IT'S A DAD'S LIFE:Public fathering is a real issue. You can't play the game until you know the rules, writes Adam Brophy
THE ELDER has her first play in the new school coming up. She is a flower. She has two lines.
We are very excited, so much so the missus is making the 7am express out of Dublin that morning to arrive for curtain up.
Before this happens though, I need to find a decent electrical shop to sort the problem with my camcorder's battery charger.
I'm not getting any juice, and I need to be juiced up so when I elbow my way through the scrum of camcorder-wielding dads to the prime recording spot I don't look like no fool with no red power light.
Also, I'm the new dad in town so I have to mark my territory somewhat more aggressively than I would usually.
This is the first public arena of fawning that I will have entered since our move and I do not, repeat "Do Not", want to let myself or my family down in publicly displaying how rocking a dad I am, in demonstrating how much I adore my child, and yet oozing nonchalance and comfort in displaying my feelings in a public place about said child without belittling other, less cool, dads than myself.
Public fathering is a competitive issue, especially when you're coming in cold. I knew the markers in the old school; what sort of displays of affection were acceptable, when too much marked you as a bit noncey and too little distinguished you as cold.
It was no mean feat deciphering social mores in a place where I once heard a mother see her daughter off at the gates with the words: "If you don't bleedin hurry up I'll break your jaw."
To which the daughter playfully kicked the mother in the padding of her meaty behind and ran squawking to her classroom.
But there I knew the score. In a playground setting, the fathering approach had to err on the side of macho. There was a lot of rolling shoulders, a lot of nods but little in the way of conversation, and every dad had to playfully clip the ear of his offspring after pick-up at least once on the way out. This implied both a comfortable intimacy and basic knowledge of the way of the Samurai dad.
You had a couple of options here, both of which I roadtested. The first was to compete and engage in the schoolyard posturing head on. This involved sucking the last out of your smoke as you entered the yard as if you might never survive the time differential between then and sparking up your next one on leaving. You would wink gamily at the mothers and offer other fathers a slight downward twist of the mouth.
When waiting, you needed a wall to lean against, behind which you could spit and attempt to inspect something slightly out of everyone else's line of vision. You never hurried but you gave the impression that you had somewhere pressing to be.
The alternative was mega-friendliness. Enter the playground on drop-off or pick-up as if being there was the highlight of your day, seeing everybody was the most important thing in your world and hearing their stories (about the kids, of course) your motivation for waking in the morning.
I tended to spit and smoke and smile, all simultaneously. Back then I was fresh to the game.
Anywhere new and there are different rules, and you can't start to play until you know them. A listing has not been provided by management (parenting is like Fight Club - you don't mention the game) but the one crucial factor I have noted is that nobody sucks tabs within sight of the gates.
Without such a blatant prop the extremities are narrowed, which implies that the plays must be more subtle. Charm, rather than a blunt instrument, may be required.
Dammit, charm is always a problem.
When subtlety is involved you know the parenting con is on. The con is that you are as interested in other people's kids as your own. You are not. You will never be.
On any given day, you suffer your own and barely tolerate others. Other people's kids require work and attention to detail in order to retain the facade of your family's acceptability in polite society. Everybody knows this and yet they maintain the con, thus implying a game of considerable depth.
I will charge my camcorder and prepare to pounce for top spot. But I get the feeling nobody will compete. They may record from the back of the hall. They may have top-quality camcorders. They may be HD ready. That might be the game. It's all in the game.