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With his wife out of town, our fearless second-time-around dad tackles Day 4 of solo parenting:

I’m pushing Lightning Bug down the sidewalk in her rickety little stroller. Approaching us on the same sidewalk is a young woman pushing a baby in a larger nicer stroller.

Bug says, “There not going to be space.”

I say, “It’s a big enough sidewalk. And we’ll just move over to this side and she’ll move over to that side and we’ll have enough room.” Our strollers near each other.

I smile at the sweet young woman, she smiles back.

Our strollers are quite close now.

She’s moving off to one side, I keep smiling and casually push Bug’s stroller to the edge of the sidewalk, very graceful, very suave.

But one of Bug’s wonky stroller wheels goes off the sidewalk and turns around jamming into the muddy grass. We jerk to a sudden halt but I’m still pushing and Bug almost falls out the front of her stroller because I didn’t buckle her in because she didn’t need to be buckled in and it looks like she’s getting whiplash, I’m now pushing and twisting the whole stroller out of the way of the oncoming other stroller, still smiling gamely at the young woman whose eyes show growing alarm, I drag our stroller completely out of the way, tripping over another of our janky wheels myself and almost tumbling as Bug says, “Daddy what you doing?” We come to a complete stop somehow now turned to face the sidewalk, looking like we’re planning to ram the nicer stroller, me clutching our stroller handles for dear life, grinning stupidly at the woman passing as quickly as she can, Bug repeating, “DADDY WHAT YOU DOING??”

The other stroller hurries away and I shove Lightning Bug’s bad stroller back up onto the sidewalk.

“Just trying for my ‘Cool Dad Of The Year Award’,” I tell her.

Photo courtesy of Eric Coble