The Dad Life

I had our first guest post planned for this week, however I did not have time to edit it. 

Instead, I am sharing my favorite YouTube video:

I can’t tell if my older brother modeled himself after this video, or they observed him for months before making it.

I will admit that I have cheap a$$ sunglasses and a minivan that are eerily similar to those in the video.  My first kid, however, was only 1 when this video came out. So you can tell where I obtained my parenting inspiration.

While I shared the video purely for fun and wasn’t even going to write a real post, watching it just made me reflect on the differences between urban/suburban living.  We don’t live in NYC, but we spent 6 years in the city limits.

Yes, the dad life in this video is a middle/upper-middle class suburban life.  A few years ago I laughed at the video and didn’t think I would ever have much in common with it.  With the arrival of Rogue Three, city living disappeared and suddenly we had a minivan and a house in the suburbs. 

We used to walk to a park and restaurants.  We saw our neighbors continuously — sometimes that’s a good thing, sometimes you’re just in their business.  Everyone parked on the street in front of the house — garages were mostly for storage — so we were always a part of each other’s lives.  It was easier to get to the city attractions by car, and the light rail had more utility (it doesn’t go anywhere near my current home).  Kids played in the front yards and constantly went between houses.

We also had rocks in our backyard — literally.  Our tiny backyard had been landscaped by someone and it was entirely rocks and a tiny 4×4 foot pond.  The fish in the pond must have felt like the guys in red shirts from the original Star Trek — they never lasted long.  It wasn’t exactly a great place for kids to play.

We lived so close to a major street that we could never let the kids outside on their own, because they were either playing in the rocks or at risk of wandering into the street or the alley, where they were at high risk of being run over by a car.  The public school 2 blocks away wasn’t very good, but we used a free charter school instead (a cool language immersion school that unfortunately has its own issues).

Our current neighborhood is pretty great, the new school is wonderful (and polar opposite of the old one).  We’ve made friends with some great people and are closer to other friends.  It’s a bit different than city life.  We’ve mostly adapted, but out of nowhere today, Rogue Two told me he missed the old house (he was not quite 3 years old when we moved last year).  He still refers to our current house as “the new house.”  Rogue Three has never seen the “old house” — he’s growing up a suburban boy and will never know about the backyard rocks or the pond. At some point Rogue Two will call the “new house” just “house” and the “old house” will  fade from his memory.  That will be a sad day.

We’ll be back next week with a full-length post, and perhaps some pictures of my recently completed trip to England and Scotland!

I also recently recorded my first podcast (for someone else’s show) — it will be available in September or October. I have a face made for radio, as they like to say.