Parenting and Piano Bars

I lean over to the drunk young bachelorette who obviously needs to tell me something that she apparently can't convey adequately on the request forms that are piled in the middle of every table. It looks pretty important too.

Bachelorette: Hey! Can you play that song... ummmm .... it's like - daaa daaa daaaaaaa - something, eyes and your hips...

Me: Hm. It's not ringing a bell.

Bachelorette: Yeah, it's like - unnnnn naa naa - eyes and your hips... Come on! You know it!

Her breath smells like the vodka and grenadine she been sipping through the plastic penis-straw that's become a "must-have" with every bachelorette party. Of course, when you're wearing a silver plastic, jewel encrusted tiara decorated with six hot-pink penises and the word "Bachelorette" across the front (in case anyone mistook the occasion for a tupperware party,) the penis straw is definitely the obvious, no-brainer accessory. Oftentimes bachelorettes will proudly stroll in with the 6 foot inflatable weenie under their arm. Because when you're really attention starved, a boring old penis necklace is just so... understated.

On a side note, in my eleven years in the dueling piano bar business, I've yet to see a bachelor party adorned in sparkling plastic vaginas and jeweled boobie crowns.

So, anyway... back to cosmopolitan-breath: Naaaa naaaa da, daaaaa hips... I know you know it! John Mayer does it!

Wow. And some lucky guy is about to commit and make babies with this fine specimen. Good call. I know a keeper when I see one.

Me: That's awesome. Hey, your friends are calling you. I'm going to play a song now for the other 200 people in the room.

I call my friend Zach to the stage to play drums with me on some Lady Gaga to make sure the bachelorette party forgets about any disappointment I might left them with over this nasty John Mayer incident. I follow that up with some Miley Cyrus for good measure, just to be thorough. The other piano player ends up playing drums for me instead of Zach though. Why? Zach (who is a bar-back) never made it to the stage because he had to escort a gentleman out who decided while he stood at the bar waiting for his drink, he would go ahead and relieve himself (the word "gentleman" in this instance is clearly only used to denote gender and not to imply social grace or stature of any sort - ironically, kind of like the sign on the restroom door.) Now, in this guy's defence, the restroom was clear on the opposite side of the bar.

Pretty typical stuff, believe it or not. By the time I get home, it's almost 3:30 am. By the time I eat and do a little reading it's almost 6. The sun's coming up as I'm winding down. I change into some comfy sleepwear and just as but hits the side of my bed, before I even lay back I hear my 11 month old son, Jagger, waking up through the monitor next to the bed. Sigh. Turn it off. No use disrupting Aerin's sleep. She never gets enough. I'm already up.

I go into Jagger's room and he's standing with his hands on the crib rail and he smiles, squeals and bounces up and down when he sees me come through the doorway. How can I possibly be annoyed at this point. Tired as crap, yes, but now I have a big stupid grin on my face. He has a stinky diaper, so I figure I'll change him, maybe read him a book, then put him back to bed. I put him on the changing table and clean him up. It's especially stinky, even for him. These days he likes to stand up on the changing table so we let him air-dry like that while we hold his hands. It's his favorite place to dance. So I was singing while he was shaking his little booty when he decided to relieve himself all over both of us and the changing table. Somehow it was less offensive when he did it. Maybe if the guy in the bar had been wearing dinosaur pajamas it would have been cuter. Incidentally, I don't know what it is about my singing that makes people pee.

By the time I get him back to bed it's almost time for my 10 year old daughter to get up for school. Well, no use in getting Aerin out of bed at this point. I'm already up. So I cook up some omelets, we do the morning routine and I drop her off at school and I get to bed at about 8:20. Jagger wakes up for his morning bottle at 9:30. My wife, Aerin, gets up to feed him after enjoying that one hour of time that we spent together/slept through. Then she does her best to keep her eyes open while Jagger tries to eat everything that will fit in his mouth. Again- all of it, pretty typical stuff.

Strangely enough, I learn things from my kids that help me to deal better with drunk people at the bar. Actually, watching over drunk people can be really similar to taking care of a baby at times. I mean, you constantly have to stop drunk people from doing things that could hurt them like, "Hey! Get down off the table!" or "You have to put your shoes back on. You could step on broken glass," or "You should probably wait to cross the street until that huge truck goes by." They also throw up on themselves, babble incoherently, and in some cases make boom-boom or tinkle in their pants (Yes our poor doorguys have actually witnessed this a 4 or 5 times while helping people to the door that have had a little "too much fun.") And like children, they get more irritable and defiant the later it gets. I guess the main difference is when your children aren't following the rules, you can't just tell them to leave. Kids are like drunks that you're forced to live with. On the bright side, when they're old enough, they mow the lawn.