My time is well spent these days at 50 when I should be enjoying my child’s adulthood, instead I get stuck with a little man that is on my tail 24/7. As difficult mentally as it gets sometimes, I have to find the good things that I can do at 50 years of age with my child. Frankly at this age I need a vacation.

So I gather the tools, the hammer and nails, drink about 3 or 4 cups of coffee get ready for the big day of tree fort building. My son loves to hammer things so I thought it would not be an issue during our construction process. We get to the tree organize the wood, get over the arguing stage, get over the placement of the hammer on the nail stage process, as well as the calisthenics we did around the yard before we even nailed or cut a piece of wood. I was tired but the time all that was done. My wife comes out and says “Honey, you do understand that he is just 3 years old”? This is when I woke up to understand that even if I did build this tree house in the tree, he would probably fall and I would have to deal with the wife in crisis with her baby sprawled out on the ground all fours raised, trying to blurt out daddy hit me with the hammer or something to that affect. Thank God he cannot speak yet, just enough to say, “ba ba, dinner, I go now, good morning daddy, do you love me”, but not, “daddy hurt me and I landed on the ground trying to climb in the tree house type thing”, I can imagine that face full of tears.

My son is good, man is he good. It starts out with the quivering of the lip ever so slightly he waits until we are both looking. Then the lip gets this frown and out comes the cry it starts slow real slow then goes to an eye ball to the other eye ball, the interesting thing is that you can see no tears. I have to tell Mommy, “Look no tears”, then everything is good to go, I’m safe and life goes on we forget about the tree and move on to something else, like taking a walk a good father son walk around the block. At 50 this is not good either, since I cannot walk, or even run, the little jewel decides to run ahead of the pack leader, which is me. Go for the gold medal I have to send out the neighborhood to find him. The whole time he is at home with his mother, on the couch, by the time I get back to the house from an exhaustive search and walk, he has had dinner and is in bed. Watching his favorite cartoon Spongebab or whatever his name is. You see I have to burn thirteen hours of SpongeBob Square Pants just to settle my sons interests down.