I am the Doctor

I have come to a startling but flattering realisation: I am the Doctor. Not "a" doctor, "the" Doctor. As in the man with the Tardis.

How do I come to such a conclusion? Have I been drinking too much or not getting enough sleep? Has the mind numbing tedium of Minion Memes finally driven me over the edge? Well maybe, but the justification I'm giving myself in my head is that I am a father, ergo, I am the Doctor.

Start with the screwdriver. Fathers are never without one. It should be something you're given at the hospital when your kids are born. The first thing you realise, as a father, other than that you never want to see the woman you love go through that again, is that you need a screwdriver. The first toy your kid gets will need batteries - not included, of course and needing to be replaced every half hour or so - and you can't get at the battery case without a screwdriver. I can understand why in the case of those little lithium things but when it's a D size,  I think the chances of junior imbibing it are fairly low. Nonetheless, you need a screwdriver.

Then there's the toy you have to fix. Usually about an hour after it was unwrapped on Christmas Day and the shops aren't open to get a refund. But it's my favourite Santa present, dad! Screwdriver again.

I just wish I had the "twiddle the end and it will do everything" model. Who came up with those triangular headed ones? And the little cogwheel ones? Listen, you toy engineering people, when it's 10.30 on Christmas morning and my kid is upset, there are always user serviceable parts inside!

What else convinces me that I am the Doctor?

Well, I have a Tardis. I guarantee that my house is bigger on the inside. It's the only way I can account for the quantity of stuff that seems to find a home in it. Under the couch, behind the toilet, up one of my offspring's nose. And the space under the kids' beds is in another set of dimensions entirely. No matter how often I clean under there, I can still reach in and pull out two school shirts, a left shoe, a friend we thought we'd lost last time they slept over and about three and a half tonnes of Lego pieces that "are lost forever Dad, we'll never find them!"

The final things that convince me that I am the Time Lord are my nemeses; aka my children.

My three year old is a Dalek. There are two things that are known constants about Daleks:

1. They have no facial expressions so they have to articulate every single thing that they are thinking about, planning to do and actually doing "You are a huuman. You will be exterminated!"; and
2. They will go on and on in the world's most annoying voice until you pay them the attention they want.

That's my three year old. He can't even defecate without giving me a running commentary about what's happening and how noisome the production thereof is. And as for nagging ...

My next two boys are Cybermen. Obsessed with upgrades - in their case of the versions of the apps on their tablets - and warfare. All they want to do is create chaos and delete each other. Every opportunity to sneak in a quick fraternal deletion in the form of a punch to the stomach, a kick up the bum, a dob-in or a filling your house on Minecraft with lava is taken. They might have been human once but now ...

And finally my teenage daughter. She's The Silence. You don't get much communication from her when she's in the mood but you can sure get the look. Parents of teenage girls, you know the one? The one that follows a suggestion that she might not wear that pair of shorts or she might just tone down the use of Netflix a little and, perhaps, just perhaps, do some more study for her upcoming exams.

And, after you get the look, you know that Silence Will Fall.

I only wish that I could manipulate time the way the Doctor does. I might get an extra hour or two to myself during the day!