We can all agree that being a parent is hard.  You must put aside your selfish needs and make sacrifices for your kids.  There are times you feel like nothing is yours and everything you do is for your family.  If you feel this way, chances are you are a great parent.  Kudos to you for putting your family’s wants ahead of your own.  That said, there are a few sacred things that as Dad you must hold on to.  One of those things is bag fries. 

Bag Fries or Bonus Fries – What are they?

Whether you call them bag fries, bonus fries, bits or you just finish them before anybody can name them, these are the fries that are at the bottom of the fast-food bag after you hand out all the food. Urban Dictionary cites these as unclaimed fries that are commonly “up for grabs” when there are multiple orders in a single bag.  Usually these require that your family has moved beyond the kid’s meal/Happy Meal phase of life and are on to larger orders with a separate order of fries.  These larger orders come stuffed in a single bag. Inevitably some of the fries fall to the bottom of the bag.  When you find you have lost the tv, the car radio, Amazon Alexa, and everything else in life that was once yours, to your kids, do not give up the bag fries!

Parenting is About Sacrifice

I never realized how selfish I was and how much free time I used to have, until I had kids.  My wife and I often joke that if we did not have kids, we surely could cure cancer or bring peace to the Middle East.  I am not sure what I did with my free time prior to kids, but now it goes to home projects or picking up after our kids.  Most of our time is taken up with work, kid’s activities, and prepping meals.  You take out kid’s activities and prepping meals and there is no telling what we could get done with that free time. 

Please understand, I would not trade the life I have for the world. That said, it is interesting to imagine what could get done with our parent energy and a free weekend.  There is nothing more rewarding than being a Dad, but that also comes with sacrifices.  Parenting requires you to put your kids first and your needs second.  But you must keep some of your identity to not totally lose your mind while parenting.

Find Your Sacred Things

Now that my kids are a little older, we have successfully taken back the radio.  Or at least, we have a better radio share than we had for a period with our kids.  I attribute some of this to our kids liking some of the same music we like.  I wrote about the Beatles being a great “gateway drug” to get our kids into classic rock.  We find our kids listening to “Let it Be” and “Hey Jude” without us in the room, which is a big parenting win.  This has bled into some other music that we like, and our kids seem to enjoy/tolerate.  Music to us is one of those Sacred Things.  We have taken this back (mostly). 

Music is on in our house regularly (thanks to Alexa and Amazon Music).  For me, it can be a real mood enhancer.  There was a “Baby Shark” period where we had lost nearly all control to our kids.  We would have something on and right before the song is about to take off, one of our kids would ask Alexa to play “Baby Shark” or “a song by JoJo Siwa”. 

Imagine you are at the 6min 44sec mark of “Stairway to Heaven” and Robert Plant sings “And as we wind on down the road, our shadows taller than our soul”.  You are about to take off into rock extasy. Then your adorable 4-year-old pops into the room and asks Alexa to play “Run Baby Run” by Casper Babypants (this is a real thing).  If you are a better person than me, you relish in the fact that you got to hear the first 6 plus minutes of Stairway.  If you are more like me, you feel like you were just awoken from a wonderful dream to find out you are in post op recovery from a vasectomy…

Bag Fries for the Win

But I digress.  My point with this post is for parents to hold on to some sacred things.  Bag fries are that.  Mealtimes are typically a mess in our house.  Rarely is everybody eating the same things, and those that did not prepare the meal are often critics in what they are served.  On the occasion we find ourselves getting fast-food, it is a race between the kids to divvy up the fries and nuggets we got them.  They have yet to figure out the bag fries.  I am not sure if that is because I have guarded them with my life, or if they are so focused on getting their food, they don’t realize that some of it may have been left behind.

The bag fries have become a sacred thing.  It brings me back to a time in my life when I had some control and things were a bit simpler.  It is not that I love fries (well I do love fries), but it is more the principal of the bag fries.  I have just bought this food for the kids with rarely a thanks on the their end.  I will be damned if you are going to take these bag fries from me. 

For those dads out there, that have managed to hold on to hobbies like rebuilding cars, golfing, fishing, drinking with buddies or otherwise without disruption from your kids, I salute you.  I have not figured that out yet, but I have my music back and I never gave up my bag fries…