Simply irresistible. (Me or him?)

Talking of life as a baby dada (see last post), we celebrated our first Christmas as a threesome (in 1999) with my family in England. Unfortunately, work pressures forced the mem-sahib to postpone her flight for a few days, leaving me to fly ahead across the Atlantic, overnight, in sole possession of a ten-month-old.

Ahem, nailed it. Even down to changing diapers twice in the airplane lavatory, without dropping the baby down the toilet on either occasion. In fact, when we landed, and I was strapping Primus into the Bjorn, the people in the row behind expressed amazement that there had been a baby in front of them for the entire flight and they'd never noticed. (In this, it helped greatly that Primus was the least fussy infant on the planet, and charmed the stranger who'd been given the mem-sahib's empty seat next to him.*)

The point is, as a competent and devoted solo Daddy with a cute baby, the (female) flight attendants were all over me. In fact, I regard this as the high point in my life in terms of being attractive to the opposite sex. Even over my front-stage rendition of "Take a Pair of Sparkling Eyes" in the high school production of The Gondoliers.

And the irony is that the very situation that made me so desirable was also the very thing that signaled my complete unavailability.

*I found out later, by recognizing him from the unfamiliar British television I watched over Christmas, that this was the Irish actor James Nesbitt, at that time starring in a popular sitcom called "Cold Feet." I don't suppose he was too pleased to find himself billeted next to a baby for the entire flight, but hey, you live by the standby, you die by the standby.