Shit They Don't Tell You About Fatherhood: TV Crime Shows

Shit They Don’t Tell You About Fatherhood: TV Crime Shows

I love Law & Order. All of them — the original series, SVU, Criminal Intent — like seriously love them. If I could, I would take them on a date, maybe dinner and a Brendan Fraser movie, then park with them at a scenic spot where I might attempt some awkward heavy petting. When I got home, I would write a sonnet about them because that’s what I do when I am infatuated and why I was single for so long.

Since having kids, however, I can’t watch any incarnation of the show. I don’t mean I don’t have the time, although that is one of the hurdles. I mean I see the victims, no matter how old, as former children. Fictional children, yes, but children nonetheless. They were once little folks learning to walk and talk and then they grew up, got mixed up with a jealous software magnate or media tycoon or sex slavery ringleader and ended up dead. And that means their fictional parents will mourn them for the rest of their fictional lives.

My wife always had this problem. Before we had our boys, she had a hard time watching crime shows, even the news if it involved children getting harmed. I can still watch the news, but my enjoyment of crime shows has been permanently dented. I immediately imprint my love for my children onto these characters and it really screws me up. But wait, it gets worse.

It’s not just TV shows. Last week, my wife and her mother went out to dinner with a friend. On nights like this, when I have the place pretty much to myself, I have a set routine: the boys go to bed, then I have pizza, maybe some wine and watch a shitty movie. This time, I chose the special effects extravaganza 2012. No stranger to Roland Emmerich and his campy disaster porn, I knew what I was in for. I’ve seen all his flicks and enjoy the sheer absurdity and empty entertainment calories they provide. (The President of the United States flying a fighter jet? Leading a squadron in a dogfight with aliens? Oh, Independence Day, you’re so adorably jingoistic.)

Except this time, I was watching the spectacle as a father. By the start of the third act, I was openly weeping. Like a fucking moron.

Forgive me if I’m spoiling this for you, but since the ads made no secret that the film involves the end of the world, I guess I can mention pretty much everyone on the planet dies. Unlike Emmerich’s previous films, however, this one is full of families with young children. So, when the character Santam leans down and kisses his young son’s forehead as that 7-mile-high tidal wave races toward them, I was might as well have been watching Sophie’s Choice.

My friend irreverend recently tweeted about wiping the snot from the nose of a stranger’s child at the playground. Before having a kid, boogers grossed her out. Now, she’s a mucus wrangler. Being a parent changes you. For me, it’s made me think about the stories people tell in a different way. The stakes are higher for every TV show, movie, book, play and comic because every character was once a baby. Like mine.