Who Knew?

We are getting ready to move for the summer to a hotel. Before you start inquiring as to who lost a job or which one of us developed a fondness for freebasing bathtub crank, allow me to elaborate. Jess’ job includes housing as part of her compensation, but we are only permitted to stay in our home for ten months a year. The other two months, we are moved to temporary housing. Since we now have kids, her employer must legally place us in a residence free of lead paint (even though these kids barely latch on to a nipple, let alone a brain-slowing window pane, slathered in lead paint).  Since they didn’t have any other lead-free properties available, we are being put up in two-bedroom suite in a hotel. It has a full kitchen and isn’t too bad. We even get maid service. I feel like a Rockefeller already.

We’ve gotten pretty good at this move, annoying as it is. Having the two kiddos has made it infinitely more challenging, but we’ve done a pretty good job thus far of finding time to pack, eat, and resist the temptation to leave Jackson and Logan on the doorstep of some rich people with a note. One tactic we’ve employed is the, “Get These Kids The Hell Out Of This Apartment , So I Can Get Shit Done” approach. It’s a pretty simple concept: I get the kids the hell out of the apartment so Jess can get shit done. The easiest and cheapest way to do this is to load them up in the Chicco * double-stroller and cruise down the sidewalk about a half-mile to downtown. 

"You must be such a GOOD daddy!"

As I’ve pointed out previously, twins seem to attract a wide-array of lookey-lou’s. And, you may recall, they are almost all women. Before I go any further, it is critically important for me to point out that I am thrilled to be married to Jess. Even when we butt heads ---and butt hard at times---I am still in love with this woman and could not imagine life without her. However, like most dudes, I have a fragile ego that requires emotional bubble wrap from just about anyone willing to apply it. So as I’m strolling along with the double-dose in tow, I’m not offended when women “ohh” and “ahh” and tell me how cute they are.  And do I sometimes take a path that might attract this kind of attention?

I’m not answering that. But it’s not like I’m strategically rolling past the yoga studio as class lets out and asking, “Do you know where the single fathers’ support group is?”  Should a woman on her jog stop dead in her tracks and say hi, I don’t smack her in the ass and say, “Keep runnin’, Gump!” That would be rude.

But this isn’t my fault. It’s real simple. These kids are chick magnets. And I do believe that men get some residual respect. Not deserved, mind you, but residual. Why? Easy. First off, you have two infants, so you are immediately viewed as a sympathetic creature. Second, you are out by yourself, which shows that you are taking initiative to being a strong parent. Forget that you’ve been ASKED to leave. Third, babies are always cute. So even if you are a horribly disfigured bell-tower attendant, they are more likely to see something cute and adorable in you, as welll (or they think, “God damn, this kid is gonna be fugly once he hits puberty.”) Finally, it shows that someone actually has enough trust in you to leave them in your care. And being responsible for babies is right-sexy.

Smell the loneliness...

To even further bolster this point, most of the people who follow this blog and have “liked” the Facebook page (shameless plug..come one like my page, would ya? I’m not going to ask for money) are WOMEN.  Are you kidding me? I spent the better part of my single years trying, unsuccessfully, to attract women. Had I known the power of twins, I would have downloaded pictures of babies from the Pampers website, and started blogging about my “dear, sweet angels from heaven” like a mad man upon emerging from my Y2K bunker. And you think dogs in a park are a nice icebreaker? Babies are the bomb! They’ve done far more for my desirability than the hundreds of ounces of Drakkar cologne I splashed on my fat body in the 90s.

Conversely, the twins-get-you-attention-from-the-opposite-sex theory falls pretty flat for gals. Jess recently noted that attractive men seem to “run the other way” as soon as the double-stroller reaches their periphery. Whatever positive attributes men receive for being out, about, and alone with twins, women get the proverbial ying to the yang. There are any number of theories we could explore in this space as to why this is the case, but it would take a lot of thought and, quite frankly, I’m not going to invest that much time into telling you why guys are pigs. I’ll leave that up to the folks at Cosmo. But we are, and let’s just leave it at that.

 I would be foolish to assume this new-found attention has anything to do with me on any level beyond surface. But I am a fool, and assume I shall. With the move approaching, I must come to grips that my “hey ladies” downtown strolls will come to an end for a couple of months. But one good thing about calling a hotel home: every couple of days there are new sets of eyes moving in. See you at the pool! Look for the stroller. 

*On a recent trip to a way-too-expensive baby store, we were looking at new strollers. We explained to the sales person that we had a Chicco. We pronounced it “chick-oh”.  The sales woman immediately corrected us, “You mean, ‘kee-ko’.” We told her that we had heard it pronounced “chick-oh” in several different places. “Oh no,” she laughed condescendingly, “it’s kee-ko.” No one should take strollers this seriously, and furthermore, no one should try to make you feel like a dope for not sharing their illogical arrogance on the matter.