One of the fondest memories I have of my dad is when he became the first kid (or adult) in our neighborhood to ride a skateboard all the way down Sunniroc Lane. The road had a 10% grade and was about 1,000 feet long. I was eight–years–old and up until that day no one in the neighborhood had made it more than a quarter of the way down without face planting in the street or careening uncontrollably over the curb into Mrs. Glass’s rose bushes.

My dad made it all the way down Sunniroc Lane, and he didn’t have the advantage of riding on one of those big fat skateboards kids have these days. He had my skateboard, which was a narrow plastic death–machine with roller skate wheels. The slightest pebble would have sent him careening through the air like a clown shot from a cannon, but his only net was the warm asphalt of Sunniroc Lane.

He heroically ended the ride crossing Rockridge Road, narrowly dodging oncoming traffic and disappearing from sight off the shoulder, coming to a sudden and painful stop in Rocky Creek. I thought he was the coolest dad in the history of the world. He would later tell me that once he was about a quarter of the way down the hill, he was just too darn scared to jump off. But that didn’t matter to me.

My dad could do things like that. He was all–time quarterback in neighborhood football games. He would send me on patterns through the house, down the hallway, around the lamp, and then he would hit me with a pass just as I was going out of bounds at the steps. My dad was, and still is, a playmate.

The weird thing was as much as he played; my dad was the disciplinarian of the house. If I were sneaking through the hall well past my bedtime to catch a glimpse of Charlie’s Angels , he would just have to give me a look. It was one that could raise the hairs on the back of my neck and send me running as fast as my little legs would take me back to my bedroom.

What I want to know is how he did that. How could he be the playmate and the disciplinarian at the same time?

As a parent, I’ve participated in many tea parties with my two girls and subjected myself to numerous flying elbows while wrestling on the floor with my son. I’ve let them win the championship of the world in basketball and donned a sword and cape to rescue the princesses from the evil, little brother dragon.

I am a pretty good playmate. But if I catch them chatting when they should be sleeping, sneaking a bag of M&M’s out of the Halloween stash just before dinner, or turning our bathroom into a water park, they don’t exactly look at me with fear in their eyes…except to ask the question, “You’re not going to tell Mommy, are you?”

I have somehow become more of an accomplice than a parent, and that disturbs me. I guess my willingness to become a human jungle gym on occasion has drastically decreased my role as a disciplinarian in the eyes of my children.

My dad needs to let me in on his secret. How do I command respect and play with Play–Doh at the same time? Maybe I should find a big hill and break out the old skateboard. If they still don’t have a healthy fear of me after I conquer a Sunniroc Lane, then maybe they’ll be so sympathetic to me when I’m in traction they’ll do everything I say.