Misplaced Kids, Doing it Yourself, and Daddy Putty Reduction – A Guest Hellcat Edition

I bring you a special addition of Tacklerism Tuesday, this week, courtesy of the famous (or is that infamous?) Chase McFadden, of Some Species Eat Their Young. His blog was one of the very first I started following and I’ve been hooked ever since.

In short, the guy is hilarious, so if for some reason you didn’t know about him before now, you’re in for a treat.

He gives tacklerisms today, Hellcat style….

* * *

When I read the Twitter message from Kelly asking me to write a guest post for Dances with Chaos, my first thought was, “Oh, crap. I think I’ve lost one of the kids.”

A quick head count confirmed it: I could only account for three-quarters of our brood.

MIA was Perpetual Motion, our 5-year-old vagabond adventurer, the usual suspect when one of the quartet disappears. I checked the usual hot spots – our neighbors’ horse pasture, our neighbors’ trampoline (apparently much trampier than the one we have), our neighbors’ unlocked vehicles – and of course found him standing knee-deep in the creek behind our house catching minnows.

Once I’d accounted for all of the fruit of my looms, my second thought was, “What the hell am I going to write about?” And at that exact moment, my 4-year-old daughter stomped up and gave her brother the what-for.

“When Mom and Dad whistle, you are supposed to get where they can see you! Right, Dad?”

“Right, Honey. Now run along. I’ll take care of this.”

As I watched my sweet little girl march off, likely to go interrogate and/or lecture her other two brothers, I thought, Maybe I’ll write about the Hellcat.

*****

With four kids age 7 or under, there are plenty of memorable utterances from the ankle-biters in our house. But the queen of the verbal anecdote has to be the Hellcat.

This is the girl who sings “Jesus can do miracles… Jesus can do miracles” only around me, suggesting, it seems, that there may even be hope for someone as hopeless as your dad when you play on the Big J’s team.

This is the girl who told me on one occasion (using her gravely-disappointed-with-two-extra-helpings-of-guilt voice) that I had in fact made Jesus sad, and although I assured her that He was used to it, it did nothing to lessen the shame face she was slapping on me.

This is the girl who is still easing her way out of the “bagina” identification phase: “Great Grandma, you’re a girl because you have a bagina.”

This is the girl who told her mom she didn’t need a bottle for her baby doll Lulu because she was going to feed her straight from the tap, ifyou know what I mean.

Lulu may have just finished nursing....

This is the girl who, while my folks were visiting at Easter, asked, “Is Papa a girl?”

“No.”

“So why does he put cream in his coffee?”

This is the girl who, like Tackler, plays a little barbershop now and again (although she hasn’t had the foresight or imagination to use a saw), and once informed me that it didn’t matter if I didn’t have any hair on my head because she could just cut my arm hair.

This is the girl who played an integral role in the infamous wiener incident, wherein she emotionally scarred her father for life.

And this is the girl who always wants to help her dad, and by “help” I mean turn something like a recent 15-minute tune-up for the riding mower into an hour-long teeth grinder because she wants to do this by herself and she wants to do that by herself.

The Hellcat: Daddy's Little Helper

Helpful, indeed.

And savvy.

And intuitive.

So as she sensed that my patience was fraying like the belt on the mower that I was attempting to replace, she crowded her face down between mine and the engine and looked up at me.

“Dad?”

“What!”

“I love you,” she said, and then she gave me a delicate peck on the lips.

“I love you, too.”

Instantly, I was putty in her tiny, grease-covered hands.

Of course she could help. Of course she could do it herself, no matter if it tripled or even quadrupled the time that it would normally take me to do it alone.

I’d be more patient. I’d be more loving. I’d be more happy.

She had broken me like a cheap, foreign-made mower blade.

And when she spoke again, the tone in my voice was something close to paternal glee. At least initially.

“Dad?”

“Yes, Sweetie?”

“You have a lot of hair in your nose.”

“I know, Honey. Thanks for noticing. Now run along. I’ll take care of this.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Chase is a writer, blogger, husband, father, and semi-professional Jedi. His hobbies include subconciously humming themes from popular children’s shows… and that’s pretty much it. Kick Ass Wife and Chase have four young children (Slim, Perpetual Motion, The Hellcat, and Tax Credit #4). He loves them. They’re funny. Occasionally they make cool noises. All in all, they’re awesome kids. But there are times when he understands why some species eat their young.

Chase also “co-parents” the site Stuff Kids Write with Leanne of Ironic Mom. Go. Read. Laugh. Send them the  hilarious writings of your children.

You won’t be sorry.