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2005-09-30 01:05:09 PM
The Story About the Toddler, Volume 27.
by Jeff Vogel
Our daughter Cordelia is three years and four months old. Raising a
three-year old is very educational. It is a chance to see what a human
being is like in its pure natural state, unbent by the demands of
societal restrictions. You can see our species in its raw form and
learn, at a deep, innate level, how obnoxious and repellent we all are.
I mean, fuck. Every day, all day. "Mommy, give me milk." "Daddy, come
play with me." "Mommy, buy me a thing!" "Daddy, stop breathing!"
"Mommy, shovel some shit for me." "Daddy, let me kick your knee."
"Mommy, where are you? Mommy? Mommy, come here? Mommy?" Mommy? Mommy?
Mommeeeeee!!!!!"
All this time I spent wishing Cordelia would learn how to talk, and,
now that she can, she treats us like Martha Stewart treats the help.
Three year olds are the clay we mold into human beings. It is our job
and sacred duty as parent to break Cordelia's will so that other humans
won't have to put up with her in her current, intolerable state.
So my wife Mariann and I play good cop-bad cop with her. Mariann's job,
as the good cop, is to listen to Cordelia's limitless requests and
occasionally pretend that some of them are slightly reasonable. My job,
as the bad cop, is to react to everything she says with mistrust and
disapproval and, basically, tell her to be quiet whenever she opens her
mouth.
It's harsh, I know, but you have to have a bad cop. No policemen ever
got anywhere by playing good cop-good cop. No suspect ever confessed
when one detective said, "Can I get you a soda?" and then the other one
said, "And can I get you a sandwich?"
And Cordelia better consider being a little more polite, because
Mariann and I are getting pretty close to playing bad cop-bad cop.
It's a sacred responsibility, raising a child, which leaves us with a
choice. We can struggle mightily to get Cordelia to be polite for a few
seconds a day. Or we could just dump her on someone who is inclined to
tolerate her repellent behavior and then go out to dinner.
Fortunately, my parents came and stayed with us for a few weeks, which
settled the issue for us. Their tolerance for Cordelia was limitless.
My daughter could gut-shoot the pair of them and they would tell us how
cute her smile was as she pulled the trigger. They took the brunt of
the endless demands for a while. Mariann and I can parent next month.
Or something.
* One Way To Make Your Child Like You Again
Since I am the bad cop, Cordelia doesn't like me. That's all right.
Lots of people don't like me. I try to coast through life on my winning
nature, rugged good looks, virility, and, of course, my highly
above-average endowment, but, for some reason, people just can't help
noticing that I am a prick.
But oddly enough, while Cordelia dislikes me because of my efforts to
control her behavior and keep her from eating sand, having my parents
here is enough to get her to start liking me again.
When my parents are here, for Cordelia it's like that Twilight Zone
episode where this guy dies and thinks he's gone to Heaven because
everything goes right for him and everyone is nice to him and he never
fails at anything but then he realizes that he has actually gone to
Hell. (IRONY!!!!!) When my parents are here, Cordelia gets spoiled to a
level so obscene that even her goofy three-year old brain realizes that
this isn't the way it's supposed to be. And after a week, when she's
trying to overcome the ennui by crushing my father's feet with repeated
blows of a hard maple baseball bat, she realizes that she actually
needs some boundaries in our life.
Then she comes back to us, desperate for the love and guidance that a
parent, even me, can give her. It's truly a tender moment when your
child expresses that you are the one she wants to be with, to protect
her and to teach her.
Well tough shit, buttercup. Mommy and I still have two nights of
babysitting left, and restaurant reservations have already been made.
So go back to crushing my dad's feet. We'll be back to breaking your
will in three days.
And my parents will happily endure my daughter, because they owe me. I
recently got a book of my baby essays published, which gave them
parental bragging rights beyond their wildest dreams. So they owe me
big time.
And someday Cordelia will be old enough to read what I wrote, and then
she'll have a good reason to hate me.
* "Father, I Shall be Avenged"
So here's what happened. I impregnated my wife. A basically healthy
child came out of her.
Now, I am a pessimistic person. My basic assumption was that I would
not survive long enough for Cordelia to get to know me. I wasn't sure
precisely what would take me down. Brain tumor, car accident, eaten by
wolves. I couldn't be sure. But I didn't want to die, so that meant I
was going to. So I had to start writing this journal, so Cordelia could
learn how worderful I was and adore me posthumously.
And then I put the journal online, so my relatives could read it and
not bug me for updates on her progress, forcing me to waste valuable
time talking to them. And then I kept writing the journal entries, and
they were funny, and then I tried to sell them as a book and, for some
reason, someone bought them, and my book, "The Poo Bomb" was published,
and I hope it completely disappears from the face of the Earth before
Cordelia becomes old enough to read it, or I will have a serious
problem.
I mean, just writing the journal in the first place was stupid enough.
Leaving something behind so that Cordelia could read it post-mortem and
find out what a great person I was? Yeah, right. The best I could hope
for based on this crap is Cordelia asking Mariann exactly why she
stayed married to me. ("Well, honey, you have to understand how much
paperwork went into getting a divorce back then.")
But, with my luck, I'm not going to die soon. And that means that
someday Cordelia is going to read what I wrote. And we are going to
have this conversation:
Her: "Father?"
Me: "Yes?"
Her: "I read the book that you wrote about me. I am deeply hurt, and I
feel that you have violated both my trust and my privacy. I do not see
how you could ever make it up to me."
Me: "I see. Here is your pony."
