My son used to hit my wife, which was a problem. Once we got serious with consequences, he stopped. He’s hitting again, but now he’s hitting me. What’s worse is that I like it.

Jake is unlike me in so many ways. He’s adorable, he has a lot of hair, he has a big penis, and he enjoys the company of people. We are similar in that he gets bat-shit hyper. That is all me. The issue is that he channels his hyper activity through hitting (and biting), and I think it’s very funny.

What sets him off is when I pretend to sleep. I’ll fake snore, and Jake then screams in excitement and wails on me. He doesn’t just hit me, he beats the shit out of me. He’ll charge me, and with a huge smile, smack me repeatedly in the face and on my bald head. When he’s finished, he’ll say, “Mo! Mo Daddy sleeping!” Because I’m stupid, and more truthfully, because I love the attention, I’ll close my eyes and fake snore as he beats the shit out of me again.

Watching the UFC has helped prepare me for Jake’s attacks. When a fighter gets pounded on the ground, he covers up like this:

I do the same, but I sound very gay:

Inevitably, some shots get through.

Sometimes many get through.

Last time, many many got through.

I had an opportunity to kibosh this last weekend. It was rocky rocky time before Jake’s nap when he usually calms down. Rocky rocky officially starts the moment Jake climbs into my lap on the glider. On Sunday afternoon, he quietly wished Amy night night, climbed in my lap, and a switch went off. In a blink, Jake smiled maniacally, wound up, and slapped me in the face. My first reaction was anger. I yelled at him and tossed him in his crib.

“That’s not funny,” I said.

“It is funny,” he said, smiling.

This made me crack up, and I took him out of his crib and pretended to sleep as he beat my head some more.

Jake catches on quickly, and he doesn’t do anything half-assed. Once the time bomb explodes in his head, there’s no turning back. I can’t exactly ask him to tone down his beatings of me. They must stop altogether. Amy’s been pleading with me to stop encouraging the bad behavior. The hitting could spill over into daycare or onto the faces of our parents.

I have to now be stern and unwavering. I was all set when I put Jake to bed last night. I was in the middle of changing him when he said with a smile,

“Jakey hit Daddy?”

“No. We have to stop doing that.”

He sort of nodded, and I fastened a clean diaper.

“Jakey punch Daddy?”

Forget it. He had me. I cracked up, put my head on his stomach and pretended to snore. His hands went flying, and I winced, promising that tomorrow would be a new day.

I know where I stand

When not interviewing, you have to find non-indulgent ways to kill time as an unemployed douchebag. Doing a fun activity is kind of taboo, and I learned that the hard way.

A friend of mine who works (they all work) was in the middle of taking his four weeks of paid time off, and asked me if I wanted to see a move on a weekday. Sure, I said. Why not? I’ve gotten some good prospects out there, and I’ve been spending most of my time in front of my computer, applying for jobs. I’ll break the monotony, Goddamn it!

The outing was doomed from the start. We saw a 10:35 a.m. movie at Northbrook Court. Something about being 34 and going to the movies with my friend at that time made me feel like a sexual predator. Going to a movie while my bread-winner wife was at work made me feel like a loser. And actually thinking that The Other Guys wouldn’t be another shitty Will Ferrell movie, made me feel like an asshole.

I decided to stick with what worked, and the next time I left the house, I went with Jake to Target. I look forward to Target trips because cereal is cheap there, and I get unusually excited about shopping for cereal. Grape Nuts was on sale.

“Yes!” I fist pumped. “Grape Nuts for under three dollars. That’s a deal my friend.”

“Yeah,” Jake smiled, excited for me.

“It’s the best cereal.”

“Jakey eat it? Jakey want Gwrape Nuts.”

“Oh no,” I laughed. “You wouldn’t like it.”

“Jakey likes Gwrape Nuts,” he affirmed, nodding his head.

“You wouldn’t. You’d think they’re yucky.”

He looked at me perplexed. I realized I just utterly confused him, and I had to clarify things.

“It’s really an acquired taste,” I said. “Your pallet needs to develop more for you to appreciate it.”

“Jakey eat it? Yeah.”

“Ah! It’s too dangerous,” I said, shaking the box. “Hear that? it’s like little rocks. You can choke.”

He grimaced with confusion. I understood what he couldn’t articulate. If it’s too dangerous for me to eat, why are you eating it?

There was only one way out of this.

“You want a sucker candy?”

“Yeah!”

We left the cereal and cruised the store aisle picking up this and that. Suddenly, Jake removed the Dum Dum from his mouth.

“Oh my God! A cherry picker!”

I looked and sure enough, a worker was in a cherry picker way up fixing a ceiling panel.

“See it! See it!”

Jake loves construction vehicles and boobs. No sexual ambiguity there. He’s all boy. He removed his Dum Dum again.

“Man is so so up high. Hi man!”

