You Can't Scare Me, I Have Kids

I am having one of my periodic “I miss my kids” weeks. They are all grown up with kids of their own, but I still miss them. In their honor, several years ago I wrote a book about them – You Can’t Scare Me, I Have Kids. Still available on Amazon. Order now and be one of 12 people in America to have a copy. I gave one to each of my kids and found one being used to level some furniture at one of their homes. I was touched.

What follows is an excerpt.

Several years ago, after working a very difficult, multi-injury accident with the rescue squad, someone asked me, “How do you keep such a cool head? Doesn’t anything frighten you?” I immediately replied, “You can’t scare me, I have kids.”

That conversation got me thinking about all that had happened to bring me to the place in my life that someone would consider me fearless. Why wasn’t I afraid in such a tense situation? Maybe it was the kids.

I used to be a “scaredy cat.” I was afraid of most everything. I was afraid of most everyone, too. My first three years at school, I didn’t speak to anyone but my big brother and my teachers. I was afraid to walk past the only house on my path to school that had a dog.

Like most little boys I was both fascinated by and afraid of girls. I still am. I was afraid of water, heights, bullies, failing, fighting, falling down in public, snakes, mice, facing my father’s wrath, being skinny (I overcame that one with a vengeance.), being shot at (I got in the wrong farmer’s field by mistake.), and being the last out in an important baseball game.

It was while in Junior High that I began my project to overcome my fears. The first thing I did was ask a girl out on a date. That whole debacle only served to reinforce my fear of women. I tried speaking up in class. Unfortunately, since all I ever shared were smart-aleck remarks, that wasn’t much help in fighting my fears, either. My junior high years remained filled with fear.

Then, in high school I did two major things to address my fear factor. First, I signed up for the football team. It was there that I learned that getting the stuffing beat out of me didn’t hurt all that much. Being a football player marked me as a tough guy. People were now afraid of me. The other thing I did was start hanging around with some fighters. So, on Friday nights I played football and Saturday nights I got into fights. So, here was “mister scaredy cat,” terrorizing other boys on the playing field and in the parking lots of drive-in eateries. If you didn’t know me well, you would have thought I wasn’t afraid of anything. If the truth was known, I was still afraid of almost everything. I had just learned how to mask it. My mind was still afraid but my body had learned to ignore my brain.

I grew up – well I guess I really just got older – and went off to college. That scared me. When I was ready to graduate I was afraid to go out into that cold cruel world alone. So I got married. And that scared me. In just a couple of years we had our first child, Mack. He was an adorable, red headed, blue-eyed little boy. And that really scared me. Being a dad scared the wadding out of me.

The memory of the first time I held him is still vivid. I remember looking into his sweet face and wanting to throw up. I was petrified. If it wouldn’t have made me look so bad, I would have pitched him to his mother and run away. While holding him I realized that here in my arms was a human being that was totally dependent on me for everything. If I screwed up, he could die. What was God thinking about, sending this precious little boy to live with me? Didn’t He realize that I wasn’t qualified to be a parent? I was still a frightened little boy, myself.

As it worked out, we kept the kid. Being a parent panned out better than I thought it would. I was still scared, but learned that if I just took it a day at a time, did a bunch of praying, and kept a sense of humor, I could do this parenting thing. It seemed that the children just kept coming (Four in six years.) and they did scary things almost every day. My children are all adults now and they still can be a little scary.

But I learned to just do what I had to do. It wasn’t long before I started really enjoying being a father and after a while I forgot to be afraid. They were much more entertaining than they were frightening.

After seven children, it is pretty difficult to scare me. I can only think of one thing that could possibly frighten me. Nancy telling me she was pregnant. Now that’s scary.

Copyright © 2002, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved