“Hello?” 

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Hey, man.  Not much.  What’s happening?”

“Nothing.  So, I was thinking about this.  Tell me if it’s just me.”

“Shoot.”

“Like, as a parent, or rather, as a dad, do you feel like you’re the assistant manager to your wife?”

“I don’t get it.”

“Like, your wife is the manager and you’re the assistant manager.”

“Gotcha.  Yeah, I see what you mean.  But, isn’t that just women in general?”

“Yes, but that’s not quite what I mean.  Like, they have the ultimate say on things?”

“Are you saying that your wife wears the pants in the family?  That’s a fairly normal thing.”

“No, I guess that’s not quite it.  I mean, especially with kids, they always know what should be done and what shouldn’t be done.  And, as you may have guessed, whatever they do is the correct thing and often what I opt to do is the wrong course of action.”

“Now I hear you.  Yeah, I think that’s true for everyone.  Isn’t that kind of what we signed up for?  Or at least that’s how this whole thing works.”

“Yeah, I guess, but it still doesn’t make sense.  It’s like my wife is a veteran at this.  She will openly critique my plans or handling of the kids as if she’s done this before.  Neither of us have had kids before, yet somehow she knows better than I how things need to be handled.”

“Ok, I’m with you.  The veteran analogy is much better.  Like, they’ve been in the trenches before and scoff at us dads, the newbies, who don’t know how to handle this parenting thing.”

“Exactly.  Like, she’ll pass an edict that we aren’t watching TV or screens during the week.  So then, I am policing the kids from using the iPad and shoot down their requests to watch a show.  Then, I’ll come home on Friday and everyone is watching something and she’ll explain that everyone just needed some downtime.  And, that’s it.  As if the leader of the platoon made a battlefield decision and the former plans had to be scrapped.”

“Completely.  But, had you been the one to make that call…”

“I’d have been shot.  Like, she’s the general who makes the rules but is also the only one with the authority to break them.  My only option is to follow the established guidelines.  And, the messed up thing is that I go along with it.  For the most part it keeps order and things move forward, but I sometimes stop myself and think, ‘What the hell does she know?’.  We’re both learning as we go and figuring this parent thing out on the fly.  But, she openly directs traffic as if she’s a grizzled vet at this.”

“Right.  Like when you’re playing golf with your buddy and you both suck, yet he wants to point out flaws in your swing.”

“Precisely.  Why do we let that stand?”

“I don’t know.  Because they are generally right?”

“Yeah, I guess there’s that.  But that doesn’t mean we like it.”

“Of course not.