By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
I had an unusual boyhood. After a painful family divorce in the 1970s, I grew up without a traditional father. My surrogate fathers were Trappist monks. I tell the whole story in my 2021 book Monastery Mornings (Paraclete Press 2021). Growing up without a father, I had to figure out how to be one on my own.
I knew I’d need certain parental skill sets, such as cooking; doing laundry; breadwinning; changing diapers; tolerating teenage malaise; and teaching the spawn how to make tough choices by asking them difficult hypothetical questions (e.g., “Would you rather spend an hour in a room with screaming monkeys or arm wrestling the strongest person in the world?”).
I also read up on other requirements of the job: building a daughter’s self-esteem; learning when to coach a son and when to just have fun playing ball with him; twerking to Black Eyes Peas songs; and limiting screen time without making your kids hate you.
And then there are certain unusual talents I never even imagined I’d need. I had to learn them on the job. And so, I did.
Removing Vaseline and magic marker from an entire body
The first unexpected but required parenting skill I had to learn was the art of removing Vaseline and magic marker from an entire tiny human body. Our oldest daughter Erin certified me on this talent…twice.
The first time was when we thought she was napping. This was bliss, because she resisted pretty much every nap despite my warnings that when she grew up, she’d regret every childhood siesta she’d refused. (BTW, she’s grown up now and agrees with my nap-regret prediction.)
During what my wife Vicki and I thought was a nap, however, Erin was busy emptying the small tube of Vaseline we’d carelessly left in her room and smearing it over her entire body. Obviously, this effort wore her out. We found her sound asleep on the floor of her room…covered with Vaseline.
The remediation process was tricky. She was so slick she was hard to lift. I did not want to grab her and send her shooting across the room. Removal required a bath or two and, because Vaseline is water resistant, lots of soft but absorbable Bounty quicker-picker-upper paper towels.
About a year later, she moved on to another form of body art—magic markers. Of course, she chose the moment we were rushing around to get ready to go to the park to draw all over herself.
When I asked why she did it, she reported that she wanted to be like a clown. I found it hard to argue with the logic of that answer. (BTW again, clowns were funny lovable creatures back then, not horror movie freaks.)
We were lucky she did not use permanent marker. The regular stuff came off with a good scrubbing and left her with just some red splotches and sore skin. And thankfully, the whole “be- like-a-clown” thing ended then and there, before their professional reputation deteriorated so badly.
Catching flying vomit with my full body in the Las Vegas airport
The second unexpected, but required, talent of fatherhood I had to discover was how to catch flying vomit with my full body in the Las Vegas airport. Our son Danny schooled me on this skill, but gratefully only once.
Like most families, we have lots of humorous vomit stories…on the bedroom wall, in our bed, destroying a carpet, on an usher at church who was desperately trying to run away from it, and on a pile of McDonald’s French fries we were sharing. (BTW yes, we tossed the French fries.)
These regurgitation memories pale, however, in comparison to the Las Vegas vomit showstopper.
We were returning home from visiting with my wife’s family who lived in the Vegas suburbs. We were at the airport gate waiting to board. This was pre-9/11, so our non-traveling family members could join us at the gate back then.
Our almost-two-year-old son was running everywhere, despite our best efforts to corral him. Eventually, he crawled up on a chair and held his arms out to me saying, “Daddy….” He was adorable, so I went to pick him up. That’s when he turned into a vomit volcano.
The unexpected eruption flew at me like a scene from the Exorcist movie, except in slow motion…so slow, in fact, that crowds of strangers had time to gather around, buy popcorn, and watch, mouths wide open. The incoming vomit paralyzed me where I stood.
I could not dodge it, so I just watched it approach and then envelope me. Trying to shield others, I also turned myself into a human catcher’s mitt to capture as much of the regurge as possible.
The shock of the moment numbed me to what otherwise might have been an unpleasant reality—I was oozing like some kind of gelatinous vomit blob monster. Not surprising, as I walked to the men’s room to change, the airport crowds parted like I was Moses at the Red Sea.
(BTW, I got a brand new T-shirt to wear on the plane. It read, “Happy New Year, Las Vegas 1999.” Most comfortable shirt I ever owned.) (More BTW, much to the relief of our fellow airline travelers that day, my brave mother-in-law Marge Comeau took the shirtus maximus vomitus home to clean.)
Running backwards down a hospital corridor while holding up my daughter’s legs
The final surprisingly necessary parenting skill I learned was that a father must be able to sprint at least fifty yards backwards down a hospital corridor while holding up his daughter’s legs.
Our daughter Megan revealed my hidden talent here. She got quite sick one night and we had to bring her to the hospital emergency room to be checked. (BTW, she’s fine now.)
She was sitting in a wheelchair waiting for a room. Her pain level was so high that she warned us she was going to pass out, and then she did. The desk aide, my wife Vicki, and I sprang into action to expedite her move back into the ER treatment area. Vicki held her head up and the aide pushed the chair.
Unfortunately, Megan’s legs stiffened when she passed out. I had to hold them up, so they did not scrape the floor and interfere with our rapid wheelchair movement. Once we all knew our roles, we rushed away down the corridor, me running backwards.
Fueled by adrenaline, I was certain I was going to crash into something I could not see and somersault onto the floor without sticking the landing. I visualized two O’Briens admitted to the ER in one night—a family record that likely never would be broken.
Alas, it did not happen. The only casualty occurred when we ran over the toe of another nurse who came to help, perhaps proof of the old adage that no good deed goes unpunished.
Megan regained consciousness right after we reached her room. She was wide awake for any subsequent wheelchair rides. When she had sufficiently recovered, I thanked her for forcing me to learn something new and told her I never, ever wanted to do it again.
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote, “When one has not had a good father, one must create one.”
American author and psychiatrist Frank Pittman added, “Fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man.”
Salt Lake attorney and writer Michael Patrick O’Brien once said, “If you don’t really know what the hell you are doing, you should make something up and look as confident as possible in the process.”
I am proud to be Exhibit “A” for all three of these little pearls of fatherly wisdom.
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022.
