Friday 31 January 2014

The morning after the night before

It’s the morning after Australia Day and I’m walking H in his pram along the path by the beach in Byron Bay. It’s just on 6am and the sun is coming up, so what sort of people do you think you would come across? Did I see young partygoers still reveling or people asleep on the beach?

No I came across a number of Dads doing exactly what I was doing – pushing their child or children through the first light of the day. I didn’t see a single mother doing this. H and I walked for about 45 minutes that morning and I think we saw a dozen different Dads with strollers. I never really interacted with any of these other men aside from the ‘manly nod’ and a brief greeting of “Morning” or “G’day”. However, I analysed them all and I passed judgment on them as to why they were out at that time of the day looking as they did. Many of these Dads looked as if they had enjoyed Australia Day, probably at one of Byron’s pubs watching the cricket, a little too much. Now they had the job of walking their child who had been woken early or had an interrupted night’s sleep because of Dad’s snoring and or late night partying to give Mum a rest and the chance to catch up on some sleep.

After our walk I got back to the motel room we had stayed in the night before and woke Sane Mum from her extra slumber. I went to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror and I could have passed the same judgment upon myself as I had just done on all those other Dads. I was unshaven, bleary eyed and generally a little disheveled. The thing is I went to bed at 8pm the night before because we were sharing a room with H and once he was in bed it meant so were we! Ok I’d had a beer and a glass of wine with my dinner and I’d checked the cricket score on my phone once about 8:30. This was as close as I’d come to the big night I’d pictured all these other Dads as having.

I’d passed my judgments on all these other Dads by thinking of the stereotype of what they looked like before 7am on the morning after a public holiday. Was I right about these Dads having had a few the night before or had they had an enforced early bedtime in a tiny motel room with kids asleep in travel cots? Having seen how I looked in the mirror that morning I know I won’t be so quick to pass judgments and label fellow Dads with stereotypes as I was before.


Now don’t get me started on the two pairs of legs I saw coming out the windows of a beat up old car down by Byron’s beach…………………..

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