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

Maybe they do know. Nah, I can't even consider that. Too scary.

I can't even fathom having a kid. I watched that child come out. The pride swelled up in me. Also the anger, and the competition. What I witnessed was something that hurt my woman and I couldn't stop it. And something that made her happy in a way that I've never been able to make her happy.

This doesn't mean her screams didn't make me think, "Boy! I'm glad I'm a guy!"

That's right. I'm not sorry I'm a man. True, men have all of the destructive tendencies. We're encouraged to be little destroyers from birth. These traits come in handy, though. Once we have a family, we'll destroy anything we have to that threatens it. Women like us for that. Sometimes men get so confused they actually destroy the family.

Some men want to understand pregnancy so desperately (or just get their wives to shut up when their ankles swell to the size of holiday cheese logs) that they'll strap on one of those fake bellies and walk around for a while. This is going a little too far. If you're going to write about it so that we all understand it, okay. It's like Black Like Me. But if you just want to find out what it's like to weigh eighty pounds more, you can eat a lot of those cheese logs or make a movie like The Santa Clause.

- -

An odd thing about fatherhood is the change in camaraderie with other male parents, especially when your kids are still very small. You bond, but the adhesion principle is altogether different from the stereotypical macho posturing about one's fertility and already being able to pay for the kid's college education. That went out long ago, with the eighties. This bond is rife with genuine tenderness, vulnerability, and a little sadness. I don't know why. It just is maybe because having a kid finally connects a man to something he loves unconditionally that, unlike his car or power tools, can actually love him in return.

One guy I know is afraid that someday somebody wearing a suit and carrying a gun is going to walk up to him, out of a crowd, and simply say, "We know. We know you don't know what you're doing. We've been monitoring you." I know what he means. It's not really the "monitors," it's the reality police. It seems like my whole life has been by the seat of my pants. I'm making it up as I go along. I find it strangely funny that God allows me to make decisions; that life does just unfold, and lets me do the best I can. This particularly applies to fatherhood, in which you have ultimate responsibility for a totally dependent being. You can't go back and redo stuff you did, but you can't know if you're getting it right the first time, either.

There are some rules, however.

"Don't go near the pool. Don't hit me in the stomach. You've got to eat more." I just want to take care of my daughter. I don't want her sick. I'm worried about her falling.

My wife is far better at this teaching stuff than I am. She thinks she's horrible at it, but she's wrong. That is why she can bask unashamedly in the delight of the school's calling to say, "Your child is doing extremely well in fire prevention. And the drop drill. Also, your daughter seems to know military rules quite well. She salutes. What are you doing with her at home?"

Working so much, I feel oddly distant from the whole process. I do what I can. There's a lot of guilt involved. My wife says, "If you spent more time with her. ." I spend all the time I can with her. I'm getting better at it, though. Rather than read aloud from books on military tactics and supply requisitioning, we go to dinner and have a couple of kiddy cocktails and a marvelous time. This is usually when Mommy isn't around. My little girl and I relate better then. They're alone together so much. We're alone so rarely. When we're alone together, she and I somehow behave differently. We learn about each other. She learns that I'm her father. I learn that she's my daughter. It's a weird feeling, but any parent knows what I'm talking about when I say that I often look at my daughter and wonder just whose kid she is. Where'd she suddenly come from? And why on earth did she pick Laura and me for parents?

When my daughter and I are alone she'll hug my leg and say, "I just love you so much, Daddy!" She's so used to my leaving that when I tell her she and I are going to hang out all night, she gets this great look on her face and says, "We've got so much to do, Dad!" There's nothing like it in the world.

I want my relationship with my daughter to keep growing, so I've been giving my wife a couple of hundred bucks each week and making her go to the mall with her girlfriends, or something-anything!

But this closeness is not without its problems. When I'm sitting there playing with Barbie, washing her hair, the lunatic in me suddenly says, I've got to get a scotch and get the hell outta. . Right in the middle of all this pleasantness, the lunatic goes, Look at yourself. You're bathing dolls!

My daughter likes to bathe with me. She goes, "Jacuuuzi!" and gets scared when I put the jets on. She likes them, but wants me in there with her. I've got to be there. But I need to know: When do you stop bathing with your daughter? There's a day. It's coming. I want to mark my calendar. Oprah must know. Phil must know. Geraldo must. . nah. I keep asking around, because I never want to find out I've missed it by a day, but I keep getting this: "Oh, you'll know."

I'm not so sure. I want to cut it off long before you'll know, whatever you'll know is. Sounds like an est seminar. I don't want another situation like my brothers and me seeing my mom in the shower and staring just a moment too long.

My daughter likes me to chase her‑-definitely a girl thing that stays with them until the day when they finally allow some lucky guy to catch them. I'm teaching her early, though, to run real fast. I like it better when we're working on my car. I drag her into my world whenever I can. She wanted to help me paint the raised letters on my tires. She likes going for rides with me. She loves going fast. She thinks my Mustang is a Ferrari. That's probably not a bad thing. If I'm real lucky, it will probably save me some money when she wants a Ferrari for her sixteenth birthday.

- -

Having a kid has made me do things I never imagined I would. I nurture other people's kids. I used to be such a smart‑ass around other people who had kids when I didn't. And now, no matter what they do, I understand. I can be talking to an adult and wiping snot off his kid's mouth. I'm grabbing boogers out of some kid's nose and wiping them underneath the table or on the couch. Hey‑-either I do it, or he will.

My wife and I used to avoid sitting next to people with small children on an airplane. Then, the worst thing in the world was a screaming baby.

"Can't they take care of the kid and stop it from crying? Give it something! Why don't they sit in the back of the plane with the engine noise? With a couple of oxygen masks and a blanket, I don't see why they can't ride in the baggage compartment. At least until he stops crying. We paid for these seats!" Like they didn't. Like they get them free. (Don't beleaguered parents always look like indigents even if they're rich?) They're hiding the child and saying "Sorry" to the whole plane, like "Forgive me for having this baby!" We didn't mean to interrupt you reading your inflight magazine.

But once it's your kid, you look at anyone who's impatient with you like, "What's the matter with you? How come you don't have a kid? Get with the program and join the family of man!"

Every single thing you thought you'd never say or think, you say and think in the first two months after childbirth. Everything.

Now I yearn for a better life for all children. I'm interested in better education systems. In mentoring. In health care and eliminating ketchup from consideration as a vegetable at lunch. (Thanks, Ronald Reagan.) It's brought my whole life into focus. And yet, now and then, the lunatic will say, "Uh huh, right! You could run them both over, take the money you got from the TV show, and live with some island beauties, drinking lime rickeys in the Bahamas!"