For some, the growing up process creeps up over many months and years, catching the victim unaware. With others, like me, the moment of “growing up” can happen in a split second, when one is catapulted from rebel without a cause to the authority figure, with almost no notice.

I was pretty wild growing up and I took my time at it, I admit. Frat parties that ended at seven in the morning, crazy binges with friends competing to out-drink each other, raging hormones with the girlfriend of the moment in the backseat of my old wagon, occasional experimentation with marijuana that once almost resulted in burning down my dad’s garage during an all-night smoking session. I’ve been there and done it all and my slate would have to be wiped with something stronger than Lysol to get it anywhere close to "clean."

It’s a miracle that I made it through college in one piece and even graduated, with the diploma in hand that my mother hoped would be my passport to the “civilized adult” phase of my life. She cried with pride when she saw me in my graduation gown, but the loving motherly feeling was far from evident when I got home drunk that night from a celebration party with a pierced ear. I was always doing things like that and I got a real kick out of feeling like a non-conformist who just went out there and did his thing. At work, I was the plain-speaking guy who got fired or voluntarily walked out before settling down.

So there you have it – I had built up the typical resume of the boy whose middle name was Trouble. The good church-going ladies of the neighborhood prayed for my soul and their young daughters secretly prayed for a ride on my Harley Davidson.

And then on a warm spring evening, at around 5 o’clock on the 24th of April when I was thirty years old, I finally grew up. I opened my front door and there was Emma. The deep blue eyes, the curling black hair, the smile that was pure sunshine… everything that was the devil in me was reflected in her as something angelic. For the first time in my life, I lost my heart at first sight and when she curled her tiny fingers possessively around my thumb, there was no going back ever again.

She lay wrapped in a basket with a note from her mother that politely informed me that I was the father of the child and that she forfeited  to me all responsibility and rights connected to bringing her up. 

Today when I go to a nightclub, rather than “checking out the chicks,” I find myself feeling worried about giving permission to Emma to come to a place like this and wondering, when the time comes, how I am going to explain the “facts of life” to her. My supermarket cart is filled with baby food and soft toys and I’ve given away my hard rock CDs because the noise wakes her up. I keep checking out the best schools in the neighborhood and asking mothers I know for the best tips on getting juice stains out of the carpet. I didn’t expect the growing up process to hit me with such a vengeance, but I have to say, I am kind of enjoying the whole thing though I still shudder when the day must come when Emma has her first crush.

I thought I’d get myself another tattoo but then settled for just putting up a saying on my desk. It says  “Watching your daughter being collected by her date feels like handing over a million dollar Stradivarius to a gorilla.”