On Moving Big Rocks

The Boss and I were sitting on the couch in the basement watching Two and a Half Men, a show that is wrong for far too many reasons to list here but extremely funny none-the-less, when I heard the unmistakable sounds of a child crying upstairs. I ran up the stairs and found Captain Chaos standing in front of the gate that keeps the Coon Hound in the kitchen. Her hair was teased out in a wild, bed-head frizz and her eyes were red from crying. The little girl stuck her arms in the air, waiting for daddy to pick her up and hold her and comfort her. I did, asking if she was okay and soothing her imaginary ailments as she wrapped her arms around my neck and buried her face in my shoulder. I decided that the quickest and easiest method of getting her back to sleep was to plop her in my bed, on my pillow, and allow her to fall back asleep under daddy's blanket. I'd move her back to her bed when the Boss and I were finished watching TV. As I plunked her in bed and covered her up with my blanket, the Captain rolled over to face me. Her eyes were closed, and she flashed her trademark tight-lipped, wide, self-satisfied grin.

"Oh, she's good!" I thought to myself. "I've been had." She got exactly what she wanted, and I didn't see it coming.

The thought has occurred to me on more than one occasion that somewhere in this wide, wide world is a young, innocent boy who is completely clueless about his future. He is going to grow up and meet a cute, happy, freckle-faced girl. She'll be a free spirit. They'll become friends. He is going to fall in love with her and decide to spend his life with her. He'll ask for her hand in marriage and she will accept. Before he knows it he will realize that he is hanging on for dear life and enjoying every minute of it because she will delightfully keep him on his toes, never knowing what is coming next, but unable to say no to the tight-lipped, self-assured beaming smile that comes his way after she walks past the light switch, climbs in to bed next to him where he has been waiting, and asks him to turn off the light. Or get her a glass of water. Or her pillow that she left on the couch. She'll ask him to move the 600 pound red rock in front of their old house across state lines because she wants it in front of her new house, too. He will do it. Unlike Ogden Nash's Song To Be Sung by the Father of Infant Female Children, where he laments about the boy who will want to marry his daughter Jill, I'm thinking of writing the Song To Be Sung To the Unsuspecting Fool Lad Who Marries the Captain. The world should be warned.

The Boss laughed when I told her what had happened. When I shared my thoughts on the future Mr. Captain, she said, "Yeah, they said the same thing about me."

I had to laugh. I'm that boy. I'm the one who gets up and turns off the light. Or gets the glass of water. Or retrieves the forgotten pillow. I moved the 600 pound red rock across state lines because the Boss wanted it in front of our new house, and when my mother-in-law asked me (with more than a little incredulity) why I did it, all I could say was, "I love your daughter."

Yes, there is a little boy somewhere in this world who has no clue what is in store for him. I bet I'll share a few moments with him like my father-in-law has shared with me. They are quiet moments when the Boss' name comes up in conversation and he just shakes his head with a smile. He knows. He married her mother. It's a generational thing. And where the Captain is concerned, I'm just the training ground. I'm the person on whom she perfects big doe eyes and the sing-song, "Daaadddy?" that will become a sing-song "Hooooonnney?" in the future. And a big rock will be moved.

I'm in a privileged position.

And I wouldn't trade it for the world.