The Best Looking Man in the World

There's nothing more attractive than a man taking care of his child...that tiny hand lost in his...the little face looking up oh-so-high at daddy. My dad was gorgeous. He looked just like Elvis Presley...dark hair all slicked back with the perfectly formed crest above his blue eyes...drove a motorcycle. Vroom, vroom.

Witness the feminine flurry whenever a dad drops off the child at our school as we all congregate around the entrance in the morning. We have our share of entertainment industry dads who look effortlessly hot anyway unshaven and in their ripped jeans--but put a kid in their arms and they become...well, irresistably hot. I have to retreat to that private place in my head momentarily to regain composure. The trouble is, my head has a tongue and I'm not very good at self-censorship. All I've heard from one of my school chums lately is about "the new hot dad in our class, the new hot dad in our class." I don't think she ever even mentioned his child's name and I had never spotted him, but then one morning we're all clutching our cappuccinos when she says, "there he is!" Wow! I didn't go to do it, it just spilled out. "You are the new hot dad!" He looked NOT confused enough (as if he hears this all the time) and smiled. "But I didn't say that," I pass the blame like a seventh-grader, "she did!" My flustered friend starts beating me with her purse as new hot dad takes his son to class and tells me this is the second time I've done this to her. Twice? "Yeah...remember last year's Hallowe'en Party?"

Oh, yeah.

I just think that if someone's attractive, you ought to tell them. Personally, as a not-particularly attractive person myself, if someone thought that about me, I'd wanna' hear about it. All about it. Now maybe new hot dad has heard it before, but that guy at the Hallowe'en Party probably wasn't use to it.

He was balding with long hair--a bad combination if ever there was one for a hairstyle (along with the comb-over). He could have played this to his advantage of course, being Hallowe'en and dressed up like a character from "Rocky Horror Picture Show" but this idea was obviously lost on him. He wore unfashionable glasses and ill-fitting clothes. So what was he doing here with the rest of us folks?

Well, he did work in the industry...and his attractive-quotient hit double-digits as we watched him play with his daughter! As we watched from inside, he handled his little princess with ease...then the other little princess as well...then mom brought out the baby and he offered to change princess number three! We were already swooning when he turned into Doctor McDreamy before our very eyes. He'd take the other two girls (both under five) with him while he changed the baby's diaper so mom could relax and get a drink!!!

I knew hissing at his wife and the mother of his children while she leisurely perused the hosts' fabulous wine collection trying to choose which one to indulge herself in was absolutely childish. The only solution was to corner this man when he was alone and flash him my tits.

Ok...that was never going to work and I knew it. Sizing up the age of one or two of his kids, I knew he was seeing tits morning, noon and night with that breast-feeding wife of his. That was at least one thing he was probably getting enough of at home.

Maybe kidnapping him towards the end of the party...but how was I going to pull that off between wrangling my kids around? My daughter might be dressed like a princess, but she sure ain't acting like one. And what would my husband say when I got this long-haired bespeckled man home? Hey, I think they wear the same size...at least I'd have something to offer this guy. Maybe my husband would welcome the help. You certainly wouldn't catch him offering to take one and change the other one's diaper.

As soon as Mrs. Unlikely Attractive carries her Spanish wine out of the room, that's when I yell it out the window: "We think you're cute!" My friend beats me with her purse (and she carries really big purses!) and says she can't believe I did that and storms out of the room.

Mr. Unlikely Attractive doesn't even look up because it doesn't occur to him that I'm talking to him. How adorable! I corner him. I don't flash him my tits. I do tell him how adorable he is because he's so great with his kids. He looks surprised, tells me I'm not too bad myself and we both walk away with a smile.

I bring home two grumpy kids (and no kidnapped, long-haired, bespeckled man which my husband doesn't even realize was a consideration earlier in the evening). They've had too much fun, too much walking, too much candy. I come home to a grumpy husband. He's had too much work, too much sitting working on year-end closing and too much of his own cooking. Why do we look forward to holidays so much when they inevitably end up with too much of everything? By next year, we will all gleefully unpack our Hallowe'en Swag and anticipate the wonders of this night...and it will end the same...but we won't remember this part.

My daughter is disappointed that she didn't win the constume contest in her homemade 'rainbow princess' outfit. Suddenly, even my husband can turn into the best looking man in the world as he takes her hand and tells her she's the most beautiful princess he ever saw and how not everybody can win everytime. She looks up at him extremely pleased and he leads the yawning princess off to bed.

My son went to a birthday party this past weekend. Talk about a gorgeous-looking guy who was great with kids...it was at a gym and the instructor, every bit of 22 or 23 years old was a treat for both the kids and moms alike...and probably the child with two dads, too. A group of us moms speculated what he told girls he met when he was out carrousing around on Saturday night when they asked what he did for a living. Fitness instructor? Gym coach? Entertainer? We decided it probably depended on the age and biological clock of the woman. Good with kids is very, very attractive to a woman in her 30s and beyond...

My father died 16 years ago today and it's taken this long to admit that to most people he probably looked more like Don Knotts on a scooter than Elvis on a Harley...but when I put my hand in his and looked up at him, he was the best looking man in the world...maybe he looked more like Clark Gable or Montgomery Cliff or...