Tim Allen: Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man

I'd like to share them.

And since this is my book and not yours, you'll just have to put up with my going on about this for a while. Or else I'm taking my bottles and diapers and going home, to put myself down for a nap.

See. Have a kid, and right away you start acting like one.

- -

We never tried to get pregnant. It just kind of happened. We knew we wanted kids, as a concept, but the lunatics inside both my wife and me were still scared, and maybe a bit selfish. It took us eight years even to get married. I thought, "What would I do with a kid? What would a kid do with me?"

And then, one night, within a moment, my whole perspective changed. I was staying with an old friend from childhood, and her father was in town. We were sitting in her living room, laughing about something, and suddenly I noticed her father looking at her with what can only be described (though words cannot really describe the look) as a sparkling gaze of pride, love, and friendship. All at once he asked for a kiss and a hug. I said, "I'll hug you, but a kiss is out of the question." I learned later that he was speaking to her.

This ineffable moment between parent and child made me rethink everything. We knew-superficially-that having a child would change our lives, change sex, change everything.

Guess what? It's the best thing that ever happened to us. We wouldn't change a thing.

My reaction to the news that Laura was pregnant was screaming. Loud, sustained screaming.

My wife said, "Is something wrong?"

"No, no. That's an excited scream." Nuances can be so subtle.

In retrospect, the whole process was kind of fun. I've never had such manly feelings, both for her as well as about myself. Laura has never looked more radiant. There's something about how lovely pregnant women are that even makes you fall in love with pregnant strangers.

Of course, we were scared to death. Laura said, "Now what do we do?" We worried: "Oh, God, what if the baby doesn't make it? What if it's sick or deformed?" The terror is nonstop, even after they're born. Mostly after they're born.

When I got the news that we were expecting, I called my older brother and asked for his advice. He said, "I'd suggest going out to dinner."

"That's all you can tell me about having a kid?"

"I'm telling you: just pick a place right now and go out to dinner, because you will not be able to do this for a long, long time, and you don't realize how cool it is just to go out to dinner. Even if you have a baby‑sitter, it's almost unbearable the first time the kid stands at the door as you're trying to get into the car, crying wildly because he or she doesn't want you to go out. Try and enjoy your dinner then."

How much being a parent would change my life didn't occur to me until I was heaving up my dinner the day my daughter was born. I'd had dinner at the hospital, then had to stop in the parking lot and throw up: once because of the baby, twice because of the food. When I finally got home, my first instinct was to pack a suitcase, leave a note-"I can't handle this"-and run away.

- -

Before my daughter was born, we learned that she had a potential genetic defect. It's a horror that a lot of people go through. I understand it. Our doctor was very concerned. A specialist said, "It's within normal values for this certain enzyme, but it's on the edge."

Everything worked out okay.

During the tests, our doctor had a picture of my daughter's chromosomes on the wall.

"Well, there she is. You must be very proud."

"God, she looks so. . small."

"All those rods are what will determine her every detail."

So I asked if there was a way we could give her bigger tits. The doctor took me seriously.

"No!"

"What about better eyesight?"

She got really mad. "You can't go in there and start fiddling with your child's chromosomes, young man!" With that, my wife and I took our chromosomes and left. Later, Laura told me the doctor wanted to test me, as well. Before our appointment, Laura kept reminding me to wear clean underwear.

"Are they clean?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know? How can you not know?"

"They were clean when they originally started, but I went to the gym today and I've been running around."

Laura explained that the doctor was going to want to see my penis. That sounded like a reasonable request. Besides, I'd been wanting to show it to her. Not really. In fact, quite the opposite. I felt very uncomfortable. Every time the doctor would ask me a question, I got pissy.

Finally, I said, "Enough with the questions. When do I get to show you my penis!" The doctor said nothing.

Then Laura piped up. "Sorry, doctor. He's like this with every body." Then they both started laughing.

I discovered later that the two of them were in on this and just trying to get back at me for that crack about the chromosomes.

I had to kill them both.

My next book will be about single parenting.

- -

It was a natural birth. That is, there were no Satanists in the delivery room. We used the Lamaze method. Look at the word closely. With a little male ingenuity, a well‑positioned apostrophe, and French as a second language, Lamaze could be rewritten as L'Amaze. That's what birth is. Amazing.

At the time, though, I kept thinking it was LaFromage, or LaDecoupage, or something like that.

My wife didn't want her drugs until after our daughter was born. I told her, "This is not the Olympics or a gladiator movie. If it starts hurting, take the damn Demerol."

That, and a stern look at the attending nurse, and I didn't have to say it twice.

My wife was really good. We'd gone to childbirth classes together and she wanted me there. She could have cussed out the nurses when the pain got too intense, but it wouldn't have meant as much to her as cursing someone who would take it personally.

It's a good thing I was around. Laura was breathing all wrong and the baby started coming out before it was ready. I had to remind her to hold on.

"Honey. Honey. Hold your breath. We've got to wait until the doctor putts out on the eighteenth green."

Before my kid was born, I used to think very differently about being in the delivery room. Like: There's absolutely no reason to be around. You're there for support, but you're really just a pain in the ass. You coo and whisper supportively, trying to help your wife concentrate on her breathing. It never works.

If it was me having the kid, I'd want to hear a manly song I could sing along with: "In 1814, we took a little trip, along with Colonel Jackson, down the mighty Mississip. We took a little bacon and we took a little beans. ." I could breathe to the drum cadence.

Men also say such stupid things in the delivery room. Men are such lamebrains. She's lying there, and we're going, "God, honey, that's gotta hurt," or "Will I be able to use that area again?"

The woman is also angry, but she's drugged up, tied down, and what the hell is she going to do about it?

You've got a take your licks when you can.

"I don't like your cooking all that well, either. Honey. And you look like hell on Sunday morning."

But that attitude changed the minute we got into the birthing room. I gained considerable insight and realized that birth has a deeper meaning for men than we suspect. Seeing the process firsthand just reinforced my belief that men are far more jealous about women's ability to bear a child than we'll admit. Men can build a skyscraper, but we can't hug it, feed it, change it, coach its Little League team, teach it about sex, or spring it from jail when it's caught joyriding in the family station wagon at three in the morning.

I've read that men are like bees; they just hover around the uterus trying to reproduce themselves. I've also heard that men come out of women and spend the rest of their lives trying to get back in. I don't think it's very complex. The whole business of men and women is reproduction; there's nothing else to it. All the arguments, all the horseshit, all the rhetoric is, at bottom, about reproduction. We can't do what women can, so they have the ultimate power. We act like they don't. We treat them horribly because we can't have kids. We demean them-not because they'll accept it, but just to keep them in their place. If women understood the power they have, I don't know what we'd do.