How To Navigate That Unexpected Playdate With a Dad

It’s almost as painful as a date at a zoo

Your new friend/acquaintance texts you to set up a playdate. Timmy and Ralph are becoming sweet little friends at school so this feels like a great idea.

As a bonus, Ralph’s mom seems cool and you are excited to get to know her better. We all know how rare it is for the stars to align with kids’ friends’ parents. It’s like trying to find a book about rainbows in a Florida library.

You offer to host the playdate at your house. You panic about the state of your house before the playdate and furiously clean until it no longer resembles the set from World War Z.

You feel good and ready for Ralph and his mom to enter your abode. You’ve even put out some meticulously curated treats for the moms. Delicious homemade trail mix in Martha Stewart brand cupcake liners. You are fucking amazing.

Your phone buzzes. It’s Ralph’s mom.

“Hey, so sorry to do this, but work is insane today so Johnny will bring Ralph over. Hope I can make it another time!”

You panic. You’ve never met Johnny. You have no idea if Johnny is dropping Ralph off (please sweet baby Jesus) or if Johnny is coming to hang out. You also have no idea if talking to Johnny will be as fun as poking your eyeballs out with a hot poker.

Based on prior experience extracting conversation from other dads, you’d opt for the hot poker.

You draft 30 different versions of the same text to Ralph’s mom, but you delete them all because there is no polite way to ask: “So do I have to hang out with your husband who is probably as interesting as a damp sock, or will he drop off the goods and run?”

So, you start mentally preparing for the worst case scenario by brainstorming topics of conversation that might resonate with a generic dad.

Sports — you know absolutely nothing about them other than equestrian sports due to your fleeting, but passionate obsession with horses in your youth. It’s also a weird in-between season. Football is done and baseball hasn’t started. You can’t even pretend to know a single NBA team, so that’s off the table.

Cars — you could compliment his car and try to talk about it, but you know they drive a minivan. You do too. The conversation will die quickly.

Work — you could ask him questions about his job, but you don’t even know if he has one. You also do not have one, so the conversation could leave you both feeling like inadequate slouches. You will also judge him for not having a job, and will be unable to conceal your judgement.

The weather — this is an obvious and safe choice and will buy you approximately 30 seconds of conversation. You could make something up about a potential tornado but that could cause him to fact check you on the spot, unnecessarily piling on to the awkwardness.

Travel — just another way to ask, “are you rich enough to travel anywhere cool?” and that feels pretentious and icky.

Alternatively, you can:

Hide — take your phone into the bathroom with you and pretend to take a shit. As a man, he expects a shit to take no less than 25 minutes, so you can just relax and send SOS texts to all of your friends, begging them to randomly pop by.

Fake work — all of a sudden, you have become a highly successful small business owner and have a quadrillion important work calls to take. Pick up your phone, and start yell talking into it and throw around some business phrases like “circle back” and “bandwidth” and he won’t suspect a thing.

When he asks what you do, the answer is always “custom diapers for incontinent cats.” This will prevent any further probing.

Fake laryngitis — you mysteriously lost your voice overnight. Cause is completely unknown. You’re not sick, but you can’t speak. You offer him a copy of Better Homes and Gardens and slip into your bedroom to cry about the awkwardness of it all.

Hover over the children — and point out everything his son does “wrong” so that he ends the playdate prematurely. “Ooh sorry buddy, we don’t wear socks in our house. I’m gonna have to ask you to take those off.”

Zombies — pretend they’re invading your house and start packing chaotically and talking about your panic room. The chaos and confusion alone should clear him out in no time. It will kill all future chances of becoming close with Ralph’s mom, but at this point, you are willing to risk it.

While this traumatizing event brings back memories of that really bad date you went on in your 20’s to a zoo, chances are this dad would also rather poke his eyeballs out with a hot poker than engage with you. He will likely be relieved when you employ all of the above tactics to avoid an hour+ of excruciating conversation.

But seriously — who takes someone to a zoo on a date?!

Good luck with Johnny and remember the zombies are coming. Any minute now.