As often happens with technological gadgets, what was once a rarity and a luxury is now common place, novelties fast becoming necessities of modern living. And so it is with the ubiquitous GPS devices, now located in cars, cell phones and watches everywhere. Anyone can now find you at any given moment, much to the delight of overbearing parents and suspicious spouses alike. There's no getaway too remote for the damned devices—unless, of course, you happen to be sitting in your living room trying to access the Internet on your phone, in which case the service will be spotty even though the salesperson assured you that the signal would be amazing because of the proliferation of cell towers nearby. “Four bars at all times,” she told you when you bought the phone, apparently neglecting to mention that the four bars was out of roughly four hundred, or so it seems.
Now, I should confess that I am no technological Luddite, eschewing the creature-comforts of modern living in favor of a spartan existence. I'm not going to give up my GPS-enabled phone any time soon, nor will I be reading maps and compasses to find out which road is best for my horse-and-buggy trip to the blacksmith. I do wish, however, that the technological titans of our time would dedicate their collective energy to more serious pursuits. I have little need to have my phone recommend the drugstore or florist closest to my house. Nor do I need assistance to make the three mile trek to my office that I've done thousands of times. Instead, I have one simple suggestion, a request that will ease the pain and suffering of billions of parents worldwide. No, it's not for technological advances in the search for cures to malaria or AIDS or the need to provide potable water to billions in the Indian sub-continent or sub-Saharan Africa. These are worthwhile goals, to be sure, but they pale in comparison to the one innovation that will improve the lives of parents suffering through interminable meltdowns and torrents of tears. May the titans of technology join forces with the moguls of Mattel and start producing toys with GPS chips inside!
It's a rather simple and long overdue request really. My son throws a sudden and sustained shit fit every time he can't find his favorite toy car, a Mattel Lightning McQueen model from Cars 2. It is of no consequence to him that he has literally hundreds of other toys strewn haphazardly around the house. He's not interested in playing with the toy trains on the basement steps, the silly putty covering my slippers, or the bottle of bubbles that appears to be slowly leaking all over the new wood coffee table. When he wants his Lightning McQueen, well, he wants his Lightning McQueen. Like any good parent, I try to fool him into thinking that some of his other toys are actually Lightning McQueen. I tell him that I hand-painted Lightning a new color in order to try to pass off the blue toy car from Cars 2. No dice. I try to tell him that the new Lightning McQueen I bought last week—the one that changes color in the water—is much better. This time he looks at me like I'm a used Hyundai dealer trying to tell him that Hyundai is Korean for BMW. After my first (undoubtedly correct) instinct of lying fails miserably, I begin to actually look for the car. In the meantime, my son continues his tantrum, his incessant screaming only interrupted periodically for a few brief seconds at a time. (Later, I learn from my wife that the screams were only interrupted because they were muffled by a pillow on the floor. For those of you wondering, she didn't try to suffocate him. Turns out that he periodically buried his head in the pillow while he was hitting and kicking the floor. All I can say is that at least there were a few seconds of quiet, and I didn't notice any residual snot or slobber on the pillow, so all is good.)
Like almost all searches for my son's toys, this one was predictably futile. I checked all the usual spots—under the couch, between the couch cushions, under his bed, in the toilet (don't ask), and even in his sister's crib—with no success. I was about to give up completely (by which I mean I was about to drive to Toys 'R Us to buy a duplicate Lightning McQueen to pass off as the original) when my son found the toy himself. Apparently, as he was writhing on the floor he became a tad uncomfortable and noticed that the bulge in his pants pockets was poking him in the hip bone for he stopped crying and pulled his toy from his pockets. The cries stopped and, in between his sniffles with snot cascading down his face and over the front of his overalls, he told me he had found Lightning McQueen. Hardened by this experience and the three hundred or so other times my son has gone ape shit over a lost toy, I decided that life (mine, at least) would be so much easier if I could simply put GPS-enabled tracking devices on all his toys.
