Full-Time Dads;
The E-Magazine for Caregiver Fathers
Issue 3, originally appeared in print - August 1991
When I became a Full Time Dad one of the unexpected delights of the responsibility was in tending the wild fauna of my refrigerator. Like most men of the baby-boom generation my domestic training was woefully inadequate. A childhood of household chores had taught me little about domestic responsibilities except how to wash dishes. I went through a long period of impoverished bachelor years, but ate so little and poorly that I never had a chance to explore the world of food storage.
Now, however, I wish to share the entertaining hobby of Bachelor Pets, always a source of fun and conversation between Dad and the children.
Talking about Bachelor Pets is sort of like talking about sex: people are still embarrassed by it. I know not everyone has this particular interest, but I am certain someone appreciates them as much as I do. So, perhaps by sharing some of these "secrets", we can discover that we're not as isolated as we sometimes seem. Hence I am coming clean about my appreciation for Bachelor Pets.
I first became a full time dad when my girlfriend and her son moved into my little Chicago bungalow. Since I was a stay-at-home struggling author, and my girlfriend was a dedicated PM-shift nurse, I became the house person by default. That's when I learned to buy groceries, thanks to the patience and training of my girlfriend, and to cook, thanks to the eagerness with which 2-year old boys eat almost anything.
For a while we shared domestic responsibility equally. My girlfriend and I got married, had a child and adopted another. We shared five years of marital bliss, struggled through another five, and endured the last five. Divorce followed, and where we didn't share too well when married, we tried hard to do better afterwards. For child arrangements my ex wife and I arranged to share care. For six months she keeps them on weekends and I during the week days, and then for the second six months we switch.
My second stint as full-time dad, and full domestic responsibility, came after our divorce. At age 401 found myself a single parent, and I began the wonderful exploration of Bachelor Pets. Now, for the first time, there was no woman at home to throw away the leftovers. I never figured out what to do with them. Yeah, sure, we ate some. Fried macaroni and cheese is much better the second time around, after all. But what about the left over leftovers?
There is the temptation to offer them to other people. But after hearing George Carlin's routine I stopped that. The decisive line is where he takes something out of the refrigerator and says, "Do you want this? I'm going to just throw it away. No thanks, I've my own garbage." I sure had a refrigerator full.
The variety of life forms became difficult to keep up with after a while. At first the remains were just simply gross. They were things like slimy vegetables, meat to make me gag, and the famous pudding-with-a-crust, which seems to be found in every midwestern fridge.
Then one day I viewed it differently. I began to actually look at what I took out, and keep track of the contents of the fridge. I noticed some fascinating things. Sometimes there were things there which had not been there the night before- I am sure I would not have left that big white puffy thing there, after all. Some things seemed to mutate into entirely different life forms, like the bread that became a gigantic grey mass of cilia that blew off grey dust when touched. Some things altered their very surroundings, like the green thing that turned black and puffed up its ziplock bag so I was afraid it would explode.
The collection was ephemeral: I didn't dare keep the thing that grew on the leftover snails. But the hobby was exciting. Mundane rotting food, like those old bananas which spontaneously generate those little hovering bugs, are pretty common. Much more rare is the pyrex baking dish with three kinds of mold in it. I have seen that only once!
Everyone has seen oranges with that characteristic blue blotch, like a rotten bruise, but I am pretty sure that few living people have looked upon the green thing growing on the grey thing growing on something once green, but now mostly black. That's a prize among Bachelor Pets.
And I think that more of us than will admit it out loud know what decrepit spam looks like, with those low black mounds surrounded by a white fringe. But I have a photo of something left over from Thanksgiving that is absolutely unidentifiable!
My fiance moved in with me recently. At first I was pretty alarmed that my new-found wild life would disappear. After all, they had never before gathered where women lived. But I am glad to relate that I was wrong. She even saved the zucchini in the back of the refrigerator, down on the third shelf, for so long it got to be the size of a smokey link of sausage. In fact, it was she who suggested starting a photo album for the pets. So if anyone would like to swap pictures, let me know, c/o this magazine.
Copyright 1991 Greg Stafford
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