I'll Mature When I'm Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

you are holding the baby upside down.
    3. When you have the baby oriented correctly, walk around in a circle while jiggling the baby and singing, in a gentle, soothing voice, this traditional lullaby:
    Hush little baby, don’t say a word
Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird
And if that mockingbird don’t sing
Papa’s gonna put it in the food processor
    This lullaby will help relieve some of the tension you’re feeling as you—only recently a normal person, now a sleep-deprived zombie staggering around in circles while a tiny human barfs on you—begin to truly understand how much your lifestyle is going to change.
    I distinctly remember when this really sunk in for me. It was 1980, and I, a brand-new father, was at some friends’ house during a New Year’s Eve party. The party was going on downstairs; I was upstairs with my two-month-old son, Robert, who was lying in the exact center of our hosts’ bed, taking one of his two hundred daily naps. I was watching him, in case he woke up crying, or suddenly figured out how to play with matches.
    From downstairs I could hear the roar of the party. It was a major party, the kind of party where some of the guests could very well wake up naked in a foreign country. A little before midnight I took a quick peek downstairs, and I saw that the party had reached Gator Stage. This is the point a party reaches when certain guys, having consumed perhaps eight or nine more shots of tequila than they really need, find that two things are true:
    1. They wish to dance.
    2. They cannot stand up.
    The solution is for these guys to dance in a style known as “the gator,” which is when you lie on the dance floor and writhe around to the music in what you believe to be a rhythmical manner. You run the risk that the vertical dancers will step on you, but if you’re truly in gator mode, you wouldn’t notice if a UPS truck parked on your head.
    So there I was, peeking down at my friends having crazy fun—fun that, the previous New Year’s Eve, I had been part of. I went back and sat on the bed with Robert, and it hit me: Not only was I not going to be gatoring this New Year’s Eve, but I was never going to gator again . Dads don’t gator. Oh, you might attend a party where gatoring has commenced, and you might even consider joining in. But as you start to get down on the floor, some part of your brain—the Dad Lobe—will kick in and remind you that you need to relieve the babysitter. And you will step over your friends (or on them; it doesn’t matter) and head for the door.
    So you will not be partying as hard. Here are some other things that will change:
    When you’re part of a group of guys who are arguing about whether it’s possible to jump from a given roof or balcony into a given swimming pool, and the group finally decides that the only way to settle it is to have one guy actually attempt it, you will find that you no longer volunteer to be that guy.
    You will also set off fewer fireworks than you used to, and virtually none indoors.
    You will learn to do everything with one arm, because the other arm will be holding the baby. You will , at some point, go to the bathroom while holding the baby.
    You will have frequent daytime fantasies—elaborately detailed, very explicit fantasies—about napping.
    You will reach the point where you will, in the same perfunctory manner that you now check your text messages, pull back your baby’s diaper and peer down to determine the status of the Poop Zone. You will be able to do this in a restaurant while chewing your entrée.
    You will exchange your sporty fun car for a practical seventeen-cupholder vehicle with a name like the Nissan Capacity, the interior of which, over the next five years, will gradually become coated with a quarter-inch-thick layer of a substance consisting of Cheerios, Juicy Juice, and spit.
    Over the next five years, you will spend roughly forty-five minutes, total, listening to songs you like, and roughly