One of the biggest problems that I faced when I got married and now again that I’ve got a newborn son (4 months and counting) was the transition from bachelor to husband and now to stay-at-home dad. There is a profoundly different mindset and collection of priorities that have to be changed nearly overnight for the arrangement to be successful. Or at least semi-successful.

After I graduated college with my history degree and immediately went back for a graduate degree, the real drinking began. I drank more, slept less, and got better grades than at any point in my academic life. And all of this after I’d essentially ousted myself from the fraternity. Go figure.

When I finished grad school, I moved down to Dallas and took a job as a marketing manager for some big, screw the poor people company. Of course, I had my own Catholic guilt about abetting the same people that were preying on my own relatives, but I figured that was part of being an Adult. Doing things that you don’t like, earning the paycheck, and not drinking anymore.

I went to work, did my job, earned numerous accolades and recognition far beyond the normal stingy-ness of the department, came home to watch TV and play D&D and video games with my similarly inclined friends. It was official, I was an Adult. Capital A.

Then I met my future wife, got engaged, moved to Australia, got married, and had a child. All of this in the span of five years. What I realize now was that back then and even now I’m nowhere near being a mature, responsible human being. Notice I didn’t even bring in the a-word.

How do I know this you might ask? Well, everyone (and by everyone I mean my wife) as well as my own daily bumblings, self-injuries, and absent mindedness loudly declare it to be true. I’ve been tested at genius level IQ, aced all of the standardized tests as a kid, and all the good stuff. Yet now as a husband and father, more than ever, I feel completely clueless.

“What I’m saying is all I really want is someone to hold me and tell me that everything is going to be all right.”

Sammy, Wedding Singer

While my waist size is larger and I’m developing the horrifying beginnings of back hair, I’m no more an adult or adult-minded than I was when I was in short pants playing live action He-Man in my grandma’s jungle of a backyard. Examples?

When my son was first born I was changing his diaper for the first time in the hospital. I’d seen both my sisters do this with their children and the entire Vietnamese family was watching, so I put on my Consultant-Know-Everything face and start to change him. I got the diaper off and grabbed him by his ankles to lift his little hiney up for wiping. What I didn’t realize in my ultimate focus on the gravy like stew he had produced all over his backside was that I was arching his little firehouse right at his face.

Well, timing is everything. My Vietnamese family freaked out and rushed to save the child from me as I facilitated his self-delivered golden shower. That’s one of his first experiences in this new & scary world and I can take sole credit for it. It has to go up from here for the rest of his life.

Or there was the time that I had to relearn how to make steak. This was not just a single failure either, it was a repetitive exercise in defeat over the last year. This one is particularly hurtful to my pride, because it threatens to suspend my Man Card. I’ve had my failures in my new role as house husband, but I can easily write off most of those to lack of experience. But cooking steak? This is the rite of passage into manhood. Somewhere the ghostly line of my male ancestors are burying their face in their hands and grumbling obscenities.

My problem was that I was trying to make it super succulent and juicy by putting in a lot of olive oil into a frying pan. Lots of oil and the natural stake juice leads to a boiling effect. And I’d get distracted by something else (like glowing lights or loud noises) and -whamo- sucky steak. Unless you’re a villager in the rural South Korea, boiled meat is like eating roof shingles with less flavor.

It got to the point where my wife won’t let me cook meat anymore. My wife! I had to resort to the Internet for tips. I’m convinced that as I grow older, I’m becoming stupider. I used to work at Wendy’s (damn them all to hell), Pizza Hut, Taco Mayo, and Eskimo Joe’s as a cook. Somewhere between then and all of that beer to my current married/parent condition, I’d forgotten how to grill.

In fact, there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t hurt myself, break something, or torture my poor son on accident. Like squirting milk into his ear while testing the temperature of the bottle. Or leaving his weiner pointed up under his diaper so that it sprays all over his chest and pajamas.

The whole while I can see and feel the condescending, yet pitying eyes of Bingo watching me as I blunder about the house all day getting into my little misadventures and mishaps. Its as if he’s thinking, Well, that’s not how I would have done it.