If Verizon can fit a tracking device in my phone, there's little reason why FAO Schwartz can't put them into its stuffed animals. I'm not concerned about any Orwellian implications, either. I'm not trying to monitor the movements of my children, and I have no interest in knowing if they are doing something untoward to the puppets in their rooms. I simply want to keep them from losing their toys. Besides, any concern over the overly watchful eyes of Big Brother is easily dwarfed by my interest in an hour free of shit fits. I only ask that the next time my son loses Lightning McQueen that I be able to track down the toy because of its embedded GPS chip. Now, I realize that I probably won't be able to monitor the toy's location from my smart phone since the phone is only smart when it has a good signal in my house—which is less than a mile from both the Verizon store and the nearest satellite tower—but that's a diatribe for another day. In the meantime, let's hope that the toymakers out there start contracting with their Chinese suppliers for toys with GPS chips. While it would be an ingenious ploy for the Chinese to begin tracking movements of all Americans, I'm undoubtedly willing to set aside national security concerns for something more pressing—the security of my sanity.
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Thursday, December 22, 2011
The Innocent Indolent
Like most fathers, I am constantly worried about my children. I have long-term worries that any father would have, most of which center around concerns that my daughter will be the groupie of the college ice hockey team or that my son will be living in a man-cave in my basement when he's 40 years old. I don't spend too much time obsessing over these concerns, however. Instead, I spend most of my days worrying about one thing in particular: whether my I've somehow pissed off my wife because of something she would describe as lazy or careless parenting.
I am the first to admit that I can be a lazy parent. I sometimes pretend to hear my infant daughter's stomach grumbling so that I can tell my wife there's no need to change her dirty diaper quite yet since another deposit is imminent. Naturally, I then secretly hope that my wife will be sufficiently annoyed by my chronic indolence that she'll then change the diaper herself. It's not a strategy that maximizes marital bliss, but it usually enables me to watch a few more snaps of the Niners game without interruption. (I can assure you that there's no need to call child protective services as, other than a few dozen isolated mishaps, I have always changed the diaper before her liquid poo has seeped out of all of her clothes and pooled underneath her head.) And, in the spirit of confessional candor, I should probably admit that I sometimes skip pages in the books I read to my son before bed, primarily because one more complete reading of Goodnight Moon might make me use the firearm I've stashed near his bookcase to end my own misery induced by children's books. (Again, don't rush to call the authorities: other than a few isolated incidents, I always have the safety on the gun. And the gun is almost always unloaded.)
Naturally, I try to make my laziness as inconspicuous as possible so not to draw the ire of my wife, though I'm not really good at doing so. Case in point: about a month ago, my wife decided that we were all going to a Halloween party. She told me that we were going to a friend's house to carve pumpkins. My wife told me that it would be a good bonding experience for me and my son to carve pumpkins. I didn't really question the wisdom of giving a toddler a knife to carve with, and I dutifully followed orders. On the day of the party, we got the kids ready. As all parents know, the duration of the event you attend is usually dwarfed by the amount of time it takes to get the kids ready for said event, and this occasion was no exception. We packed bags, grabbed a tray of cupcakes my wife had made, and headed out to the car. We stuffed the car with bribes to keep my son from having a shit fit, dozens of diapers and wipes in case of emergencies (yes, plural), and enough clothing to keep a small Tibetan village warm for the winter. I took at least three trips back to the house to grab more things for the one mile car ride to our friends' house. In the meantime, my wife buckled the kids into their carseats.
Weary from the hour-long process of getting ready to leave, I contemplated calling it quits and taking the kids back inside before we left. Since they had never carved pumpkins and didn't even know what the verb 'carve' meant, I was pretty sure I could come up with some lie that would assure them they had indeed 'carved' pumpkins on the trip to the car. My wife sensed my devious plan, gave me a skeptical look, and my sinister plot was quickly scrapped. Instead, I pulled out of the driveway and we headed to the party. At the first intersection I slowed the car and was just about to make a complete stop when I saw something pass over the windshield and crash into the ground just in front of the car. There was glass everywhere, but I was perplexed by what I also saw: orange gobs of goo amidst the countless shards of glass.
My son immediately became hysterical, which naturally caused my daughter to lose her shit as well. All I could hear was incessant crying and screaming, and I still didn't know what the hell had happened. I put the car in park, and I walked toward the front bumper. There I saw the carnage of cupcakes strewn about the street, the orange frosting coating the street for a 20 foot stretch. In years past, I probably would have laughed my ass off. I may have even tried to pick off the glass shards and eat a few of the deformed cupcakes. But this time—with the screaming kids in the car—I had only one thought: how did I manage to fuck up this time?
