Are You My Dad??

Does anyone get those really deep burning questions? I am talking about the deep burn of 10,000 flames in your heart after eating too much spicy Mexican food – but in question form. I have a little book which inside it is filled with Amber’s undying life questions, yearning to be answered. Including a few things like:

• Is it still possible for me to reach 6′ in height without surgery?
• How is the perfect tuna sandwich made and how will I ever know which is the most perfect since I refuse to eat tuna?
• Where in the world actually is Carmen San Deigo?
• And why does anyone care???
• I love chicken salad and am not ashamed of it.
• Why do anchovies smell great but taste horrible?
• How do you throw away a garbage can?
• Will I ever travel to Southeast Asia?
• Can I have a shooting range and lemonade stand at my wedding?
• Do vampires get AIDS?

You get the idea.

Today’s post comes from a question that I found when looking through my secret question book the other night. The question stemmed in my mind some time ago, in the dark (well, actually light) ages of my life – pre-big kid job – when I was cooking mac & cheese for neighborhood rugrats when their parents weren’t home, playing with paints and cardboard egg containers to create various art projects, building snow forts in the winter and running through sprinklers in the summer just as excited as the 4- and 5-year olds that were under my supervision. I was a babysitter. And it was awesome. And, like many kids today, the kids I watched would kindly ask me if they could watch a TV show sometime throughout the duration of me watching them. And naturally, I said yes. Mainly because if I said no, the kids would dog pile me after their bedtime snack, and due to the surge of sugar from the popsicles and tootsie rolls and crack cocaine in the disguised form of the evil babysitter snack rival named “pixie stix” they consumed, they would sit on me and rip my hair out and tie to me to chair and perform Chinese water torture until I said yes. Or they would just cry violently until the sugar worked its way out of their system via vomit, in which case they would smile with a certain victory that said, “You won’t let me watch TV, huh? Have fun cleaning this up. G’nite.”

Just kidding, the kids I watched were all actually really good. But I can easily imagine not well behaved toddlers running up and down the hallway naked screaming “I WANT PHINEAS AND FERB” at their top of their lungs until you agree to turn it on. I actually still practice this act of persuasion myself, but somehow never get my way…

Anyway, I remember in particular some of the kids wanting to watch iCarly. If you aren’t familiar with iCarly, I can’t really say much about it because at the point the TV came on I raided the snack pantry, did lunges to feel better about myself after going through the snack pantry, and then promptly fell asleep. It was something like, this girl had some sort of show and some friends and they were on the show and she had this brother that she lived with and he was always my favorite because he was always really clumsy and stupid to the point that it was slightly funny…well as funny as you can get for a 10 year old kids show anyway…

iCarly cast

Anyway, one day I realized: there’s no dads on this show.

I don’t know much of the storyline, so I can’t say for sure where all the parents in this show are, but trust me – you hardly EVER see any parents. Maybe its because kids like not having parents around all the time, so the show tries to embrace that. Except for the one kid who lives across the hall in the show who has this really annoying, overbearing mom. She’s nuts.

So I ask this: Where are all the dads on iCarly?

And apparently, I am not alone. I did some research.

Now, this raises all sorts of questions. But in reality, I just feel a little bad about it. I mean, I love my dad. My dad is pretty awesome and he even has a great mustache. I feel a little selfish that I get to enjoy my dad, but iCarly and the cast doesn’t get to enjoy a mustache-flaunting, Levi’s-wearing, railroad-loving, rock-picking, Miller High Life -drinking dad.

In the words of John Prine, I guess that’s just the way that the world goes ’round.

Sorry, but this case is one for the mystery books. I didn’t actually read any of the links I found. My guess is that iCarly and her brother and her friends are probably all some sort of laboratory created cyborgs with the intention to take over the greater NYC (are they from NYC??) area and eventually take over the universe. Like, in real life. The show is just a starting point.

Better call in SuperEdDad.