I never really wondered what my kids thoughts of me. Then again, I never had to. They are open about telling me I’m the best dad ever after I perform such incredible feats as blowing on their hot oatmeal or being done with work for the day. Low as the bar to impress them might be, I sure did clear the hell out of it. Though being deemed the best dad ever is neat, it’s also pretty cliche. Any schmuck with the ability to buy a t-shirt or coffee mug can carry that honor. It is far more rare for your kids to think you’re cool.
Parents are many things, but they are almost never cool. Parenting (if you don’t count the part where you make the kid) is pretty inherently an uncool act. There is nothing cool about wiping another person’s butt. Enforcing a bed time is not something cool people do. Remember that time a really cool person drove a mini-van by choice? No. You don’t.
However, something I have done has made the impression on my kids that I am cool. How do I know? Because they drew it on my car. They saw the dirty lift gate on the back of my Jeep as a canvas, and chose to use it to tell all those who are in traffic behind me that the guy driving in front of them is a cool dad. Though anybody behind me would already know I’m cool because of my Batman trailer hitch cover, but this third party endorsement of my coolness absolutely seals it.
Excited as I am to be considered cool, I now wonder what it is about me that makes them think I’m cool. I know they like it when I give them piggyback rides to bed at night, but does being a reliable form of transportation make me cool? I don’t think so (see previous comment about uncool mini-vans). I put on Michael Jackson when they ask to listen to it in the car. 40 years ago that would for sure make me a cool dad. Today? Not so sure. I bet it’s my insistence on feeding them vegetables. Kids love that, right?
I realize though, that by wondering why they think I’m cool I am actual being uncool. Cool people don’t wonder what makes them cool or even care if other people think they are cool. They just are. You think Dave Grohl is worried about if his kids think he’s cool? Probably wouldn’t give it a second thought if one of them wrote “cool dad” on the site of his tour bus. Then again, maybe he’d go write a song with Paul McCartney about it which would further reinforce his coolness. Me questioning my alleged coolness is inherently uncool.
But uncool to who? Whom? Who? The fact that I don’t really know the appropriate time to use whom makes me at least kind of cool right? A nerdy person would have paid enough attention in English class to know when to say whom, cool kids couldn’t be bothered with trivial grammatical details. Not that I would have been considered a cool kid in school either. I wasn’t some anti-social weirdo or anything, its just that looking back there is no way that a cool kid in 2003 would have been driving around with Jim Croce’s greatest hits playing on his truck’s cassette player.
Anywhom, if I am uncool to other adults (or even uncool to myself) does it matter as long as my kids think I’m cool? I’m 38 years old and pretty much done trying to make new friends or meet people. I could care less if my neighbor thinks I’m cool, but if my daughters think I’m cool then my day is made. And if they think I’m cool when they’re six, they will surely think I’m cool when they are sixteen. That’s how it works, right?
Even if for some completely unforeseeable reason my teenage children no longer think I’m cool, I’m not going to worry about that now. As much as I might not want to admit it, the day will absolutely come when they don’t call me cool, or even call me Daddy anymore. But that day isn’t today. Like the pine trees lining the winding road, I’ve got a name. And that name is Cool Dad.
I Think Therefore I Dad 