From a Well, Actually

Sometimes I overexplain things. I try to leave strangers on the internet alone, but when it comes to my daughters I am constantly describing, defining, disclosing, giving unwanted advice, poking my big dumb nose in where it probably isn't needed. My daughters love me, but I fear they tolerate this behavior only because of said love. That, ultimately, they would rather I "did not," because they "just can't even," which makes me say something like "Actually, a penny dropped from the Empire State Building won't kill you. It will only sting a little, like when you skinned your knee in kindergarten."

"Gum doesn't take seven years to digest," I might say, but I don't explain that I think we believe this because we try to hold onto to everything so hard, that we never want it to pass.

Marie Antoinette never said "Let them eat cake." Historians believe that despite her lavish lifestyle she cared deeply for the underprivileged, so I choose to believe she said "Let them have some of the cake we have."

We use far more than 10 percent of our brains, though it may sometimes seem as if we don't, especially when explaining to someone else that we do. Your hair and fingernails do not continue growing after you die. I think this myth continues because it's pretty to think something of us might still survive after the end.

If you pick up a baby bird, its parents will still care for it. I have no idea how this one came about because if a giant alien ever picked up one of my daughters, my first instinct afterward would be to hold her, ask if she was all right.

It's fine to wake up a sleepwalker. It's fine to throw rice at weddings. It's fine to swim after eating. Coffee doesn't stunt a child's growth. Sugar isn't as addictive as heroin. Going out in the cold won't make you catch a cold. You don't have to wait twenty-four hours to file a report if your child goes missing. These are myths that have perpetuated because we're often afraid, actually.

I say, "Actually, cracking your knuckles will not give you arthritis." This is something my mother said to me because I did it all the time. I suspect now she just didn't like the sound I made, but maybe she was only repeating something she had heard as a child, and it had been hiding away all this time, until her two sons came cracking into this world and she began to worry that something someone once said to her might be true.

"Actually," my older daughter said one day, "Pluto isn't a planet anymore." She was always coming home from kindergarten or fourth grade or tenth grade with some new revelation to reveal:

"Actually, I have two fathers," she told me once after attending Sunday school. "You and God."

"Actually, we don't write in cursive anymore," she said in second. "Actually, no one does math that way anymore," she said in fifth. "Actually, we won't be reading The Great Gatsby," she said in high school.

"Actually, I'm moving out," she said after she graduated, and went off to another state, one that seemed as far away as Pluto.

So I call her and ask how she's doing and she says "Well, actually." As a father it's in my nature to tell her all the things she should be doing to better her life, to which she says, "Well, actually."

Watching her grow up made me feel as if I didn't know anything. Now that she is an adult, I fear, actually, that I know even less about the world we let our children walk around in, so I often overexplain. I tell her to stay in school. To drive safely. To always watch her surroundings when walking alone at night. I hear myself tell her that Pluto will always be a planet, when I should have said that she will always...