Personal Essay: Daddy Got Laid Off
Losing my job made me feel like a failure as a father.
by Werner Trieschmann
May 11, 2009
Now the alarm clock is useless and the hours bleed into days and the days are — well, I was rather stunned at how quickly I came unhinged from the calendar. I really have to think hard about what day it is.
I hear these complaints forming in the back of my head and I so wish to stifle them. My sons are at a great age — practically exploding with new words, feelings and intense, genuine interest in the simple things, like the robins that bounce around our back
yard looking for worms. But I'm wracked with guilt, especially when I am doing a spectacularly bad job of parenting (when, for instance, SpongeBob stays on way longer than it should). What on earth I am good for? My paycheck was at least tangible proof — when
I had one coming in, I should have brought it home every two weeks and waved it around like a flag.
How do I contribute now? My skills as a repairman are negligible. I'm more dangerous than helpful when I am wielding a hammer and nails. Where I truly shine is with with sarcasm and jokes. Really, I feel like some seedy, second-rate comic who's flopping
at this nice suburban home until he can get his big break at the Laugh Hut.
And I am always trying new material out on my captive audience. The boys are in the stage when they simply can't ask enough questions. We dutifully feed them answers, but they don't listen so the questions come back around again and again. It plays out
like a circular logic routine you would use to break a particularly tough terrorist. So I've figured out a shortcut.
I'm devolving, tumbling down to their level.Three-Year-Old: "What's for dinner?"
Me: "Macaroni."
Three-Year-Old: "What's for dinner?"
Me: "Octopus feet."
Three-Year-Old: "No, it's not!"
Me: "Yes, it is."
Three-Year-Old: "I don't like octopus feet!"
Me: "Well, it's what's for dinner."
Maybe in the end that's what's most bothersome. Maybe without an office or a title to wow my children and steady my wobbly ego, there is nothing separating me from my kids. I'm just another crazy savage hanging around the house. Worse, I'm devolving, tumbling
down to their level where there's great delight in burping loudly at the dinner table and the best knock-knock jokes are the ones where poop toilet is at the door. Yeah, sure, I'll buck up and find a job here sooner or later. And I know that once I do,
I'll wonder why I was so anxious in the interim. Meanwhile, I do have some work to do. I mean, these octopus feet aren't going to cook themselves.
©2009 Werner Trieschmann and Babble Media
About the Author
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Werner Trieschmann is a playwright and former editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He has written for American Craft, the Village Voice, the Boston Phoenix and anybody else who will have him. He lives in Little Rock, Arkansas with his wife and two wild boys. Like everybody else in the known universe, he has a blog wernertplays.blogspot.com |
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