Plague Journal, Day 101: “X-tremely Heterosexual Activity”

I didn’t think The Kid would remember Father’s Day, until she did. 

Midday she walked into my room, presented a hand-made card, the front of which read: 

“Due to the failings of society, I was unaware until today that today was Father’s Day. Since society sees men as disinterested in and irrelevant to the lives of their children, I decided to give you this AGGRESSIVELY MANLY card. This is a ‘gift for him’ if there ever was one. 

“Tl;dr (because reading is girly): HULK SMASH CAAAARD”

Inside, she wrote that the card was redeemable for “one (1) X-TREMELY HETEROSEXUAL activity with daughter (i.e., sports … um, sports … Do you have other interests? Do MEN have other interests?” 

No such interests leapt to mind. The Kid said she’d watch a soccer game with me — English Premier League football is back! — but I was holding out for something better.

This morning at 9:30 we set off by bike for a 9:50 appointment at her pediatrician’s office — a 10-minute ride, according to the map app, almost all on streets The Kid knows. She remains wary of street riding, but Brooklyn has an extensive and growing set of bike lanes. 

Right away, she can’t take off — her chain has slipped. Anyone who knows me can attest to my digital inaptitude, mechanical ineptitude. But we’re running late and the office is a 25-minute walk away, so we flip the bike on its seat and I wrestle manfully with her chain, refitting it link by link to gear teeth in the back, then the front, then, after it slips again, the back. I don't know what I'm doing; no way I could recreate these moves. But they work. 

“Look at your hands!” The Kid says. 

Grease central, on every digit. I have her dig a handkerchief from my back pocket, wipe my hands, thank my late father — he not only always kept a kerchief in his pocket, in his senior years he often jammed napkins or tissues alongside. 

The ride to the doctor’s office is uneventful; we arrive at 9:58 a.m. I’m dripping; it’s already almost 80 degrees. 

“Go inside and tell them you’re here,” I say, then walk the two bikes to a lock station. We’re on Union Street; the physically-distanced line for the Park Slope Co-op extends halfway up the block, to Seventh Avenue. I ask a man to excuse me, then struggle manfully to get my Kryptonite U-lock around both bikes and the station’s metal bar. The bikes almost fall twice, but I catch them, push the lock in place, turn the key. It works. 

I walk into the office’s air conditioning, remove my helmet, see The Kid sitting on a blue couch. Some of the waiting room seats have signs asking to be left vacant so visitors maintain physical distance. 

“Did you check in?” 

“No. I thought you would.” 

“Rabbit, we’re late. I asked you to check in.” 

“Sorry!” 

I check in, sit next to The Kid. Within a minute her pediatrician comes out, checks that we’re here only for the second shot of a three-stage immunization. 

“That’s all we’ve scheduled for today,” I say.

“Then I’ll turn you over to our nurse — we have one today,” she says, then asks The Kid, “You’re okay otherwise?” 

The Kid says she's fine. 

Two minutes later a nurse emerges, leads us back to an empty office. She notes our bike helmets, says sometimes shot recipients get dizzy or faint, says we should wait 15 minutes before riding home. 

“Do you want a cute Band-Aid or regular?” 

The Kid opts for regular. Last year, I think, she’d have picked cute. 

The Kid barely squints as the shot goes in her upper left arm, but I can tell it hurts. The nurse attaches the Band-aid, sends us out. 

Back in the waiting room she says, “That hurt.”

“I could see.”

“How could you tell?” 

“Your eyes went internal, somehow. You didn’t flinch, though.” 

Fifteen minutes later we walk to the street, unlock the bikes. 

“Daddy, I want to walk home.” 

“I don’t want to walk the bike that whole way. You can, though. Do you know how to get home?” 

“Maps, Daddy,” she says, gesturing to her phone. But then she decides to ride with me. 

We turn north on the Seventh Avenue bike lane, which, as is often the case in Brooklyn, overlaps with about half of the northbound car lane. I glance back to see The Kid’s with me. Traffic is steady on this first day of New York City’s Phase Two of reopening (including offices, in-store retail, real estate, car and truck sales and rentals, and, with limited capacity, hair salons, barbershops, restaurants with outdoor seating). 

As we near Flatbush Avenue a bus pulls into a stop on the right, jutting out into the bike lane. A delivery truck waits behind two cars at the traffic light; its rear half and the bus’s front half leave a narrow path between. I slow, navigate the space, note the light's turned green and cars are moving. I hear a yell, pull off to the right, at the front of the long bus stop. 

The Kid rides up behind me, upset. 

“I thought I was going to die!” she says. 

“Did the bus start to pull out?” 

