Clayton Diggs

You ever sit around and think about how damn cool your kids are? I’m serious. I don’t get people who just wanna bitch and moan about their kids. There’s nothing on earth cooler than my year-and-a-half-old son, Clayton Von Jr! Hot damn!

Last night he was at my place and he woke up around 2:30 in the morning. I heard him stumble into my room like a drunken soldier, rubbing his big blue eyes and saying “Hi-eeeee?” in that earnest way he’s got. So I carried him back to his bed with his chubby arms wrapped around my neck and set him down and lay next to him. He just lay on his side looking me square in the eye, real serious, and touching my cheek like he was petting a kitten and making kissy noises at me with his rosebud lips. How cool is that? I’d rather be doing that with my son than any other thing. You can have your billion bucks, Mark Zuckerburg; I’ve got my boy.

You know what else Clay Jr. does that gets me? Everything. Like how he says “ah-pple? ah-pple?” for any food he’s keen on, or how he’ll take a chug of beer and then look at me with big eyes and say, “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” How cute is that? Just take my heart out of my chest right now and stab it with a pitchfork, you know? And I like how he builds these little towers out of blocks with an expression on his face like he’s got urban planning in mind, and how he stacks his boots one on top of the other on the bedside table.  I like how he always insists on having at least five of his matchbox cars in his hands and screams if he doesn’t.  And I dig how he dances his tiny curved thumb over surfaces like a finger-ballerina whenever his mind is somewhere else. He’s dreaming big dreams, I reckon. And I like brushing his curls back off his broad forehead (you could have a drive-in movie theater on my kid’s forhead!) until he falls asleep.

And then he’s waking me up at 2:30 in the morning again so I can put him back to sleep. There’s nothing better. Hot damn! If I had a drink for every cool thing my son does, I’d… well, I’d have the kind of evening I generally have.

So I’ll raise many cups to you, Clay Jr. As many as I can for as long as I damn well can. Here’s to you, son.

I love you.

Clayton Diggs, 2012

“I’m so damn cute it $#%@!ing  hurts.”