The worker waived to us. I checked out where we were and shuddered. Somehow, we were surrounded by lingerie, but not the good kind. The bras were tiny and the panties a little too Hanna Barbera. This was where 11-year-old girls shop, a safe distance from their mothers in the cereal aisle. Of course this is the area where Jake wanted us to stop. How did I walk into this? I felt like Ripley at the end of Aliens, when she goes back to rescue Newt, only to realize she’s landed right in the alien nest.  Here there was no Alien Queen depositing little alien pods with that gruesome, detachable sphincter. No, I just had the worker looking at me. Still, I wanted out because I was feeling like a fucking creep.

“Okay Jake. Say bye bye to the man.”

“No. Stay?”

“We’ve got to go.”

I pushed the stroller a foot and Jake screamed, “No!”

Now people—women—were staring. I didn’t want more attention.

“Jesus Christ!” I growled quietly. “Keep your voice down.”

“No Jesus Chwrist. Stay a couple more minutes.”

“Fine. Then we’re going.”

I felt uneasy. Very uneasy. I hadn’t felt like this since I waited in a gown right before my balls surgery. Jake tilted his head in wonderment over the cherry picker, the man and his work. I hated this man right now. I prayed that the cherry picker malfunctioned and killed him.

“Jake, I’m feeling very uncomfortable. Can we go now?”

He removed his Dum Dum.

“No.”

He put back in his mouth.

I waited another minute.

“We have to go,” I said.

Jake screamed again and grabbed for things to stop the shopping cart. He snatched a gray training bra and dropped in the cart. I removed it like a stranger’s tissue, carefully pinching it and tossing it aside.

I know I was doing nothing wrong merely standing in that part of the store where little girls become wild teenagers. I like to think that most men, especially fathers of small children, would cringe surrounded by the undergarments of young girls.

Jake calmed down once we checked out. I put the bags in the car and turned to Jake, who had a sour puss.

“One day you’ll understand.”

I’m not much of a planner. We’ve been in our house for a little more than two years, and Amy already wants to move. Now is the time to buy, she says. Once the housing market improves, home prices will go up.

“That’s great,” I say. “Please make dinner.”

On the one year anniversary of Chocolate Diapers, it should come as no shock that I haven’t considered what consequences my blog might have on my relationship with Jake.

“What are you going to do when he reads it?” Some have asked.

I’ve been glib.
“It’s fine. He doesn’t know how to read.”

Honestly, I’ve always figured I’m safe because when Jake is reading, we’ll monitor his Internet activity. The top three websites he cannot visit will be:

1. chocolatediapers.com
2. sarahpalin.com
3. pornhub.com (and its sister sites)

Actually, Chocolate Diapers will probably be defunct at that point. But I recently found hundreds of emails from my Yahoo account that I wrote in 2004. Then I found articles on Google from 10 years ago and pretty much throughout history. Apparently, once something is on the web, it can be there forever. Yes I’m a little slow on the uptake. And I’m fucked. At best, Chocolate Diapers will have earned me a paycheck of $100. At worst, an emotionally damaged son who will administer pickup truck handjobs because his father called him an asshole, dickhead and fuck on the Internet.

To be fair, I think Chocolate Diapers has portrayed my relationship with Jake as both complicated and warm. I like to think that I’ve struck an adequate balance between complaining and affection. And by balance, I mean saying something nice about Jake in one post and then ripping him in seven others. If all I did was praise my son, who’d want to read that? I’ve created a kind of Chocolate Diapers bi-conditional logical connective math, wherein tender moments occur if and only if I share instances of my plight.

For example, when I write something sweet, I must then discuss offing myself in multiple ways:

I will tell a story of Jake motivating me if and only if (iff) I discuss self-bludgeoning and jumping into a fire.

My criticisms of Jake are preemptive strikes because I’m pretty sure when he’s a teenager, he’ll tell his friends that I suck. Even if Chocolate Diapers never existed, he still will because that’s what kids do. Christ, today kids do it on Facebook and Twitter. Imagine what social networking will be like in 12 years.

If and when Jake does read what I’ve written about him one day, I hope he has a sense of humor about it. But I’ve put myself in his future shoes, and I’m not sure it will quite work out that way. If I found my father’s diary, I’d be hurt by the following passage referring to me:

And he is an asshole.

Oh my God! Did he really call his baby an asshole?

Yes, and I’ll say it again. He’s an asshole.

What the fuck? I’d think. Why’d you have me if I made you so miserable?

I write this blog because it’s fun, and it makes some people laugh. I’m pretty sure I’m going to keep doing it. By now, I’m past the point of no return.

I’m counting on Jake to inherit only my better parts. When he does Google Chocolate Diapers and finds these posts, he’ll laugh and say,

“My dad’s funny.”

Jake walks like a cool kid.

Why Jake will make his future spouse very very happy.