After leaving the office a bit early (it was Thanksgiving Eve and all), I arrived home to find my daughter waking from her afternoon nap. In her post-nap grogginess, she climbed into my arms and effectively pinned me to the couch. It was in this position of “veggin’ out” in front of the TV under my comatose two year old that I found myself watching Tom Cruise on the Oprah Winfrey show.

Normally I’m not allowed to watch Oprah due to the fact that I do not have ovaries, but the remote was on the other side of the room, and before I could change it, my wife hurried into the room and found a seat… sealing my doom.

It isn’t that I don’t like Tom or Oprah, but I did find it amazing to watch the audience of women gaze on Tom with a doe-like, dreamy expression with soft sighs and “ahs” … a demeanor they haven’t had since they had a crush on a junior high teacher. And Oprah played up to this and positioned Tom for the “Gift to Womankind” that he is…

“Tom what do you cook when you’re home on your own raising your two adorable children that you selflessly adopted?”

“I believe that my spaghetti carbonara would be my best dish (ahhh). But I can’t take full credit for it, for it was taught to me while in London (oh-ahhh) while filming a fabulous chick-flick…” and he never forgot to stick out his jaw with that award-winning smile of his.

I’m not jealous… really, I’m not. He’s hunky, but even the clips were designed to make the ladies swoon, “You… complete me.” And when they brought out the home movie footage of Tom as a boy, the audience just melted into pools of warm butter.

No, I’m not bitter… really, I’m not. He’s is the every woman’s ideal modern man. You just can’t picture the guy in a boxers and a T-shirt (with the ubiquitous coffee stain) watching football on a Sunday afternoon, belching out the Star Spangled Banner. Even when sporting a patchy five-day old growth, he still made the audience weak in the knees.

No, I’m not envious… really, I’m not. But it was watching him talk about how he is the kind of dad that plays with his kids and teaches them to read that I realized something important. Now, whenever I get in a tough parenting situation, or have a disagreement with my wife, or can’t figure out a particular software function, I will just have to ask myself, “What would Tom do?”

More than just take a confident stance with my feet apart and my hands on my hips… More than sport a jaunty jaw-infective pose… er, smile… Really, what would Tom do to make his wife remember that while Tom is now single and available, that she is not.

“Uh, Honey?” snapping my fingers to wake my awe-inspired, day-dreaming wife, “Honey?” Oprah then gives Tom some wooden swords to swing around on stage, and I realize that I’ll just come back tomorrow and try again to wake my wife.