Looking for a "Manly" Diaper Bag?

        This Recent Paterfamilias had previously intended to write this week’s column on baby food and baby poop.  But, for better or for worse, he has since changed his mind.  He has decided that baby foodand baby poop can both wait until next week. 

            This week, the Note from the Recent Paterfamilias is:  On Diaper Bags. 

            Or, more specifically:  On Masculine Diaper Bags. 

            Or more specifically still:  On how Masculine Diaper Bags are not a thing, on how they do not exist, and, frankly, on how the search for said item is futile and, quite honestly, fairly stupid. 

            And, finally, more specifically still:  On what a masculine Diaper Bag would look like. 

            But please, allow me to explain. 

            The baby, the wife, the dog, and I were all in a store last weekend, a kid’s store, a baby’s store, a famous baby’s store in fact, a store with the ridiculous name of Snuggle or Spittle or Piddle or some other equally as banal thing when this Recent Paterfamilias overheard a conversation a soon-to-be father was having with a salesperson alongside his “done-up” wife, in which he was rather insistent, while they were registering (rather rudely, I might add) for “baby goods,” that he required a “masculine diaper bag.” 

            “Is that the most masculine one you have?”

            “It is, sir.”

            “That one you showed me,” he asked the salesperson, “that one was the most masculine one you have?”

            “Yes.”

            “That’s the most masculine one available on the market?”

The salesperson, and his wife, assured him that it was. 

            Frankly, looking at him, he didn’t look all that convinced. 

            But what kind of guy insists on a masculine diaper bag? 

            Ah, yes, a question for the ages. 

            What did this guy expect?  Special secret pockets for his little black book and his whiskey flask and his pocket pistol?  Something made by Orvis or Filson or Eddie Bauer or L.L. Bean?  An aluminum briefcase from Halliburton?  A studded shoulder bag with the orange and black Harley Davidson shield on the side?  A canvas satchel with space allotted for ball peen hammers and crescent wrenches and circular saws?  What did this dude expect?  A leather briefcase?  Well, dude, go and run out and buy a leather briefcase then.  This Recent Paterfamilias has little patience for other paterfamiliases of this sort.  “No, this is just my briefcase,” these guys will say, “it’s the same sort of briefcase I tote to the office, only this one is filled with diaper cream and Aquaphor and hand sanitizer,” and he says all of this hoping that you, the viewer, fail to notice the kid in his stroller or, marginally more noticeably, strapped to his chest. 

            So, the R.P. finds himself forced to ask this person, if only hypothetically:  What’s up tough guy?  How else do you plan on trying to disguise the evidence of your kid?  And if producing a child from the root of your loins within the womb of a human female ain’t masculine enough for ya, then what is? 

            Ah yes, another question for the ages.