7. Who’s Your Daddy?

Musing Interruptus is a podcast meant for sharing thoughts and stories and enjoying idiomatic phrases and words in general. You can read along; the transcription is in the description of this episode. The idiomatic expressions are in italics. Try to get the meaning from the context and then look them up to see if you were right. If you like it, share it, but more importantly, continue the conversation.  Hello, I’m Renée Valentina and this is Musing Interruptus. There are questions that can knock me off my rocker, literally, not just figuratively speaking. My parents are quite a subject for me. If they aren’t for you, you need to try a little harder. That is all I can say about that. Thank you for listening.  I’m kidding! I kid! I’m a kidder! After the brief hiatus from questions when getting to know someone, I think we could pick up with this one. Who’s your daddy? That question can go many ways. When meeting someone for the first time, you might consider asking about their family. In small towns, where everyone knows each other, people might ask this to help them place you on their mental map. It might be strange to ask someone, whose your daddy? But why the hell not? If someone asks you, you might speak of the man who did it with your mom until you happened. You might refer to the man who took care of you, he didn’t necessarily do anything with your mother. There are men who come into your life and take care of you, sometimes sporadically, sometimes for the long haul. There are different types of daddies. The strict, emotionally closed-off fathers, that people talk long and hard of on the divan. I bet all fathers get talked about in therapy.  People pay good money to figure out that relationship. There are fathers that throw money at everything. They have internalized the provider role. They do everything in their power for you to not want for anything, except their attention because they work all the time. There is the Sunday daddy, the one you get once your parents divorce. The full-time daddy. He gets movies made about him. Especially if he crossdresses and impersonates an older woman. The overbearing, over-protecting daddy. They make for the most rebellious children. The maternal father, the overlely paternal father. The funny father. The gone out for cigarettes father. The box father (meaning, they died when you were a child). The donor father, wam bam thank you, mam. The father of the bride, the world’s best farter, the world’s worst father, and everything in between.  Whoever your father was or wasn’t, he is part of what makes you. Literally, the stuff you are made of is part father, part mother. I think some of us would like to think we are self-made, spontaneously generated. In light of the processes required in baby-making. I have a hard time wrapping my head around my parents congregating amourously to spawn me. That whole horizontal lambada hokey pokey business between my parents is a place I don’t like my imagination going. A visit from the stork, on the other hand, is rather nice. I imagine my parents were surprised by the stork. Like, OMG, a baby, brought by this funny-looking bird! Would you look at that!? Lets parent! However, it was the 80s and there are pictures of how I escaped my mother’s body. There is no doubt where I come from. It is seared in my mind. SEARED. This brings me back to the types of father. The father who takes all the photos, even when you are at Disney World Crying. That is a true story.  Who’s your daddy? That is a loaded question, isn’t it? Answering it can be a delicate operation. You need to be delicate, it affects your psyche. It is a question that deserves time and attention because whatever he was or wasn’t, made a part of you. Then there is the mess that has to do with expectations. So many kinds of daddies. So many expectations of what could’ve or should