and within a month we moved in. We met the folks in our cul-de-sac, and we were delighted to find that we were in our element, whereas at our old house, every neighbor routinely used words like “y’all” and “po-leece”.

A year later I bought a minivan, and a year after that Cathi and I tied the noose -- I mean knot, thereby completing my transformation from a footloose bachelor whose very appearance made women clutch their purses, to a middle-class suburbanite dad with mortgage and car payments so huge that in order to obtain food I have to go to Kentucky Fried Chicken and lick other people’s fingers. It was difficult at first to lose my old identity, but I’m glad to say that I made it through the tough times, thanks to an understanding wife, patient children, professional therapy, and beer.