The Final Countdown

If you saw an image of Gob Bluth throwing colored hankies awkwardly into the air when you read that post title, you've come to the right place. But this post has nothing to do with Arrested Development. That was just a cheap ploy to get you here.

We are quickly approaching the point where our first child’s birth is days away rather than weeks (hence "The Final Countdown"). It has become apparent, as the philosopher once said, that this sh** is about to get real.

I am looking forward to parenthood. I hope that truth comes across in my posts. I am incredibly excited to meet our daughter, and I look forward to watching her grow up and become an intelligent, beautiful, talented smart-ass just like her mom and dad (okay, so my intelligence, beauty and talent are debatable).

But obviously, something as significant as parenthood comes with a generous side order of change, even above and beyond the extra tick on the census tally of your home and the extra tax deduction on April 15. There is the obvious lack of sleep from having a newborn in the house. There is the financial pressure of providing for a child’s health, education, and overall well-being from birth until (ideally) 18 or (realistically) 27. There are decisions you didn’t need to make when it was just two adults living together. And at some point, you will probably drive a mini-van. If your pride or vanity just can’t handle that, you’ll drive a mini-van that calls itself an SUV.

All in all, it’s a big shift. The closest life change one can draw an analogy to would be marriage. Marriage and parenthood don’t really have a lot in common - I’d like to think the former would come before the latter in most cases (I’m old fashioned) but besides the obvious relationships between the two concepts, similarities are hard to come by. In marriage, two individuals (adults?) go from making decisions that impact only themselves, to making decisions (hopefully in concert) that impact both. In parenthood those two people, who quite likely haven’t completely figured out the first part, now have to make decisions for a completely helpless brand-new human being whose only contribution to any given debate will take the form of a piercing cry, or if you’re lucky a gas-induced giggle.

Both marriage and parenthood involve change, but you only get a big party for one of them. Whatever you may say about baby showers - good, bad, or indifferent - I don’t qualify them as parties. Yes there are gifts and food, and you may even have a good time if you manage to avoid the inevitable “guess the baby food” games, but I just don’t think they qualify as “parties.” No one ends up dancing naked, making out with the dog, or going home in the back of a squad car. Not usually anyway. With a marriage, on the other hand, you often get a wedding reception (which can be a real party depending on the circumstances) and a bachelor/bachelorette party.

Bachelor parties.... well here’s the thing. I don’t know the history of bachelor parties as a concept. Maybe it’s a holdover from the days when wedding celebrations were week-long affairs. I don’t know. This isn’t an academic examination of modern wedding culture. What I know from my observation is that bachelor parties as popularized in movies and television have it exactly wrong, and fortunately for me, most of my friends have got it pretty right. In popular culture, bachelor parties are mostly about haranguing the groom-to-be for what he is losing: ostensibly, his freedom, by which we mean his freedom to sleep with anything that sits still long enough, his freedom to throw money at half dressed women named Bambi who are just paying their way through college, and his freedom to drink himself into embarrassment. Most of my friends who have had bachelor parties have treated them as celebrations of what is being gained. Yes, there may have been some good natured ribbing, and yes, copious volumes of alcohol may have been consumed, but it was all in a spirit of camaraderie and encouragement that doesn’t exist in movies or on TV. Yeah, I’m old fashioned, and I’m actually pretty proud of that. I did go to one bachelor party where the groom-to-be kicked a party-goer in the face as we all attempted to tie him down with duct tape, bury him in the sand on Folly Beach, and put makeup on him. But that’s a story for another day..

...Actually, that was the entire story.

But I bring up this concept of bachelor parties because I am curious: what would the concept of a bachelor party look like if it were changed and applied to a couple on the eve of becoming parents? Unless you are celebrating before you start trying to have kids, you’re probably not hitting the bars for a drinking binge. People frown at resting your beer on a baby bump. Clubbing? My wife and I have never been much for the dance club scene (such as one exists in Columbia), but I’ll admit the image of the two of us on a dance floor during her eighth month of pregnancy with “Techno Chocolate” blaring in the background is kind of hilarious. More specifically, the image of the likely reactions we would get is what gets me laughing. Even more innocuous, nontraditional forms of celebration are limited either by the condition of pregnancy or by the absurd heat of South Carolina summer. I tried to convince her that go carts were perfectly safe, but that was a non-starter. Same with paint ball, though the look she gave me was almost as painful as a paintball welt. The golf balls on the putt-putt course literally melted when they hit the cement. A midnight movie? We’d both fall asleep. Maybe that’s the most practical form of celebrating/preparing for being parents. Sleeping. For about 48 hours straight.

I don’t know the answer. So I put it again to our Constant Readers - particularly those of you with kids - what would you do if you had a night (or dare I say, a weekend) without the responsibilities of parenting? If you could go back and celebrate the the transition from pre-parental life to having a child, how would you do it?