The Daddy™ Dilemma

Hard skills, soft hearts, can’t lose.

The baby girl heard ‘round the world

People don’t take care of things that aren’t theirs, is something my dad would say to me (in his thick tri-state accent) repeatedly when I was younger. This was usually in reference to how critical he was of any service, how shitty the craftsmanship was on every modern consumable good, or even how store shelves are routinely and casually ransacked in the name of customer entitlement. He would rather take a decade to complete a project than let someone else half-ass it for any reasonable rate. If you ask my father, the quality of care has been in decline for as long as ownership has been outsourced to industrialization. My dad is wrong about a few things (like my taxes which he’d been doing all wrong for several years!), but this has never been one of them. Thanks to Larry, my understanding of masculinity is road rage, conservative economics, and a stubborn dedication to self-made meritocracy. It doesn’t exactly make me the ideal candidate for Baby Girl (or maybe it does, I don’t know).

But what’s in a name, that which we call a daddy — that any other name would be…so that? jkkkkk No, but actually. I’ve never met so many childless men in my life who want to be my daddy. They love to hear it. They demand to hear it. It’s like the opposite of a pet name. This is a new development for me in the thirst dept, which ironically wasn’t even a Thing™ until I started dating younger.