Life as a Dad entails a few things that you need to be prepared for.

You don't find them listed in the parenting books often but they do seem to take on a peculiar importance in your life, often strangely and totally out of sync with their actual importance...

If you are a Dad be prepared to spend a significant part of your waking hours playing and mastering fiendishly complex games with obscure and difficult rules and many, many tiny pieces that never quite fit the way they do on the boxtop.

If you are a Dad be prepared to learn far more then you ever cared to about cartoons, cartoon characters, Japanese anime stylings, obscure cartoon villains and the bizarre universes they inhabit.

If you are a Dad be prepared for having the above two points intersect far more often then you would ever think possible(i.e. Sinchan, Doraemon and more....).

If you are a Dad be prepared to spend most holidays assembling intricate, highly complex toys that require the use of specialty screwdriver tips dug out the bowels of your toolbox. Said toys once assembled also will a) not work, b) not work long, or c) will not interest the boy for more than 8 seconds.

If you are a Dad be prepared for inflatable toys. You are expected to blow them up...again and again and again. I don't know if you've ever had to huff away at a slippery plastic valve, head pounding with the effort after 5 five minutes or so, a task rendered even more Sisyphian by the boy constantly leaping on the other end of the inflatable, making it leap like a gaffed fish and jet out huge quantities of air.... My best advice to new fathers - go buy a pump. Now.

If you are a Dad be prepared to watch your favorite foods vanish from your plate when your back is turned...sometimes even without your back being turned.

If you are a Dad be prepared that when THINGS GO WRONG, whatever they might be, it is, inevitably, your fault.

If you are a Dad be prepared to lose your favorite pillow and your position on the bed.

If you are a Dad be prepared to have your shaving cream regularly used for non-shaving purposes.

If you are a Dad be prepared to have more fun then you have ever had, more laughs, more tears, more anger and more emotional depths then you have ever experienced before.

In the end, being a Dad...is worth more then I can possibly tell.

To all new dads out there, all the best and have fun being one!

Posted by Wan Mohd Fahimi @ 11:00 AM