WAITING FOR BABY MURPHY, AGAIN.

How did I get to this place again so fast? It seems it was just a few months ago that I wrote "Waiting on Baby Murphy" and now my daughter Olivia is 2 1/2.

As my wife and I start over with a second child, it's a whole new ball game. Again, no one gave me a manual on this new and different experience. Even at 40, I enter the arena of raising a second child about as naive as someone who thinks adultery and lying have nothing to do with being a good president.

I'm also nervous this time because the predictions made from the sonogram say this child will be a boy. I know nothing about boys. Sure, last time I checked I was one, but recognizing basic anatomy is little help. I don't recall what my needs were as a male child. Am I supposed to treat this little baby tougher than I did my little girl? Maybe put a ball or even a live animal in the bassinet?

I have thought about it and here is my game plan. At 3 months I am going to start spiking his bottle with Tabasco sauce. At 6 months I will start replacing his story books with "Field & Stream" and "Heroes of NASCAR." At 12 months I will start relating stories of my youth to him, something like, "In my day we didn't have particle accelerators. If we wanted to manipulate some atomic molecule, we had to do it the old fashioned way, with duct tape and a clothes hanger."

I have been recalling too, some of the things my father did, to try and help me turn out to be a manly man. I remember he made me play football against my will in the 8th grade. I was scared to death as I took the practice field every day. "Poor Billy," my mom would say. I was barely 220 pounds back then. I would always become so frightened when 2 or 3 of the 7th graders would become trapped under my body when I fell.

I guess to make me more macho, my dad also forbid me from playing the pan flute, my dream instrument. I can remember falling to my bed in tears, only dreaming of one day seeing MY name on an 8-track tape like the great Zamphir. I still try to hush the sounds in my head of my father yelling, "Ode to Joy? Commode to joy!!" I still think I might have had the last laugh though, when I skipped my high school prom to "jam" (as we called it) with some of my buddies. Woodwinds never sounded so good in a lime green tux. I still laugh to think that I got to rock out with my pals while my date and all my other high school classmates were snoring away the night only getting to drink, dance and party naked.

Maybe the answer is the right environment when my son is a little older; for example, sending him to North Carolina to my cousin Jed's tobacco farm. Having his arms up to the elbow in raw tar 8 hours a day could do a little boy good. Jed needs the help anyway, living with only one-quarter of one lung left. I will wait until my son is at least 6 to send him there I think.

This is hardly helping me prepare for the right training for the son that will arrive soon though. I need some assistance NOW. I guess I should just use my instincts. They seemed to have worked so far. Well, except for that incident with my daughter and the fireworks.

Billy Murphy -- 2/12/98