How Not To Dad: Episode 4 - Koumpounophobia

    To begin this fourth episode, what I'd like to do is ship a flux capacitor laden Delorean to the corner of Gitschiner street and Linden street in Berlin, Germany, set the displays to March 5, 1885, back that sumbitch up about a quarter of a meile (that's mile to us English speaking folk), aim it at the German Patent Office, and gun it.  If there is any true sense of fate or destiny in this crazy universe, and a kneifen (pinch) or two of luck, I'd meet the sidewalk to that building at the exact moment that a gentleman named Heribert Bauer is strolling his happy arsch into the patent office, probably carrying an envelope with some documents and a little prototype metal object a bit smaller than a dime stuffed into it.  Hopefully the time machine would materialize just close enough to Mr. Bauer so that the DMC logo on the grill would rustle his pant leg as it screamed to a stop an inch from his knees.
    In the nice version this would happen, and Bauer would fling the envelope into the air and scamper away unharmed.  I'd pick the envelope up, throw it in a trashcan somewhere, then start trying to figure out how I'd get back home since you can't get plutonium in Berlin in 1885.  It's not available at every corner store yet.
    In the not so nice version, the Delorean doesn't stop inches from the knees, if you know what I mean.  Either way, the envelope and its contents must be destroyed, for the happiness of dads everywhere.
    What's in the envelope, you ask?  What little metal object can cause such rage as to inspire me to want to bend space-time itself, risking all of existence in order to stop this object from being invented altogether?
    The snap button.  The snap button is what's in the envelope.  What Mr. Bauer (or the man who perfected the design almost twenty years later, or the thousands of textile workers and designers who slap these little metal bastards all over baby clothes) didn't take into account was that you can't really snap thirty-eight buttons together from ankles to nipples of a wriggling baby who's pissed off because she has to wear clothes.
    The common baby has two legs.  For some reason, someone once decided it would be a good idea to put a row of buttons up both legs that met in the middle, so you can unsnap all of these buttons quickly for easy access to the diaper.  It works, too!  Getting the onesie undone is pretty easy when dealing with buttons.
    Getting the onesie back on, though, is like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle while riding a unicycle during an earthquake.  My daughter is a calm baby, but even calm babies have pretty short fuses when you're trying to snap the "male" side of the button to the "female" side only to find after three or four buttons that the "male" side is a cheating bastard and is sticking his appendage in the wrong partner.  So you unsnap, re-snap, do the same with the other leg, and when you get to the joint where the legs meet the hips you find two "female" side buttons staring at each other.  Now you've got to rework the buttons and try to figure out how they became lesbians somewhere along the way.
    Now try doing all that while your pissed off baby is screaming and kicking at your face.

Moral of the Story:  If your wife takes you shopping for baby clothes and gets all excited about an outfit for your daughter and asks your opinion, you only need to be looking for one thing: how many buttons does it have?  If the answer to that is more than three, protest.  Argue with your wife if you have to.  Sleep on the couch that night.  Trust me, the argument will be easier to deal with.