"Nobody Weird Like Me"

For those who know both me and Stacey, it might seem safe to characterize me as the zanier parent of the two. She, the PhD candidate who has been in school for most of her life, is surely a more straightlaced parent than I, the class clown who was perpetually in trouble for the few years I could manage to stay in school, right?

Turns out, such an characterization would be dead wrong.

Sure, I've used Connor to deliver the punchlines to many a joke ("How does Connor do a pooper?" His answer: a very long and loud grunt — a gag used to its greatest effect in very public places such as libraries and restaurants) but his mother has gone off the deep end.

A few weeks ago, Connor and I were driving somewhere (either the dump, the playground or the dump, probably) and he pointed out the window at the randomly placed rolls of hay in an adjacent field.

"Look, Daddy," he shouted. "Dinosaur poop!!"

Yeah, that's his mom's handiwork.

A few months ago, when I was putting Connor down for his nap he got the giggles and started singing, instead of drifting off in my arms.

Instead of singing the familiar hook to Elmo's theme song ("that's Elmo's world!!!"), he instead sang, at loud as his tiny lungs would allow: "That's Elmo's UNDERWEAR!!!"

Again, that one was all Stacey.

So, remember this when you're chastising me for teaching Connor to jiggle the breasts of women at the mall, for helping him figure out how to light his farts on fire, or for showing him how to give wedgies to other kids on the playground. Believe it or not, he might have learned these things from that well-read, deceptively normal woman that he calls Mama.