Now, I knew that my wife put the cupcakes on the top of the car as we were getting ready, but I knew that any deflection of blame—even if I was in fact innocent—was surely an approach doomed to fail. Like any male with kids, I know most of the cardinal rules of fatherhood, even if I don't always abide them. In this instance, the rule was simple and undeniable: when one of the parents is responsible for some fuckup, it is always the male's fault. There was no doubt that somehow the cupcakes strewn about the road were my doing. Perhaps I hit the brakes too aggressively, or perhaps I was driving too fast when I got ready to turn. It made no difference that the roof of a car is no place to put cupcakes, it was my reckless driving that caused the accident. I didn't dare accuse my wife of any wrongdoing, for I knew that the conversation would shift from the cupcake carcasses to my general failings as a husband and father. I would hear about my seeming inability to get out of bed when my daughter cries at night, the time I told her that my son was just a chronic whiner when it turns out he had salmonella poisoning, and my general avoidance of dirty diapers. So, in the time-honored selflessness of a father singularly concerned with self-preservation, I accepted the blame. I suggested that perhaps I left the cupcakes on the roof, that I undoubtedly should have seen them while I was packing the car, and that I would curb my reckless driving in the future. My wife, who also knew that she had left the tray of cupcakes perched on the roof of the car, was happy for the concession. After I swept up the cupcake carcasses and shards of glass and my son finally calmed down, we made our way to the party—marital bliss intact and nary a mention of my laziness.
I am the first to admit that I can be a lazy parent. I sometimes pretend to hear my infant daughter's stomach grumbling so that I can tell my wife there's no need to change her dirty diaper quite yet since another deposit is imminent. Naturally, I then secretly hope that my wife will be sufficiently annoyed by my chronic indolence that she'll then change the diaper herself. It's not a strategy that maximizes marital bliss, but it usually enables me to watch a few more snaps of the Niners game without interruption. (I can assure you that there's no need to call child protective services as, other than a few dozen isolated mishaps, I have always changed the diaper before her liquid poo has seeped out of all of her clothes and pooled underneath her head.) And, in the spirit of confessional candor, I should probably admit that I sometimes skip pages in the books I read to my son before bed, primarily because one more complete reading of Goodnight Moon might make me use the firearm I've stashed near his bookcase to end my own misery induced by children's books. (Again, don't rush to call the authorities: other than a few isolated incidents, I always have the safety on the gun. And the gun is almost always unloaded.)
Naturally, I try to make my laziness as inconspicuous as possible so not to draw the ire of my wife, though I'm not really good at doing so. Case in point: about a month ago, my wife decided that we were all going to a Halloween party. She told me that we were going to a friend's house to carve pumpkins. My wife told me that it would be a good bonding experience for me and my son to carve pumpkins. I didn't really question the wisdom of giving a toddler a knife to carve with, and I dutifully followed orders. On the day of the party, we got the kids ready. As all parents know, the duration of the event you attend is usually dwarfed by the amount of time it takes to get the kids ready for said event, and this occasion was no exception. We packed bags, grabbed a tray of cupcakes my wife had made, and headed out to the car. We stuffed the car with bribes to keep my son from having a shit fit, dozens of diapers and wipes in case of emergencies (yes, plural), and enough clothing to keep a small Tibetan village warm for the winter. I took at least three trips back to the house to grab more things for the one mile car ride to our friends' house. In the meantime, my wife buckled the kids into their carseats.
Weary from the hour-long process of getting ready to leave, I contemplated calling it quits and taking the kids back inside before we left. Since they had never carved pumpkins and didn't even know what the verb 'carve' meant, I was pretty sure I could come up with some lie that would assure them they had indeed 'carved' pumpkins on the trip to the car. My wife sensed my devious plan, gave me a skeptical look, and my sinister plot was quickly scrapped. Instead, I pulled out of the driveway and we headed to the party. At the first intersection I slowed the car and was just about to make a complete stop when I saw something pass over the windshield and crash into the ground just in front of the car. There was glass everywhere, but I was perplexed by what I also saw: orange gobs of goo amidst the countless shards of glass.
My son immediately became hysterical, which naturally caused my daughter to lose her shit as well. All I could hear was incessant crying and screaming, and I still didn't know what the hell had happened. I put the car in park, and I walked toward the front bumper. There I saw the carnage of cupcakes strewn about the street, the orange frosting coating the street for a 20 foot stretch. In years past, I probably would have laughed my ass off. I may have even tried to pick off the glass shards and eat a few of the deformed cupcakes. But this time—with the screaming kids in the car—I had only one thought: how did I manage to fuck up this time?