Her: "Thank you."
And if that doesn't work, I'll just throw my arms wide and say, "OK,
fine. You get three punches. Don't hit the nuts."
But this should be avoidable. Once nobody buys the book and it goes out
of print, I can destroy all of the copies I own and just pretend that
it never existed. And, after I'm dead, Mariann can describe me to
Cordelia using a script I am creating. I basically steal the story of
Lorenzo's Oil. It's a touching story of Cordelia's rare, supposedly
incurable disease and my successful efforts to cure it with nothing but
love, persistence, and my resemblance to Nick Nolte. I come off great
this time.
* In the Child's Defense
When she isn't demanding Mariann's and my constant attention and
affection, she can carry on something resembling a conversation,
reliably count up to 15 objects, draw a few letters, and put on her
pajamas unaided. I say these things to be fair to her. I give all
credit for these advances to all of the TV we've been showing her.
* My Indian Name Is Speaks-With-Children-But-Not-Well
Raising a second child will be easier than raising first in one very
important way. I won't waste time trying to teach it things it is
completely unable to learn. I was reading Cordelia books and trying to
get her to talk at the age of three months. If she was biologically
capable of speaking, she would have said, "Dad, will you chill out
already? I'm trying to breathe here! JESUS!"
Being the parent of an infant is awful enough without having extra
expectations arbitrarily heaped onto your head. And that is why I have
a problem with the movement to teach your kid sign language.
Sure, on the surface, the theory seems reasonable. Children can use
their hand muscles much sooner than they can use their mouth muscles,
so making up a sign language they can use to tell you they are hungry
or tired enables them to learn to communicate earlier. Which gives them
a head start on all those brain-dead snot fountains they'll be
competing with in second grade.
But I ain't buying it. It seems a lot more like a way to enable a
parent to burn a lot of precious time deluding him or herself than
anything else.
Pre-verbal children have fuzzy brains and no comprehension of even
slightly abstract concepts (like "hungry" or "tired"). Parents have
fuzzy brains too, and an almost supernatural ability to convince
themselves their child is communicating when it's really just flopping
around. My daughter can use actual words and understand some concepts,
and we still have countless conversations like this ...
Me: "Cordelia, what's wrong?"
Her: "I'm hungry."
Me: "Would you like to eat?"
Her: "No!"
Me: "Would you like some cereal?"
Her: "No. Yes."
Me: "Here is some cereal."
Her: "Don't want it."
Me: "Are you hungry?"
Her: "No. ... I want to eat."
(Repeat until Cordelia starves to death.)
If my three year old can't properly communicate what she wants with
actual English, I seriously doubt that your two year old is doing any
better with some piece of shit made-up language you ginned up.
But sure, you might say. "I taught my one year old sign language, and
when he was hungry he could always make a hand gesture." Lady, one year
olds are ALWAYS hungry. You want to know how you can tell he wants to
eat? His eyes are open!
American parents. I swear. Fifty thousand years of raising human
children, and people were happy if the thing survived with all limbs
intact. Now that's not enough. Now the kid has to learn sign language
while listening to Mozart with calculus flash cards jammed into its
diaper. No wonder it takes forever to get our kids potty-trained.
They're wetting themselves from stress.
* "What ... Is ... That ... Thing?"
My family lives in Seattle. A recent study revealed that Seattle is one
of the two cities with far and away the smallest percentage of the
population under the age of eighteen (San Francisco is the other).
It's depressing. I love Seattle, and I don't like the idea of it
becoming one giant, overcaffienated retirement community. But that's
not the main reason this makes me so unhappy. I shall explain.
The other night, Mariann and I took the girl to Fremont, a neighborhood
in Seattle. Every city has several areas like this one. Once, Fremont
was a funky place, where people with strong personalities but not much
money created an area with style and character. And then the rich
people saw it and said, "That place is funky. I'm going to pay any
amount to live in such a funky, funky place, driving up real estate
prices there with my evilness."
And, faster than you can say "Thai restaurant," the neighborhood was
crushed by insanely expensive condos, occupied by young, up-and-coming
assholes.
We took our daughter there the other night, to take refuge in one of
the few remaining outposts of coolness. And, as we maneuvered our
daughter among the young, snappily dressed yuppies on the sidewalk, I
observed a strange thing. They kept giving Cordelia these looks.
Not happy looks, like, "Oh. Cute child. How nice." And not disapproving
looks, like, "How dare you bring that noisy creature into our enclave?"
They were looks of incomprehension. Looks that plainly said, "What is
that ... thing? It looks like me, but it is much smaller. And faster.
Perhaps, if I remain very still, it will not bite me."
I can deal with people who hate kids. It's a perfectly rational
reaction to them. I just didn't expect parenting to make me a mutant,
one of the eccentric few who put my wang into a place with a receptive
egg waiting for it. Having a kid is enough of a pain without making you
a WEIRDO.
Or maybe I was misreading them. Maybe the yuppies were looking at her
and thinking, "We're counting on getting our Social Security money from
THAT!?!?" I can sympathize with their shock. Either way, they need to
go out and start makin' some babies. Something just isn't right here.
###
(To see the previous installments, or learn how to get this material in
handy book form, go to www.ironycentral.com. Copyright 2005,
Jeff Vogel. All RIghts Reserved.)
- Jeff Vogel
Spiderweb Software, Award-winning Fantasy role-playing games
for Mac and Windows. Huge, free Demos!
www.spiderwebsoftware.com
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Funny stuff. Thanks for lightening my day.
Stasya
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