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I was always a fun dad, but I seemed to get a bit more careless with each successive child.

When our youngest, Matthew, was three, I took him to the park to fly model rockets. He was so excited!

As I was preparing our first rocket for lift-off, I had to bite off, then spit out, a piece of the plastic engine plug, which holds the engine igniter in its place.

“You wanna try?” I asked my boy. So Matthew mimicked my actions. Only he chose to swallow, not spit.

The plastic piece lodged in his little throat. He began to choke, and eventually I had to hold him upside down by his feet, as I frantically pounded his back to help him dislodge it.

His face was crimson red by the time he coughed it up. I sat him back on the grass to give us both time to recover from the ordeal.

After a few minutes, I asked him, “You want to go home, or fly the rockets?” I left it up to him. I was so very wise.

“Rockets,” he barely managed to croak. We had a good rest of the day together.

When he was five years old, I accidentally closed the trunk of my car on his neck. He reeled backwards, stunned, falling against the hood of the car parked behind us.

“You okay?” I asked.

Matthew nodded his head while rubbing his neck, but seemed a bit dizzy.

“Why was your head in the trunk, anyway?” I said.

“Baseball bat,” he whispered.

“Oh. Well, don’t do that again.” Which is what I should have said to myself.

The next year we were playing ball in the park. My wife joined us later in the day, so we had two cars on site.

After a couple of hours we decided to leave. As I was driving home, my wife pulled up alongside me on the road. I honked. She honked. We waved to one another. As she passed by, I noticed that Matthew was not with her.

I glanced behind me, and noticed that Matthew was not with me, either.

Oh boy.

I circled back and found him standing on the sidewalk, right where I left him, having a casual conversation with some woman.

“I thought you said you were going back with Mommy,” I said, leading with an excuse.

“Nope,” he replied as he climbed into my back seat, not the least bit perturbed. He was getting used to his dad.

A few years later (Matthew was nine or so), we were back flying rockets when on its descent, one of them got caught high in a tree in a wooded area of the park. We both hated when that happened, but I knew exactly what needed to be done.

“Let’s go,” I instructed Matthew, and off we drove on a new adventure.

After several stops spanning an hour and a half, we returned to the park. It took us 20 minutes more to set up all of our newly acquired ‘retrieval’ equipment, but once we did, we were finally ready to try to get our rocket back.

Once again, Matthew was so excited!

We used a half roll of duct tape to piece together four lengths of floor molding, each one ten feet long. At the end of the last one, we secured a thick metal hook. Then we opened up a twelve-foot ladder, and I climbed up, balancing myself precariously on the very top level.

So far it sounds well thought out and perfectly safe, no?

Matthew slowly fed me the molding, and after 10 difficult minutes of missing my target, I was finally able to loop the hook around the branch that the rocket’s parachute had wrapped itself around. It was no simple task; the 40 foot long contraption bowed in the middle, due to the heavy hook wrapped to its end.

Matthew jumped up and down with excitement, unaware of the horror that awaited him.

I yanked the contraption towards me, hard. The branch bent all the way back. Suddenly, it snapped forward like a slingshot; the hook had come loose from the pole and flown off, landing somewhere in the thick grass.

Crap, I thought. Now we were finished. But when I looked down, I saw Matthew staring straight at the ground in front of him: the hook had somehow landed at his feet! What insane luck!

“Hand it to me, Matthew. And the duct tape, too,” I instructed. I was ready to give it another try. But Matthew did not move.

“What are you doing, taking a nap?! Hand me the hook!” I was getting impatient. Then I realized Matthew was holding his face with both hands and whimpering softly.

I climbed down, and off the ladder.

“Let me see,” I said.

When Matthew lowered his hands, I realized with a shock what had happened. The hook had come flying down and struck him, sideways, on his face. The top, rounded part had hit him above his left eye, and the lower, straight part had made impact below the eye, straight down his cheek.

It looked like a big question marked was embedded on his face. The bruise was deep, and an angry shade of red.

He looked like Batman’s arch enemy, The Riddler.

Wow. I had really done it this time. My wife was going to kill me. In fact, my son would first grow up, then kill me! Because he was going to look like a disfigured clown for the rest of his life. I had better get him home…

But then, I started thinking (never a good idea). What was the rush? I mean, the sooner we got home, the sooner Matthew would look in the mirror…why not let him enjoy life for a just a little while longer?

“You want to go home, or give this another shot?” I asked him.

He just pointed to the tree that held our rocket, while once again clutching his damaged face.

What a trooper that boy was!

The rocket came free on my next attempt. We gathered our equipment, loaded the car and drove home, Matthew clutching his prized rocket in his arms. Miraculously, the bruise on his face had already begun to heal. My wife might not even notice! Everything was going to be just fine.

Today, Matthew is a 29-year-old man. He’s got his life all together. An Air Force pilot! Before we know it, he will be married, with a family of his own.

I doubt that I will ever be asked to babysit…