Now, I knew that my wife put the cupcakes on the top of the car as we were getting ready, but I knew that any deflection of blame—even if I was in fact innocent—was surely an approach doomed to fail. Like any male with kids, I know most of the cardinal rules of fatherhood, even if I don't always abide them. In this instance, the rule was simple and undeniable: when one of the parents is responsible for some fuckup, it is always the male's fault. There was no doubt that somehow the cupcakes strewn about the road were my doing. Perhaps I hit the brakes too aggressively, or perhaps I was driving too fast when I got ready to turn. It made no difference that the roof of a car is no place to put cupcakes, it was my reckless driving that caused the accident. I didn't dare accuse my wife of any wrongdoing, for I knew that the conversation would shift from the cupcake carcasses to my general failings as a husband and father. I would hear about my seeming inability to get out of bed when my daughter cries at night, the time I told her that my son was just a chronic whiner when it turns out he had salmonella poisoning, and my general avoidance of dirty diapers. So, in the time-honored selflessness of a father singularly concerned with self-preservation, I accepted the blame. I suggested that perhaps I left the cupcakes on the roof, that I undoubtedly should have seen them while I was packing the car, and that I would curb my reckless driving in the future. My wife, who also knew that she had left the tray of cupcakes perched on the roof of the car, was happy for the concession. After I swept up the cupcake carcasses and shards of glass and my son finally calmed down, we made our way to the party—marital bliss intact and nary a mention of my laziness.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
THAT Asshole
I'm sure that most parents have dreams and aspirations for their children. They hope for simple things—healthy, well-adjusted and successful children who aren't in therapy and still living at home at age 35. And they probably also harbor secret desires for their children that they never reveal so that the children don't feel overwhelmed—dreams of their children becoming multi-millionaire CEOs, Jobs-like innovators, or famous entertainers. While I'd certainly like my kids to be successful, I don't spend much time wondering if they'll be brain surgeons, entrepreneurs, or Olympians. In my daily life, I just hope that my kids don't turn out to be THAT ASSHOLE.
I spend an inordinate amount of time worrying that my son or daughter will be the asshole who breaks out a calculator to split up a restaurant tab. I fret over whether my son will be that indecisive dipshit who stands in front of the McDonald's menu for fifteen minutes with hordes of people behind him because he can't make up his mind. Never mind that, judging from his size, the dipshit's blood type is clinically recognized as hamburger, he still can't decide between a Quarter-pounder and a Big Mac. I also shudder at the thought that my son or daughter will be the asshole who waits fifteen minutes for an elevator to ascend one floor instead of walking six steps to the stairs.
I'm fairly certain that I'll be content if my children are able to decipher who the real ASSHOLES are in life. There's no need to impress me with degrees or dollars. And they need not bother with lofty titles or television success. I'll know my struggles through parenthood were well worth the effort if they simply recognize the stupidity of the asshole next to them on the plane, futilely trying to stuff a carry-on bag the length of Manute Bol and the width of Roseanne Barr into an already full overhead storage bin. There's no doubt that success as most people perceive it is a great accomplishment, but only if one never loses direction and becomes THAT ASSHOLE.
I spend an inordinate amount of time worrying that my son or daughter will be the asshole who breaks out a calculator to split up a restaurant tab. I fret over whether my son will be that indecisive dipshit who stands in front of the McDonald's menu for fifteen minutes with hordes of people behind him because he can't make up his mind. Never mind that, judging from his size, the dipshit's blood type is clinically recognized as hamburger, he still can't decide between a Quarter-pounder and a Big Mac. I also shudder at the thought that my son or daughter will be the asshole who waits fifteen minutes for an elevator to ascend one floor instead of walking six steps to the stairs.
I'm fairly certain that I'll be content if my children are able to decipher who the real ASSHOLES are in life. There's no need to impress me with degrees or dollars. And they need not bother with lofty titles or television success. I'll know my struggles through parenthood were well worth the effort if they simply recognize the stupidity of the asshole next to them on the plane, futilely trying to stuff a carry-on bag the length of Manute Bol and the width of Roseanne Barr into an already full overhead storage bin. There's no doubt that success as most people perceive it is a great accomplishment, but only if one never loses direction and becomes THAT ASSHOLE.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Hereditary Hate
What most parents really mean when they say that they are trying to instill values in their children is that they are trying to instill their own personal values in their kids. If they are fundamentalist Muslim, I'm sure they hope their daughters wear burkhas instead of hair extensions. And if they are multiculturally-inclined, I'm sure they want their children to be tolerant of all faiths, creeds, and types of hummus.
