Okay, so I understand that ladies take care of each other... sometimes voraciously. You know how it is when several of them get together, how they run little test programs to gauge the validity of various things for each other -- is he cute enough for my friend?; how will he react when he sees a hot lady walk by?; how miserable will he let us make him before he screams and runs away?

You know what I'm talking about, right? If you're a guy, you already yelled out "no doubt!" or "dude!" or whatever. If you're one of said ladies, you likely already changed the page of this site, so you're not reading this anyway.

So... here's the deal: I keep getting tested about how well I'm going to hold up to this whole parenthood thing. A year or two ago, it was my mother-in-law observing me like a rat in a cage with her other daughter's (you know, my wife's sister,) twins at around 3 years old or whatever they were at the time. (Whoops, I just failed a test right there! Did you catch that? No? Well, you see, I was supposed to know how old they were when we saw them, along with the color of their hair... neither of which I can recall at the moment. See how much trouble I'm already in?)

Well anyway, I did pretty well during that testing period even though I didn't know the test was underway.(aka: "he's so good with them! They really seem to like him!" and the like), It took me a while to realize that I had been under observation at the time, but now I really know what's going on, so I see it happening all the time. Let me bring you up to date around last weekend:

A really good friend of Amy's was in town with her 1 year old boy so we got together for dinner. There were also a couple other ladies there, including a very good friend of Amy's friend (hard to keep names out of this and still make sense), along with the little boy's babysitter/nanny. They're all very nice women, but that's not the point, since we're not to that part of the story where I had even met any of them yet (except Amy's friend, who I've known for many years). I had also not seen Amy's pal since long before she had a glimmer of parenthood in her eyes, so we hadn't "gone there" as of yet.

Aaaanyway...

So I got there early and had been waiting at the restaurant for everyone to show up. That might have gotten me a point or two, since I'm always late, but I digress. In strolls the group of these beautiful young women (that gets me a point or two in the pocket, that I'm about to lose in a few sentences) with the poor little testosterone-starved boy in-tow. (Yeah, that was the sound of points being deducted en masse. Now you know what that sound is, so you'll recognize it later.)

There I am, going around the circle meeting the new people and hugging the old friend and greeting my wife... okay, so they're un-buckling the 1-year old boy from his cart. Must be needing to get him adjusted and ready to get into the restaurant for dinn... oh, I'm getting to meet the boy. Cool, I dig little kids, so let's have a quick "say hi" moment...

Arms stretch out and he basically lurches out of his moms arms at me. "Well hello, little man," I say, "who must I remind you of?"... cool kid, with a bit of girth and kind of squirmy. He's settled firmly in my arms now, seemingly totally content.

It was roughly at that moment that I realized there was no more chatter amongst the ladies. I heard something along the "ahhh" lines from somebody, but after a minute of talking to the boy and playing with him a bit, I realized there was something of a semi-circle of women staring at the boys! Ack! Okay, I get it, "it's on". No mistakes, no missteps... don't drop the boy, by any means!! Keep smiling, keep smiling...

Well, you get the idea, I'm sure. I'm getting evaluated for all manner of things that I'll never know details of. I figure there are a lot of things I did well: no crying, no dropping, several smiles and some giggles... all of these Good Things, so I think I did alright.

It's a really funny thing to go through. Women put me/us/you(?) in these funky situations and then watch what happens. There are rules to this game, I assure you -- you'll never know what they are, though. You'll never know the score you got or whether you "passed" or not, really... unless you really mess up somehow. "Dang, this kid is fat!" would likely get the child removed from your arms, for example, but "this boy's gonna be a great fullback when he grows up!" should do rather nicely, and still get the point across.

At any rate, I had a very nice dinner with some really nice ladies and I really enjoyed hanging out with the little fullback. I think I passed the tests fairly well... this time.