This week I had the unfortunate experience of ageing a decade in the space of a day. I turned 30. My 20’s are behind me. No longer will people write sitcoms about my age group, no longer will I be able to get away with “not being old enough to know better”. I am now supposed to be a functioning member of society. I have shed my former skin and evolved into this new creature, the 30 year old.
Also, Fatherhood is looming. Looming sounds negative doesn’t it? Why is looming a negative term? Let’s take it back and make it positive. Get behind me Loomers, it’s a Revolution.
Anyway...
Fatherhood is certainly drawing closer. This too has urged me to shed my former self. I feel I'll never be equipped for the task at hand. Anything I’ve read on the matter has said that this is normal, yet it doesn’t make me feel any better.
I worry that people will not take me seriously as a Father. I still see myself as a kind of man child. For example, I am currently wearing a backwards snapback and an American Football jersey; Hardly the attire of the classic TV Dad. I fear that if I continue to dress like this and act as I do that people will see me as a Dad trying to “stay cool”, when I’m sure what I’ll really want is to be a “cool Dad”.
These thoughts bring me back to my childhood and I think, did I ever know any “cool Dads”? No, No I didn’t. Even Dad’s that were cool were still Dad’s and therefore instantly ranked as uncool. In one way this took the pressure off, in another it scared me slightly.
How much of my personality is wrapped up in what I am now? I am currently an actor who just turned 30, who is also a wrestler. That’s what people know me as.
Does that all change when I become a Dad?
I mean, of course it does, but how do I feel about that?
At the end of 2017 I was an Actor on my 6th year of a National Tour with a Theatre company and I was in his 20’s. At the end of 2018, I will be a 30 year old with a “real Job” and I will be a Father.
This is a big change, and for a few days leading up to my Birthday I started to be a little afraid for the first time.
The day of my Birthday changed this.
I spent my 30th Birthday on tour this year. I performed 2 Shakespearean plays in The Hawks Well Theatre in Sligo and then travelled to Dublin. In Dublin Kate was waiting for me in a Hotel that she booked for my birthday.
It was Amazing.
When I arrived she had a bunch of Birthday banners and presents laid out around the room. I began to open the presents and cards and they were all great. The varied from Replica WWE Championships to original art made with Pebbles, but they were all trumped(no Donald intended) by a card.
I am famously (exaggeration) a person who hates cards, I don’t like buying them, I don’t like receiving them and I always feel the money could have gone towards something better.
I didn’t think that on this occasion. Kate gave me a fairly standard card, but on the inside she signed it “From Kate, Flops & Peanut”.
Flops is our rabbit, but Peanut is what we have started to call the baby, ever since the “What to Expect” app told us a few weeks ago that the baby was now the size of a Peanut.
This instantly reduced me to tears. I am not a man who cries easily, but seeing the card from my baby made me so happy.
In the words of Kevin McCallister from Home Alone “I’m not afraid anymore”. If seeing a weird nickname written on my birthday card can make me that happy, then I can not wait for my whole life to be turned upside down in November.
Peanut is just going to have to get used to the fact that he/she has been landed with a “cool Dad”, well at the very least a “wannabe cool Dad”.
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