My friend, Lisa, wrote a blog post about why she didn’t go to Taste of Chicago this year. It’s on the new blogger community, The Chicago Moms, right here.
Her primary reason — aside from the heat, mediocre food, crowds and pale, large people who feel compelled to spill, shirtless, over their jean shorts and into your personal space — is the worry over violence. She’s got a little guy and had visions of bad things happening.
Bad things happen. To everyone. But if I had to point to a fundamental difference between moms and dads, aside from the whole breast feeding thing, it’s this. Moms worry over random acts of violence that will, of course, happen to them. Dads admit that these things happen, but we’re confident that they will happen to someone else.
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There comes a point where most parents start having what I like to call the, ”Maybe-we-should-move-the-hell-out-of-the-city-before-we’re-shot-in-the-forehead” conversation. Lara and I are having that now, sporadically. We can have it all we want. Thanks to the titans of Wall Street, we’re not selling our house anytime soon.
But still, we have it, every now and again. The wife grew up in the suburbs. I grew up in the city. Guess who wants to stay and who wants to leave?
I can recognize some of the appeal. Not having to pay $85 for a city sticker so you can park in front of your own house. Fewer sirens. Backyards that are larger than a postcard.
But I like the city. I work in the city. And, with Jack so young, I don’t feel like losing two hours a day on the train, going to and from work. Maybe I’m being selfish and will sing a different tune when he’s about ready to go to school. But for now, I want to stay put.
I think the wife does, too. But if I said let’s go, I don’t think she’d put up much a fight. Even so, we have some pretty funny conversations about it.
Wife: The suburbs are so nice. (She’s driving us home from Palatine, where Jack swims on Saturdays.)
Me: Uh-huh.
Wife: Summers growing up were the best. Going swimming and then being out at night, catching lightning bugs.
Me: We had lighting bugs in the city.
Wife: No you didn’t. Maybe one little lonely one.
Me: No. We had actual lightning bugs. A whole bunch of them.
Wife: No you didn’t.
Me: What do you think we did? Run around and catch rats in pillow cases?
Wife: Exactly.
There’s rats in the suburbs. I’ve seen them. They’re just smaller and ride ponies on their way to golf lessons.
Alan Kercinik is a marketing type/dad who, right now, is probably hanging out with his wife, walking the dog, reading, listening to music, ranting about some movie or television show, toiling away on a novel or telling his son not to climb on something. The opinions expressed on Always Jacked are his, but they are probably influenced by his wife.
