Be a Famous TV Dad

Day 1

Why does Fred Flintstone wear a mini-skirt? Did Fred's feet never get cold because Bedrock was a southern city? And if I'm Fred, who can I get to be The Great Gazoo?

These seemingly irrelevant questions mattered as I prepared for this week's challenge. Each day, I'm going to be a different legendary TV dad. If nothing else, it means I'll have a job this week--actually seven different ones.

First, I'm bronto crane operator Fred Flintstone, the "Wilma!"-yelling, alien-seeing, barefoot father of the hippest modern Stone Age family. And right off the bat, my first concern was Fred's mini-skirt. He shows more thigh than Frank Perdue.

Nailing the wardrobe is important, because, despite the show's popularity, Fred's not famous for many legendary quotes. There's "Willll-maaa!," "Yabba Dabba Doo!" and "Bet, bet, bet, bet, bet, bet, bet" when Fred delves into his gambling funk.

I also spent the day singing Fred's "Lollobrickida" song: "Lollobrickida/I dig your food-ida/And if there is a jewel/It's your pasta fazooool."

I sing worse than Fred, which was another reason I had to nail the wardrobe. I found an orange shirt and shorts (I'm more modest than skirt-wearing Fred), a blue tie, and I cut some black construction paper into triangles that I taped to my shirt. Yabba Dabba Doo, indeed!

Daniel's grade-school friends weren't so excited when they got off the bus after school and saw my outfit. "Why are you wearing that?" one asked. "Because I'm Fred Flintstone today." Geez, I thought kids were supposed to be smart these days.

Daniel rolled with it, though he said he doesn't like The Flintstones. But he quickly warmed to the part he'd play when I gave him his options. Since Linda was Wilma, and Caitlin was Pebbles, Daniel had to be either Dino or Mr. Slate, my boss at the quarry.

“I get to be the boss of you? Cool!”

His first edict as boss: “I want pizza for dinner.” (I love how my boss thinks!) But in this case, Wilma wins out.

“I’m firing you,” he said. Well, alrighty then. So much for having a job. That one lasted all the way from his bus stop to our driveway, a grand total of four minutes. Still, I’ve had jobs I wished ended even faster.

Later, when he left a candy wrapper on the table, I asked him to throw it away, and apparently I'd been rehired without my knowing it. "Here," he said, handing it to me, "I'm your boss. You throw it away."

That kid's in big trouble by Day 7, when he runs into Seinfeld's Frank Costanza, George's dad. "You want a piece of me? You got it!" I'll give him serenity now.

Day 2

One of my poker buddies came up with the adjective "'70s-bad" to describe something from the decade that's so bad it's come full circle back to good. Like the Bee Gees and The Brady Bunch.

The TV show never cracked the top 25 in ratings, but, because of after-school syndication, people from my generation watched it endlessly, and know more incidents from the show than state capitals. The tiki doll, "Oh, my nose!," "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia," mean ol' Buddy Hinton, Johnny Bravo, Cousin Oliver ... I could go on, but I've got to get to work being an architect.

Daniel has never seen The Brady Bunch, and doesn't like that I'm calling him Bobby, but it's my job as Mr. Brady to teach him the meaning of '70s bad. So he's learning words like "groovy" and "far out" and dealing with his second name change in as many days (from Mr. Slate to Bobby). I hope this doesn't come back to haunt him. Or me.

After school, we played Whiffle Ball in the backyard and twice he hit balls that got lost in the garden. While looking for the lost balls--but also remembering the episode when Bobby and Cindy got lost in the Grand Canyon--I stood at the garden's edge calling out, "Bobby! Cindy!" I got Daniel to join in, but he couldn't figure out why we were calling out to a Whiffle Ball.

Of course, I broke out the '70s-bad clothing for the day--and didn't have to look far to find it. Everything but the shoes was in my closet, all having been worn in the last year or so. I also realized that for the first time in months, I've now worn a tie two days in a row; once to be a caveman and today a purple tie to match my green pants.

Daniel was happy not to be "Bobby" by day's end. I didn't have the heart to tell him that tomorrow I'm going to have to call him Meathead.

Day 3

There's nothing like starting your day by having your wife stagger across the room and throw her arms around you lovingly, the whole time screaming, "Oooohhh Arrrrchieeeee!"

I kindly replied to Linda/Edith, "Stifle it, you!"

Linda made a good Edith because she kept right on hugging. I should have then said, "No matter how long we've been together, Edith, you still, as the kids say, 'Turn me over.'"

But it was still "early in the morning when the crows cock," and before I had discovered the website dedicated to Archie Bunker-isms. There, I found a few valuable life lessons that I taught my son throughout the day, such as, "Remember, don't talk to strangers unless you know them well."

And, "We better not, ya know, kill our chickens before they cross the road." And "God don't make no mistakes, that's how He got to be God."

The way Daniel looked blankly at me, he'd have made a good Meathead, who once said to Archie, "You know, you are totally incomprehensible." "Maybe so," Archie replied, "but I make a lot of sense."

When Daniel was at school, I took off for downtown in my best Archie-wear: plain white shirt, drab-gray flood pants, and white socks with black shoes. The white socks/black shoes combo reminded me of my styling grade-school days, so I was a little self-conscious when I went to the dry cleaners.

