In the cold light of day, I can get away with calling it a penchant for planning, or on rare occasions when things go right for my fantasy football team, prognostication. But if we call it what it really is–worrying–I don’t have to be modest. I’m a prodigy, and for me having kids was like turning a young Ray Charles loose in the Steinway showroom.

The all night jam sessions began when my son arrived. I found inspiration everywhere I looked. The SIDS brochure doubled my heart rate before I even left the hospital, and my incorrect installation of our car seat, which I hadn’t even worried about at all, kept the up-tempo groove going. Okay, I admit, I got the car seat checked out by professionals, as recommended, so I must have been a little worried. To their credit, they never let on that the way I had it rigged, my son would have had a better chance strapped into a barrel going over Niagara Falls. I milked a noodling, self-indulgent solo out of it anyway, with a skill new to my repertoire since becoming a parent: the retroactive worry, about something that could have happened, but didn’t.

As it turned out, both of our babies arrived home safely in their car seats after being born, and for that matter, every other time I’ve ever driven them around. But once home, young kids in the house afford so many more great opportunities to worry.

Here we lie, my daughter and I, a room away from one another in the dark, all quiet. Regretting all the coffee I drank this afternoon, I toss, turn, and wonder: Has she wedged a body part dangerously in some overlooked nook of her crib? Are her teeth growing too fast, or rotting away in there? Does her crib have bed bugs? Scorpions? Poisonous snakes? Why stop in the crib, or even this year? She had such a blast jumping off the porch this afternoon, but am I pushing her toward a career as a skydiving instructor? And if she has inherited the entrepreneurial spirit of her grandpa, what then? A zipline business over a piranha-infested bend in the Amazon?

And my son across the hall in his room: I just heard him cough. Does he have a runaway fever? Is there an anvil, safe, bowling ball, or meteorite plummeting toward our flimsy roof right above his bed at this very moment? He seems to be manifesting my family’s famous art gene of late, but won’t it lead to severed ears, poverty, and paint splattered canvases or sculptures made out of melted Barbies I will have to appreciate? Perhaps he will show the math, chemistry, and engineering bent I see on his mom’s side. I can see him making a lucrative career and stable life of that, until he falls into a vat of toxic chemicals and emerges with bleached skin, green hair, and an unquenchable hatred for Batman.

Worse yet, nothing goes wrong, and my kids bear the crushing ennui of having had such boring childhoods. I check the alarm clock again. How can it not even be midnight yet? They are too quiet in there. Of all the many parenting paradoxes, this is the cruelest: On rare nights when everything goes right with your kids, their very silence could mean danger.

One such ominously peaceful night revealed a new strategy, however. It struck me like the bolt of lightning I thought would hit the stroller earlier that day when we were caught out walking in a sudden thunderstorm. It was impossible to stop worrying, but some worst case scenarios were just good clean fun to ponder.

Diaper spook lights, for instance. Somewhere I had read that the top secret, super-absorbent chemical mojo used in disposable diapers can on rare occasions create a harmless, but spectacular luminescence in a darkened room, a la the legendary Wint-O-Green Lifesaver sparks. I had never seen it, nor did I hope to, but imagining a baby bottom aurora borealis was really quite amusing.

And how about the eerie specter of carrot babies I visited upon myself on another recent long dark night of the soul? Egged on by visions of an orange-tinted iguana I had seen in a pet store, I became convinced my relentless pushing of carrots and sweet potatoes at dinnertime had led to the unintended consequence of permanently orange children. As it turned out, judging skin tone by the light of a cell phone above my daughter’s crib was almost as fun as it was impossible, especially when she woke up and laughed. After all, this is Big 12 country, where Oklahoma State and the University of Texas (depending on the final, exact shade of orange) would surely welcome, if not financially assist, prospective students thus altered through no fault of their own.

Librarian to the core, I thoroughly researched both scenarios in hopes of stoking my angst with frightening facts. Too many carrots can cause a baby’s skin tone to change slightly, but not permanently, and reports of diaper spook lights exist, although they look to me more like the stuff of urban legend. But here was a healthier way to pursue my favorite hobby. If I was going to worry so much, I might as well have some fun with it, and I recommend the same for all parents. Find things to worry about that make you laugh instead of cry. For the group nearest and dearest to my heart–expectant dads out there–here’s one of my favorites to get you started: I bet you didn’t know your baby could be born with more back hair than you. Okay, sorry, here’s a tissue. Sometimes you do cry a little before the laughing starts. But look it up. After all her back hair falls out she’ll be so healthy and beautiful the sky will be the limit on your worries.

Dan Coleman is the secretary for the board of Dads of Douglas County and a children’s librarian at the Lawrence Public Library.

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