“Yes! I was trapped! I thought I was going to die!” 

She’s crying. 

“You weren’t going to die. It’s OK. You’re fine.” 

“I’m not fine! I’m really scared!” 

“OK. Take a couple of deep breaths.” 

“Daddy. I want to walk the rest of the way. That was really scary.” 

“I hear you. But the bus and the truck were going like 3 miles an hour. You weren’t going to get hurt. You weren’t going to die.” 

“I want to walk!” 

“Rabbit, it’s really OK. We can ride home. We’ll go slow, and we’ll stop if we get into traffic like that again.” 

“No! I can’t do it! I want to walk!” 

I try again, but she’s not budging. She’s furious at me for responding to her fear with buck-up attitude instead of empathy. I’m annoyed we have to walk. We walk.

“You really weren’t going to die,” I say. 

“Dad. I understand that you have a different perspective than mine. But I don’t care. Please just shut up.”  

Two minutes pass. She says, “Mama wouldn’t have reacted that way!” 

I don’t answer. We walk in silence. At some point, I think of her Father’s Day card. 

We reach home. In the elevator I say, "Home again, home again, jiggity jig."

“Dad. I’m not going to pretend everything’s OK.” 

“I’m not pretending. I’m suggesting we cabin this topic until after we both calm down.” 

She sighs a sigh of frustration. 

“You’ll get to say your piece,” I say. “Let’s just wait.” 

Later, she says her piece. 

The Kid: I don’t like the way you reacted. It was mean. I was really, really scared. I get that it might not have seemed like a big deal to you, but while I was riding I got really claustrophobic — it was a tiny space between the truck and the bus, and the bus started to pull out. It was like being under a bed, where the inch above you is the bed and the space below you is the floor: there was no place to move.

Me: Did you stop riding? 

The Kid: I didn’t stop, I fell over into the bus. Then I rode ahead. It was horrifying. I seriously thought I was going to die. Not in the sense that if I could watch it as a movie, this girl is riding on the street and falls over really slowly into a bus, I’m sure I could see that she’s not going to die. If I’d been watching it on tape I’d have been totally calm. But in the moment it was like: AAAUUGH! I’m going to die! I was seriously terrified. 

And then it felt like you didn’t take it seriously at all, and you just decided for me that I was fine and nothing bad had happened. When I hit the bus I screamed really loud. Didn’t you hear that? 

Me: I heard you yell. 

The Kid: And then when I came to you I burst into tears. But you decided I was fine, so you didn’t take it seriously. If I’m experiencing that reaction, you have to take it seriously. Look in front of you: someone’s having an emotional breakdown. Even if you wouldn’t have reacted that way, it’s still scary for me. You have to respect the fact that it was scary for me even if you don’t find it scary. 

Me: I hear you. How come you said what you did about your mom? 

The Kid: I was thinking when I was walking: Was I being crazy? What would Mama have done? I realized that if I came up to Mama after screaming and then bursting into tears, she would have hugged me and said I get that you’re scared, and we could have walked home. We’ve done it before. I’ve gotten horrified on my bike, and that’s how she reacted. 

Me: I had the sense that, like after a riding fall, it’s good to get right back on the horse. Was that a bad impulse? 

The Kid: It depends on how someone’s reacting. If they’re not that freaked out, then yes, make them keep going. I’ve done that before, too — if I swerve and nearly miss a truck and I’m not that affected by it, I may stop for a minute but then I keep on riding. But at that point I was really horrified, and you kept suggesting I just forget about it. Do you not have eyes? 

It was scary because I’ve never done that before — it was a big-ass truck and a big-ass bus, and I know they weren’t Nascar-level speeding, but they were both moving and the space between them was really tight. 

Me: Do you think you’ll ever ride a bike with me again? 

The Kid: Probably not for a couple of days, but I will again. But you can’t react that way again! 

Me: Okay. I’m sorry I reacted that way, and I’ll do my best to avoid it in the future. You know what I thought of during the walk home? 

The Kid: What? 

Me: Your Father’s Day card. 

The Kid: Me, too! 

Me: Do you think that counts as our extremely heterosexual activity? 

The Kid: I think it might. It was a manly activity, and then you entirely dismissed my emotions. But that means now we don’t get to see sports together. 

Me: Well, that’s ok. I don’t mind watching alone. Besides, you get scared when I yell, if someone scores a goal or something. That makes watching not so fun for me, or for you, I imagine. 

The Kid: That is true. 

The back of her Father’s Day card reads, “Thank you for not deserving this card. You are an excellent (X-CELLENT) parent. I love you, and I know you love me because you tell me so. A lot of dads wouldn’t do that.”