One of my colleagues at work had a baby shower today. Man, the amount of stuff she got! It was a little overwhelming to behold. But her daughter is adorable. I don’t think about this much, but sometimes I wonder what kind of father I would be. I think I’d be terribly insecure about not being able to meet the physical needs of a child; things like bathing, dressing, feeding, etc. I might be okay once the kid hits five or six. I could turn my chair into a kind of jungle gym (Careful, Daddy needs that to breathe) and start turning them on to books and music and stuff. Not that I foresee fatherhood as a likely part of my future, but stranger things have happened. And a kid could probably do worse than have me as a parent. For one thing, the whole corporal punishment thing is absolutely removed from the equation. The kid will acquire a healthy repertoire of expletives, but that’s just part of building a good vocabulary.
My twin cousins, who were young toddlers when I visited them a year ago, chewed rather vigorously on my ventilator circuit a few times without incident. Rest assured that baby teeth, at least, pose no threat. It might be a different story once they get older though!