Making precious memories with my daughter

Recently, I wrote about my son playing basketball, a journey that may end with alley-oops but more importantly being a good person. The unfortunate side of youth sports – for parents – is time. Time spent driving to and from practice, time spent at practice, time washing and drying clothes and trying to find lost equipment. Kid sports activity leaves much less time for adult things like not eating a meal over the sink. If you do travel sports, it’s worse. Your life is no longer your own. Say goodbye to your wallet and hobbies. Your life belongs to an AAU coach who will never bench his son no matter how many times he strikes out to end the inning.

Lucky for me, we’re only at the CYO level, and the main time-suck is practice. After work, I pick up my kids from my parents and take them straight to the gym, my daughter included. The first practice, the two of us stood there and watched, and then I pointed out there was a Dunkin’ around the corner, and our days of watching grade school boys struggle with inbound plays ended as we drove to the donut shop and began what has become a lovely tradition for both of us.

On practice nights, when we hit Dunkin’, we’re the only ones there. We order a dozen “munchkins” (is “donut holes” copyrighted?), half chocolate for her (my daughter!), and the half for her brother are glazed (whose child is this?)

It’s important to me that the kids learn how to function as basic human adults, so my daughter is the one who asks the complete strangers who are wearing playful corporate regalia for our order. The goal here is for her to learn how to be respectful and kind to those who work in the service industry because their souls are broken by the public every day and also my daughter gets to feel like a grown-up.

After we get our munchkins, we sit down at the same corner table and do her spelling homework. There are always 20 words. I say each word in a sentence, and she writes it down, and I check it. Much like the Spelling Bee, I use every word in a sentence for context, but unlike the Spelling Bee, there are jokes. I make myself the subject of every sentence for the purposes of comedy.

Sheep – My father is a powerful man who owns a great many sheep.

Picture – Any picture without my dad is boring.

Clock - My dad is so punctual a clock asked him what time it was.

And so on and so forth, with much frowning and eye-rolling and the yelling of, “DAD!”

We also talk. Sometimes we talk about school. Sometimes we talk about things she wants to do. Sometimes about friends. We also talk about our little donut shop tradition. One night, I noticed a tax preparation business right across the street. “I bet the munchkins there aren’t very good,” I said. This turned into a running gag. “Dad, are we going to Dunkin’ or the tax place?” “I hear the tax place has the best 1040s,” I say. When we drive by the tax place, she’ll goof around and say, “Dad, you never take me to the tax place.” For the record, I am very proud of her negative attitude about anything to do with taxes.

One night, while eating our munchkins and looking across the street at the tax place, we did what so many fathers with young daughters do, and we began making plans to rob it. I know this may upset some of you, but planning heists is a part of Italian-American culture, and I’ll ask you to please respect my cultural norms, as strange and illegal as they may seem to you.

We’ll need a crew, I told her. She was very excited to learn what a crew is because she is a firm believer in the power of friendship. And as a dad, I like the idea of a crew as a metaphor for professional workplace relationships. We have to be very careful about who’s in the crew, I said, because the success of the mission – as well as our freedom – hangs in the balance. My daughter’s response was swift – her brother could be in the crew, plus our dog. Good, I said. Keep the circle tight. What about mom, I asked. She wasn’t so sure. I understood. Let’s keep mom out, I said. We’ll need someone on the outside to coordinate with the lawyers if things go south.

I then laid out the various roles for the heist. I told her we’ll need a Wheel Man, a Face, a Cat Burglar, and a Wild Card. My daughter demanded to be the Face. Her job will be to act like any regular 9-year-old girl seeking tax advice, thus providing a necessary distraction. When we brought her brother in on it, he demanded to be the Cat Burglar who absconds with secret tax documents that will make us rich somehow. When my son described how he’d sneak in through the back, my daughter began expanding on the role she would play – she said she’d ask to speak with every employee all at once, and ask them many questions about taxes, leaving the back unguarded for her brother.

No father has ever been prouder.

Because I’m the only person in the crew old enough to drive, it was decided that I’d be the Wheel Man. My Subaru isn’t fast, but it’s reliable in poor weather conditions, which is something in Northeast Ohio.

The choice for Wild Card was obvious – our dog. We’ll bring him on as The Muscle, but in classic heist fashion, one member of the crew has to endanger the job with impulsive stupidity, and that is the role our Tanner was born to play.

The crew is set.

Now, we wait. Patiently. And from our corner of Dunkin’, we continue to plot, going over every detail, making plans for every possible scenario. We have a date circled on the calendar – April 15. Tax Day. The day of the year when The Mark will be overflowing with valuable tax documents, the day we do one final job, and then we’re set for life.

This is what happens when you leave me alone with my daughter in a donut shop.

If you enjoyed this piece, you may enjoy other things I have written.