
So, today I had my first taste of how I will react to being a father to a girl. My current girlfriend (she loves it when I refer to her as that) took our daughter for her first soft play visit. Every time she crawled over and climbed up onto a vacant piece of equipment a little boy would rush over and either pull her back, push her over, or elbow her in the face so he could play with it.
As she relaid this to me in the evening I found myself getting angry. I got even angrier when she told me that she didn’t say anything to the child’s mother and just allowed it to keep happening until she decided to leave.
My girlfriend was a little taken aback by how angry I had become and we agreed that I should probably self-exclude myself from taking my daughter to and from school when she goes, as I’ll end up scrapping in the playground with countless dads.
The pain in my back has thankfully subsided to a very light dull ache as the day has progressed. So much so that tomorrow’s Parkrun time trial is officially back on. Although my flat now stinks of Deep Heat, which is taking me back to my footballing day changing rooms.