Having a son taught me that NO ONE is qualified to be a parent and the only difference between a good parent and a bad parent is the level of effort. As much as I hated my parents growing up, as miserable as I was as a teenager, as painful as my entire formative years were, I can still sit, enthralled, listening to my father tell a story about the time he and Davy Crockett defended The Alamo against the Cossacks with a can opener and a Bowie Knife.
And that is what happened with this book. I set out to write a simple collection of essays, stories and columns I'd had printed about being a stay-at-home dad. It just kind of happened. I wrote the jokes, stories, columns and essays that comprise this book on a spurt of head-slapping motivation, proofed it and found, to my surprise, that it was, in every possible way, a book by a father for his son; a letter, a long night around a bonfire, sharing stories while bragging, telling jokes and drinking bear.
It's a Man's book. It's a book ABOUT Men, BY a Man and it's my fondest hope one little boy in particular will read it and transition over just a little easier into the fraternal brother- hood. Because nobody tells you how to be a Man. No one gives you a manual and a head-start. Your parents meet, have sex, and you get launched into the universe with a rudimentary understanding of things.
"That kind of negligence could get a guy killed!" - Nescher
Pyscher, 2013 From the pages of Nescher Pyscher's hilarious, eclectic and completely auto-biographical romp from infancy to successful, full-on masculinity: "Tattoos and Baby Food -A Boy's Guide to Life."