That fear subsided when I remembered that when I'd dropped off my clothes there 10 days ago, I had been wearing my superhero cape.

Day 4

What does it say about me that of all my TV dads this week, I can relate best to Howard Cunningham, a plump middle-aged Milwaukee resident who enjoys sitting in his favorite chair and reading the newspaper?

"Accept it, Dad, you're middle-aged," my 17-year-old daughter Caitlin tells me. "You're 42--that's the middle of your life."

As they say in Happy Days, sit on it, Caitlin.

Mr. C and I aren't exactly alike; he owns a hardware store and I've never been in one. Still, we both have a wise-cracking daughter and a happy, naive son. Plus, from the second season on, Mr. C simply pretended his third son, Chuck, never existed. That's how I treat the family fish--it could even be named Chuck for all I know.

As for Caitlin, I think she has the physical comedy skills to spin-off her own TV show, the way Mr. C saw his daughter star in Joanie Loves Chachi. She and her boyfriend Graham--he'll be ecstatic to know I'm now calling him Chachi--were watching TV and decided to buy a half gallon of ice cream for all of us. But it was too frozen, making it harder to serve than soup by the rollerskating waitresses at Arnold's drive-in.

Caitlin let the ice cream sit out, and little by little we all helped ourselves as it thawed. Caitlin went last, and was left with a frozen core she was determined to break. Instead, as she scraped at it, the oversized snowball flew past her, onto the kitchen floor, and rolled away.

She came into the family room holding the ice cream ball between her two fingers like a dirty diaper, saying, "I only got one little spoonful. And now it's all dirty."

Chachi and I threw our heads back and laughed. Cue the closing theme and roll credits.

I think we're on to something.

Day 5

Cliff and Clair Huxtable got along so well, I'm convinced, because they didn't have to share an office. Cliff would head to his doctor's office, she'd go her lawyer's office, the kids would go their own way--hey, who watched over Rudy during the day?

Anyway, Linda and I work well together in many ways, especially when I'm pretending to acknowledge that our house is a Lindicatorship. (In reality, King John rules a benevolent monarchy, like Cliff.)

However, when it comes to our shared office, we each have computers on our desks, but that's about all we have in common. I'm a Mac and she's a PC--"my computer's not working again!" When I'm trying to write, I need silence and no distractions. No music, I don't pop open my e-mails, I don't answer the phone. I hate to lose my train of thought because the train so infrequently pulls into the station anymore.

Linda operates at her desk like a house party DJ. She asks questions, she giggles over e-mails from friends, she talks on the phone, and she never lets a thought waste a moment's time on its path from brain to mouth. "Why do I get so many junk e-mails?" "How do you spell 'acknowledge'?" "You have to see the e-mail I just got!" "Whatcha doing?"

That's why I'm now sitting three rooms away at the kitchen table.

Of course, in honor of Cliff Huxtable, I'm wearing a sweater, though I couldn't find anything that would belong in his patchwork-quilt-of-many-colors collection. All of my more "unique" clothing has slowly been sucked away since I've been married. Kind of like my sanity.

The other--"John!" she shouts from the other room. "How do you spell 'interrupt'?"

I shout back, "L-I-N-D-A."

That would have made Cliff happy.

Days 6 & 7

As is his lot in his cartoon life, Homer got the short shrift from me this week. Saturday, Lisa (Caitlin) was at a party, we dropped Bart (Daniel) at my aunt and uncle's house, and Marge (Linda) and I went out to dinner and a movie. I know what Homer would think: D'oh!

I more than made up for my lack of TV dad-dom the next day when, in honor of Seinfeld's Frank Costanza, we celebrated Festivus (for the rest of us)! Now, a traditional Festivus celebration concludes with The Feats of Strength, but George (Daniel) was up to the challenge first thing. "You want a piece of me? You got it!"

In the best-of-9, Brawl Til You Fall, George took me down with a knee to the face for a 5-4 win. The champ was modest in victory: "That was soooo easy. I beat up Dad."

I recovered from the defeat quickly, as Frank did when he said, "I feel reborn. I'm like a Phoenix rising from Arizona."

The Festivus celebration continued at our friends' house for The Festivus Meal. Of course, I took with me an aluminum pole, The Festivus Pole--"It requires no decoration. I find tinsel distracting."--and prepared for The Airing of Grievances. "I got a lot of problems with you people! And now, you're gonna hear about it."

While waiting for dinner and The Airing of Grievances, I was almost mauled by their gigantic 3-inch-long hamster, Miss Jibbles, which their son held terrifyingly close to me. Miss Jibbles' dinosaur-like jaws were a nightmare I won't soon forget. So I wasted no time as I began the grievances: "Animals are not our friends!"

We all took turns, with Phil's grievance being that I'd be returning to his house in a few nights for poker. Lucky guy.

As Festivus drew to a close, we talked about what my challenge should be next week. I was considering not using my thumbs, or not sitting, or foregoing personal hygiene--all good, all someday to be attempted. (Though the week I go without hygiene is when Linda wants to attempt "a week away from John.")

Out of nowhere, Gray suggested the perfect challenge, one that would achieve my goal of driving the poker guys crazy Thursday night: I have to sing all week--no talking. Alleluia! It was truly a Festivus Miracle!