SoCS: Grease, Tipsy Toddlers, and Semi-Bad Parenting

Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt from Linda Hill’s blog this week is “Most/Least.”

Isn’t that the Most? To say the least.

No idea why that quote popped into my head when I read yesterday’s prompt. Other than that Grease is one of my favorite movies – and full of some pretty good quotes.

“I’m not spoiling it Sandy, I’m making it better.”

“Bite the weiner, Rizzo.

“With Relish.”

“Let’s keep it clean.”

“15 minutes.”

“If you can’t be an athlete, be an athletic supporter.”

Anyway, love the movie. And, woot, just came on after Dirty Dancing as I type this. Little bit of a bummer to know that the guy that played Kinecki died. And I always have “Big Red 1” flashbacks when I see Ducky. Big Red 1, with Lee Marvin and, ah, crap, the guy from Nerds with the laugh, and Mark Hamill is a great war movie.

I often also wonder at how it’s (Grease, not The Big Red 1″) become a family movie – it’s on ABC’s Family channel – because the original songs are not family friendly.

Which leads me to one of those parenting moments you look back on and cringe at.

Let’s see, Lauren, my oldest must’ve been 5 or 6, so 10 to 11 years ago, we were driving to Newport News to visit friends for the weekend. I had recently bought the Grease soundtrack, but had never really listened to the words – and I only had ever watched the movie on regular TV.

So, somewhere around Williamsburg, VA Greased Lightning comes on and I heard, for the first time, “the girls are gonna shit, we’ll be getting lots of tit in Greased Lightning.” I don’t know who hit fast forward fastest, me or my now ex, but we were quick on that reach. Everyone knows how much of a parrot kids are at that age – hell, I even stopped cussing a lot at the time because of that.

Luckily, they’re old enough that they can now watch mostly whatever, but, man, felt like a parental idiot in that moment. And, of course, not for the last time.

And, I guess because this is stream of consciousness and I never know how these are going to go, I’ll end on one of my favorites, in which I got my 18 month old daughter drunk.

So, I usually was the one giving my daughters a bath. I’d do that whole Dad, playing with them in the tub thing, which was fun. Sometimes I’d bring up a beer and a book and drink the one and read the other while they played.

This was one of those beer-drinking times.

So, bath-time was good as always, so I toweled Casey off and she toddled off to her room down the hall for some naked time.

The girls both loved a bit of naked time before getting their jammies on for bed.

I followed, bringing my beer and book and set the now-empty bottle near the wall. So Casey’s running around buck naked – a chubby 18 month old, think Michellil Man. She was that baby with the rolls of fat everywhere. Awesomely cute baby.

Somewhere in there, she managed to get the beer bottle.

Now, I didn’t think anything of this as she turned it up to her lips. It was empty after all.

Except for the spit sip that must’ve been left.

She continued to run around the room, but started to slow after a couple of minutes. Then, as I looked, Casey, naked, bottle still clutched in her right hand, stopped and leaned against the wall.

Then, she slowly slid down the wall, beer bottle still in hand.

She ended her slow motion slide, slightly hunched over and legs apart and her feet together. Bottle still clutched.

Then she peed.

At this point, I realized that I had just gotten my 18 month old daughter tipsy.

I was and still am a good Dad; just not all the time. There are slippages.

But it does make for a pretty good story.