All Thumbs & Two Left Feet

"The best part about being a father," one of my friends recently confided, "is that you have this little person who looks up to you and thinks you are a freaking superhero."

From the time she's little right up until she becomes a jaded teen, I'm hoping my daughter thinks that highly of me. It's easy when they are little:

"Ohmygosh, Daddy, you disappeared right behind your hands. Ohmygosh, then you re-appeared. Again! Again!"

It gets trickier as they grow old:

"How'd that quarter get behind my ear! Hey, gimmie my nose back!"

By the time they reach double-digits, the magic curtain of parenthood gets tossed aside:

"No one cares what's behind your back, just take me to the mall, and drop me off in back."

I bring this up because there are things that parents - and fathers in particular - are expected to do, just like magic. A well-rounded father is equal parts joke-machine, bank teller, camel, field doctor, and all around handyman. It has become obvious to me that one of these titles will forever elude me. I cannot fix anything.

As any good child of my generation, my inability to do handywork is not my fault, it is my parents'. Growing up, some boys were lucky enough to have plastic hammers and fake workbenches and fond memories of sitting in their father's workshop while he built a spice rack for mom. Me? I got a bench with my name in blocks in it to play with and my father's "workshop" was a shelf in our laundry room where he kept the decades-old leftovers from when he tried to fix up his new place.

My list of items to fix or address in our new condominium is impressive. It is lengthy, written in legible handwriting, and folded neatly into my padfolio. Maybe because I own a padfolio, you can tell that the only item crossed off the list is "Buy numerous expensive tools at hardware store so you feel manly. Stare blankly at tools upon arrival home."

This all comes at the great annoyance of my wife, who probably thinks she was sold a damaged bill of goods when we were married. If I can't manage to hang some curtains, what hope have I of ever putting a bicycle together or re-heading decapitated dolls?

Simple fix-it jobs are a staple of parenthood, taken for granted by adults, taken as magic by awestruck children. I hope that my child will one day have that sense of magic and awe when I pick up that broken Barbie Dream House with one hand, the telephone in the other and call for a contractor.

Oh, and about the title of this post? I can't dance for shit, either.