It Took A Village

Dudes pee standing up, okay? That’s just part of the deal. With few exceptions, we relieve ourselves with our two feet planted on the ground.

I know, I know, it doesn’t get much more profound than that, but Jason pays us by the consonant for this shit, so continue I must, super-cala-fragi-listic-expee-ala-docious?

A while back, Black Hockey Jesus asked the rest of us DCD’s to submit unto him a memory of our own fathers, all of which he assembled into a nice Friday-before-Father’s-Day post. Reading them all at the time, I felt a little weird about being the only guy whose entry was not particularly warm, happy, or otherwise positive. Like that one scary clown in a car full of funny clowns, I felt like the standout, throwing a depressing damper on an otherwise pleasant post with my WAH-WAH-MY-DADDY-ABANDONED-ME-WAH-WAH-WAH rehash.

Actually, that’s a crappy simile. There’s never just one scary clown in that car.

Yes, we’re getting back to the peeing-standing-up thing.

Truth is though, there’s really no other kind of memory I could share about the man who impregnated my mom. But the thing is, that doesn’t mean that there were no father figures in my life while I was growing up. In fact, there were vast hordes of them, and they weren’t all dudes that were nice to me just because they wanted to get with my mom. I could probably come up with a pretty long list of men who, in one way or another, filled in the role that my father should have been around to play.

This last weekend, my mom told me about yet another one of these guys, one that I didn’t even remember because I was only three years old when he was around. Pops was long gone by this time, so my mom was left alone to potty train a little boy by herself. Not having the equipment to properly demonstrate how male-folk typically handle their bid’ness, she left out the part about doing it standing up, assuming that I’d just figure it out on my own later. Lucky for me, Mom had started dating again, and at this point in time she was dating a guy named Richard. I don’t remember Richard at all other than a blurry memory of this one time he took me for a ride on a train. He worked for the railroad so he had the authority to do things like make the trains stop to let little people on to ride them. Anyway, one day Railroad Richard catches sight of me taking a piss in a seated position. My feet were not firmly planted upon the ground. I was not standing upright, ready to defend myself should one of my enemies attempt to come at me while distracted by my own relief. And to Richard, this simply could not stand. He took it upon himself to complete the portion of my training that was lacking.

I have urinated in toilets public and private. I’ve peed under trees, in the dark corners of backyards, behind theaters, off of and under bridges, you name it. I peed on a fire once to put it out, a mistake I’ll not make again as the smell was worthy of biological warfare. And it’s all thanks to Railroad Richard. I may have picked up this little skill later on, but I didn’t have to because Richard stepped up and showed me what was what. If I sound flip here, I don’t mean to. And I don’t mean to suggest that a father’s contributions are limited to minor matters such as proper pissing posture. In fact, I mean just the opposite. I don’t know why Richard took it upon himself to help me out the way he did, or why he took me on that train ride, or what motivated any of the other men who stepped in at various points to teach me some of the things that dads typically teach sons. I don’t know if they just saw a lesson that needed teaching and taught it, if they consciously recognized the role they were playing, if they were just trying to impress my mom, if they were just good people, or what. What I do know is that I owe Richard and the others like him a great deal of thanks. And, I suppose, a belated Happy Father’s Day is in order. Thanks guys.