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soothe him with nursing or rocking. When her techniques failed to work, I resorted to my own secret baby-management measures.
    First I picked him up, bounced him a bit, and trotted him around the house. That often worked, but his mom always watched me and said, “Be careful with him. His little brain is fragile.” He didn’t seem all that fragile to me, but I was cautious anyway. He still had a soft spot on his head, and there was no telling how mushy the brains inside might be.
    I wondered about things like that a lot. I didn’t want to make any mistakes with this dadhood thing. I knew some new dads had prior experience raising gerbils, hamsters, or snakes, and others had read lots of books or gone to classes. I hadn’t been able to do much at all, and now that he was here, I had to work twelve hours a day to keep my new business alive to support him. I tried remembering what my little brother had been like, but that was many years ago and it didn’t do much good now. So I just did the best I could.
    Cubby would cling to me pretty well if I gave him a chance, but the rest of him was floppy. His head was the floppiest part of all. It seemed pretty big relative to the rest of him, and he usually had trouble holding it steady. When we rode in the car, it would bob around like those springy toys they sell, as we went over bumps or around corners. I could never tell if he was too little to hold himself steady or if he just let it roll because he liked the motion. I was that way myself at times. Bobbing and rocking has always been a comfort, and people used to say I looked like a bobblehead. Maybe he was the same.
    I suggested that to Little Bear, but she dismissed it out of hand. “He hasn’t developed the muscles in his neck,” she said. I wondered where she got that particular idea, since she didn’t have any more parenting experience than me. I realized she must have been reading baby how-to manuals while I was away at work.
    When bouncing Cubby around the house failed to settle him down, we moved to plan B: We went for a ride. That always worked. Cubby went right to sleep in the car. That made him a good traveler most of the time, and it inspired me to take him places. Wherever we went, he found new things to look at and interesting objects to stuff in his mouth.
    The older he got, the farther we ranged. It was good for Cubby to see the world, I reasoned. He was going to have to learn his way around one day, and I figured he might as well start now. I told him the names of streets and described the interesting places we passed. Even though he didn’t answer, I knew he was paying attention. He sat there in his car seat, chewing placidly and watching the world go by.
    I knew how important reading was, so I started showing Cubby words as soon as he was able to sit up in the seat. The words we saw were on billboards, on vehicles, and in the windows of gas stations. Anytime I saw a glowing sign with simple language I read it to my son. “Trucks,” I would say, as I pointed to the sign leading to the truck parking area at the local diner. In that way, he learned the language of commercialism. When he learned to talk, he began with what he heard in ads and what I read him from signs—words like
Bud, diesel, bathroom
, and
food
. I didn’t smoke or drink, and neither did he, but we knew all the language thanks to roadside America.
    All babies love to chew, and he was no exception. He had pacifiers and traditional baby rings, but he wasn’t a picky chewer. He’d stick anything in his mouth at least once. If I let my fingers stray close he would even gnaw on me. When that happened, I would yell, and he snorted with delight. Obviously, he knew what he was doing.
    “No bite!” I would tell him. Often as not, he would bite me again.
    He would even attempt to eat metal if given the chance. He would also try and feed me the drool-covered objects of his attention,something I found particularly revolting even though he was