The Grin He Came Back With

I know enough hollow men who’ve managed to knock someone up and then spent the next decade filling the resulting kid’s head with whatever backward certainty they’d mistaken for wisdom. The conviction with which they do it is what stings. Like they’ve thought it through. Like they’ve arrived somewhere.

Mikki’s kid had received the same birthday present twice by accident, so they drove to a nearby store to exchange it. Pick whatever you want, Mikki told him. His son came back beaming, arms wrapped around an Ariel the Little Mermaid Barbie.

There are two ways a father handles that moment. He snatches it away and steers the kid toward a truck, a robot, something with an engine. Or he beams right back, says he’ll love him no matter what, that whoever he turns out to be is fine, and that if the boy wants a Barbie he can have a Barbie. Mikki chose the second. He filmed it. Put it online. The internet responded the way it occasionally does when it remembers what people can be like.