My chest swelled with pride. My daughters wanted me to play video games with them and they weren't taking no for an answer. Perhaps I was still the 'king of cool' in their eyes. My girls, now 13 and 11, wanted their daddy, so how could I refuse. I followed them down to the room that when I built this house ten years ago I had envisioned to be my man cave. It was to be the place where I, as head of the household, would go to regenerate, to relax after a day of hunting and gathering. A place where my woman and my offspring would enter only to bring me my slippers and an occasional glass of milk, to be accompanied by a row or two of Oreo cookies (the dark ones, not the vanilla wannabes; and always eaten whole, never cracked open to slurp the creamy filling all by itself. Sacrilege!)
My cave never was to be. Soon after moving in, it became the vault for precious treasures. That would have been fine but I had neither ownership of nor say in these riches. I'm not sure that I minded though. I just wanted that room to be mine and mine alone. It was never to be. My kids strong-armed it from me. They are tough little girls. They, being two and me being one, had the strength of numbers. More importantly for maintaining their claim to my cave, they had the ever present, lurking in the shadows, not to be crossed, support of their mother. One of the biggest surprises in a man's life is when he learns this mathematical equation: (MOTHER > wife). There are never any exceptions to this rule...never. As a result, I learned another equation: (KIDS > husband). By using the transitive property or my take on it, it then makes sense that: (KIDS > husband) (husband = man cave) (husband < = 0), therefore (man cave = ain't never going to happen).
In the early days, my room of desire was filled to the rafters with such wondrous things as: Barbie's extra large play house; a few thousand stuffed creatures; several large bins that had gazillions of those stupid, useless and one use only McDonald toys; and few million dolls in various stages of undress with many minus a limb or two. Mr. Dress Up would have have been envious of the number of princess dresses and costumes that overflowed from several more large bins. He, Casey and Finnegan could have been trapped underneath those mountainous piles for all I know. I never went in the place. I just did an occasional wishful glance through the doorway as I swept, mopped and did my daily household chores, ever mindful that Cinderella had triumphed. In my daydreaming, I pictured my kids bringing my cookies, milk and slippers and fittingly, my slippers were glass. I was Jimderella.
Today, that room is the "playroom". The Wii and Xbox are kept company by girlie coloured bean bags. No war games make it to the big screen. The girls prefer less hostile pursuits. Their latest craze is some kind of dance thing on the Xbox. This is what they asked me to play with them. I'm not exactly built for dancing of any sort, nor have I been gifted with much rhythm. I held my own on the dance floor in the 80's by doing the ankle slap - 2 side to sides, one step forward and one step back. Throw in the occasional Night Fever arm in the air, pretend to know the words, and you were golden. There was no phone camera, no video this or that. You just had to survive three or four minutes and you could get off the floor, ego in tact. Such is not the case today. Even the damn video games have cameras!
There I was a few days ago, on the dance floor of the kids' playroom, sandwiched between my two little girls. The proud and popular dad. Or so I thought. The music began and I quickly learned that the object of the game is to copy the moves that your video image is performing on the TV. While doing it, we were laughing and having a great time. It's also not a bad workout. After our song ended, the scores popped up and I was third or last. The game said I was "creative", which was a nice way of saying that I didn't exactly copy much of what my image had done. This was not unexpected. What was unexpected is what happened next. The kids played back segments of our dancing. I was worse than I ever imagined. The ankle slap wasn't as timeless as I had thought. To add insult to injury, the kids then proceeded to do weird things to our images. One was to make our heads two or three times there actual size. I have to admit that it was funny to watch. My girls and I laughed hysterically and I felt all warm and closer to them than ever. This was a wonderful daddy-daughters moment. That was until they informed me that I looked like Shrek and they proceeded to laugh even harder.
I think I was set up from the beginning. I certainly can't be mad at my kids for poking fun at me. They actually weren't wrong. Shrek is green and that colour describes me perfectly. Green with envy because they have my man cave. I won't try to get even with with my kids either. They likely come by there deviousness honestly - from their mother, Princess Lynda-ona. To end my story, here's one last formula that may be foreshadowing events to come: (Wife > husdand) (husband = dead man). The end!
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