Dad-Brain. You know what I'm talking about.

It's not a normal brain. I call it the dad-brain. This is not to be confused with the zombie-brain, which

drives the dead body to consume living flesh. Dad-brain sees monsters that are (most likely) not there. It's not real, which is why you can't confuse it with the zombie-brain (which is TOTALLY real). If you're not a dad, you won't understand this. Moms know about dad-brain; you can tell they know when it's present by the almost constant eye-rolling that it seems to cause in them. I can usually quell dad-brain, push it far down, at least as far as it needs to be so that it doesn't actually gain control of my mouth. But sometimes I fail, and it comes forth. The dad-brain must be stopped.

It's at its worst when the kids are away, on their own - that's when the dad-brain comes out, silently, sneakily, ready to wreak havoc on my normally logical mind. Example: in August we moved our daughter into her dorm for her first year at college. Of course, that very night, dad-brain required a text to be sent to make sure the dorm monsters hadn't gotten her. She didn't respond right away, because she was in the shower. Perfectly natural, but dad-brain went all postal on me, because dad-brain does not consider showers, or any other normal excuse, a reason for non-response to a text. Dad-brain goes to DEFCON 4 in a nanosecond. Then dad-brain takes control of the fingers and texts again and again, until she responds. Surprise - she was fine. My daughter, at this point, thinks poor old dad will soon be wearing one of those nice white coats with the sleeves that connect in the back. Then dad-brain recedes into the background once again, and I become, once more, whatever passes as normal for me. But dad-brain lurks; it always is lurking.

I texted her again on the fourth night, explaining, with no small amount of pride, that I had resisted texting her the previous two nights in a row, but that I really wanted to make sure she was okay. After all, she's in a new, alien environment, sharing a room with people she met only 2 days prior, so I thought checking in was a good idea. My text asked her how she was settling in. Her text back to me read, and I quote, "Good everythings good". Which, of course, my dad-brain interpreted as, "I'm fine - gotta go, there's a naked meth party in a frat house that some guy I've never met before invited me to and I have to get to." Or perhaps, "There's a serial killer making me text 'everything's okay' so that you won't call the police". Never mind that she's a really smart girl, that we taught her better, that she can take care of herself, so there's really nothing to worry about. Dad-brain is actually zombie-like in its approach to things; single-minded, shuffling and lurching, no semblance of logical thinking present. It's one purpose: make you think the worst and act on it. Dad-brain sucks.

Dad-brain is guaranteed to make its appearance during special rites of passage: first day at daycare, first real date, driving lessons, prom, senior trip, first semester @ college, etc.. Dad-brain makes you clean a gun or sharpen a REALLY big knife at the exact same time your daughter's date is coming to pick her up. It makes you shake the date's hand hard enough to pulverize bone, so that he thinks about what that hand would feel like around his neck. It makes you say things to the date, while crushing his hand, such as, "My daughter is very special to me. I would hate for her to get hurt by someone. And, just to be clear: I watch a LOT of Criminal Minds and CSI, so I know how to hide and dispose of bodies." Dad-brain could write for really bad TV shows.

I'm hoping, that now that my kids are older, dad-brain will be making less appearances. I realize it will always be there, ready to come out and make an idiot of me, probably at the next rite of passage. I know I'm not alone in this; I could probably make billions if I could invent some kind of epi-pen for dad-brain. At the first sign of non-coherent paranoia, you'd just whip that bad boy out and jam it solidly into your thigh and hope the meds kick in before you do something massively stupid and/or fatally embarrassing to your kids. Dad-brains should be. medicated.

By the way, moms have lunatic brains, too, and for the sake of consistency, let's call them mom-brains. But since I'm not a mom, I think it would be the height of male arrogance for me to try to explain it. Plus, just thinking about trying to explain it makes my head numb. And in the interest of gender equality, I'm sure it's bad, but also pretty sure it's not as bad as dad-brain, because of testosterone. Adding testosterone to ANYTHING usually guarantees making it worse. Let's face it, you can't think of one thing that sprinkling a little testosterone into won't make measurably worse. Especially dad-brains. Peace.