There is an eerie silence right before you get punched in the face.

But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. It was 2014, and I had just become a dad for the first time. I want to go on record here and say that being a parent is a job you are never truly ready for, no matter how many books you’ve read or classes you’ve attended. Nor should you be. If you honestly knew what was in store for you, I don’t think anyone in their right mind would jump into it. But once you become a parent, your world changes. It’s amazing and it’s terrifying. Most importantly, you are now responsible for the life of another person and you have one consistent question, “Can I really do this?”

Will I be able to protect my family if something bad happens? I stayed up late having terrible thoughts. Would I be able to get to my son’s room if there was a fire? What if I were pushing his stroller down the street and a rabid dog started chasing us, could I use the stroller as a weapon? If we were in a nuclear war would we be as cool as the family in “The Road?”

Now, I’m lucky to have a partner who makes this whole parenting thing way more fun. We are a team, forever intertwined as the protectors of this amazing kid. But the question remains, what would we do in a crisis? Six weeks into postpartum we both were fried. We were like vampires who probably smelled a little worse than your average vampire, on account of the fact we were really just human targets for spit-up practice. But after weeks of being cooped up inside, we wanted to see if we could re-enter the world of the living. We wanted to be the cool parents who bring their kids to bars and on vacations. So we did!

We went to this new bar in our hood, stroller in tow. It was a place that catered to a crowd of people who did not have a care in the world. Basically us nine months earlier.