My Daddy Works in His Underwear

As a work-at-home dad, I once was innocently tagged by my daughter as that dad who “works in his underwear.” Such is my home office lament.

So imagine the surprise when this mom read the subtext of what her child drew about what Mommy does for a living…

Suffice it to say, Mommy felt the need to clear the air…

Dear Mrs. Jones,

I wish to clarify that I am not now, nor have I ever been, an exotic dancer. I work at Home Depot and I told my daughter how hectic it was last week before the blizzard hit. I told her we sold out every single shovel we had, and then I found one more in the back room, and that several people were fighting over who would get it. Her picture doesn’t show me dancing around a pole. It’s supposed to depict me selling the last snow shovel we had at Home Depot.

From now on I will remember to check her homework more thoroughly before she turns it in.

Sincerely, Mrs. Smith

Now, I’ve become quite suspicious of stuff being passed as “truth” on the Internet. But fact or fiction, this is plain funny.

Kelly Lieberman is a serial entrepreneur, domain strategist, devoted mom. And she remembers vividly the day her daughter, Lily, “outed” her as a work-at-home parent

Lily was in first grade. She was asked to draw a picture of what her parents did for a living, and what she would like to do when she grew up.

During the parent-teacher conference, Kelly and husband Joe say pictures of Joe in a suit at his desk with a computer, Lily as a princess, and Kelly in a night gown with a laptop on a bed.

“I was mortified,” Kelly recalls. “Thank goodness everyone knew me.”
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So I got an invitation to become friends or some such with a happy lass on FaceBook. Never saw her before, but because she posted her picture (with a Miller Lite in hand, no less), and she’s a Gator, and she looked like someone I might have wanted to party with (20 ago before I met my wife and the mother of my three kids), I declined the invite and short-circuited any potential temptation….

But “Kristen” also had a widget, or sidebar, or some such (whatever they call them over at FaceBook) on her site called “Smart People Humor.”

Minimum-mandatory notwithstanding, I clicked on the link.

It featured a book, In the Event of my Untimely Demise, from some guy named Brian Sack, someone I’d never heard of, but whom I discovered in short order that he was someone I’d wanted to learn more about. Apparently my home office IS a cave from which I don’t emerge often, as this guy gets more airtime than a Polymagist caught in a doctor-shopping Oxycontin scheme on a slow news week when Fox, CNN, MSNBC and KCCI in Des Moines are scrambling for a lead story.

Or when Paris comes out in a video with her own energy plan.

In one video clip, Sack was a guest on The Glenn Beck Show on Headline News, with his son, Antek (It’s Polish, Sack has to explain it every time. Tell me about it. Zbar’s Polish, too…), shilling his book. In another, he’s hyping perfect holiday gifts, including a pint-sized plastic baby with a cigarette in its mouth that when lit, burns like incense.

But I digress.

After arriving in my home office at 730am, I found myself almost two hours later having explored the Web, watched 20 minutes of Brian Sack videos, and realizing that I needed his book (the subhead read, “20 Things My Son Needs to Know”). Creator of the site Banterist.com, Sack is a funny guy. And he’s a dad. And I ordered his book. I’ll write back when I’ve read the back cover.

And I actually have something to say…

We know what you’re thinking.

You see some guy working from home, walking to the mailbox in the early morning sun, cup of joe in one hand, portable phone perched in his shorts pocket. Your mind gets to thinking about his evil ways. He’s a corporate drop-out, you smirk with disdain, someone who couldn’t hack it in the “real” world.

So he shoves his wife off to work every morning to slave at her day job, so he can sit home and pretend to ply some trade – all the while catching reruns of Law & Order, and snatching up his spouse’s net at week’s end.

We’ve all suffered the snickers. We’ve been the bane of parents-in-law for half a generation now. Even my daughter has publicly misconstrued my career. When Miss Sheila asked a class full of 5-year-olds what their parents did for a living, Nicole responded, “My mommy is a nurse, and my daddy works in his underwear.” Egad!

You think being a man who works at home is all hack reruns and slack schedules? Walk a mile in our flip-flops.
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