I'd like to think that I am open-minded enough to allow my children to choose their own values, but what I really mean is that I hope I give my children the freedom to choose and that their choices reflect the ones I would have made. If that doesn't really sound like hoping your children make their own choices, you're probably right. Parents are almost always vicariously living through their children, fathers hoping that their own football failures will be undone by their preternaturally talented sons. I will freely admit that I am guilty of this indiscretion. I am not concerned, however, if my son or daughter is the best athlete or even mathlete in school. Nor do I care if my kids experiment with various religions or types of hummus. There is only one belief I must pass on to my children lest I utterly and miserably fail as a father: hatred of the dentist.
I'm not referring to a general dislike of dentistry or the casual dread of dental work. I am instead referring to a hatred that goes to one's core, a pre-cognitive prejudice that can never be undone. My last visit to the dentist only confirmed my need to pass on my hatred as if it were a dominant gene. It was a visit that made me re-think the genius of Dante, as he failed to reserve a special circle of hell for dentists. But before I delve into the sordid story of last week's dental debacle, let me give a little background.
Growing up, my family didn't have much money. We did, however, have dental insurance. It wasn't good dental insurance, mind you, but it was something to make sure that my sister and I didn't have British smiles and you couldn't kick a field goal through our front teeth. A candy connoisseur, I visited the dentist frequently. Naturally, I'd wait until the pain was debilitating before telling my mom, but a day without Fun Dip and Pixie Stix was almost as unbearable as the pain itself and made me ask for the dentist. Even though we lived in San Jose, for some reason our insurance only covered a dental clinic in San Francisco. We dutifully trekked to the clinic for what would always be an all-day affair.
The first part of the day would always be spent the same way: my mom would haggle over whether our insurance was accepted and then we would watch as throngs of poor people with really bad teeth, most of whom were slumped over in obvious pain, were called before us. After waiting hours, we would be called into what can only be called another waiting room. The only difference was that I would be seated in a regular dental chair. The problem was that there were way too many patients and too few dentists so one had to wait even more after getting to the chair. It was basically a tiered waiting system, ostensibly so that people who had already waited for hours would think they had made progress and would thus be less likely to take out their aggression and pain on the staff.
The situation didn't improve once the actual dentist arrived. I never had one consistent dentist, but was instead relegated to whichever dentist had just recently gotten off probationary status for their litany of misdeeds. When we were lucky, I think we got dental students to perform the work. The students weren't retreads like the drugged-out dentists trying to get their licenses back, but it was clear even to a ten year old that they didn't know what they were doing. The dentists would look at my X-rays and then proceed to numb up my entire face. I'm pretty sure that they loaded up on extra novacaine because they knew that they would take three hours to perform twenty minutes of dental work. The dentists were always shuttling among a dozen or so patients, filling a quarter of a cavity before coming back to get another quarter an hour later. It was a painfully slow process, one that virtually ensured that even the excessive amount of novacaine I was given wore off before the dental work was completed. So there I sat, a ten year old with two partially filled cavities waiting for the dentist to finish the job while my mouth began throbbing. It was no use to complain, for the clinic was likely to kick you out with gaping holes in your teeth if you even mentioned that you had somewhere to be that day. And it is that painful throbbing accompanied by invasive dental work done with only the last vestiges of painkiller tingling in my mouth that I associate with all dentists.
To this day, I don't care if my dentist had a hand in curing AIDS, he's still a goddamned dentist. My visit last week only confirmed this deep-seated hatred. I came to the dentist for one reason: two of my molars were killing me. Don't get me wrong, I believe in going to the dentist for preventative care. I just can't bring myself to actually go before there's a major problem. Like most people, I like to delay painful experiences until they become intolerably painful and finally force me to confront reality, all the while chastising myself for being so stupid and procrastinating so long.
Upon arrival at the dentist's office, I had to listen to the inevitable lecture about why I had waited years between visits. I should confess now that the only people I hate more than dentists are moralizing and judgmental dentists. (I'm not sure if “moralizing and judgmental dentist” is redundant and covers all dentists or that it just aptly describes the ones I've had.) I know that I've been lazy about dental hygiene and that I should stop chewing gum, eating candy, or enjoying any food that actually tastes good if I want good teeth. I know I should probably stop treating flossing like an optional exercise, reserved for those occasions where I use the edge of a matchbook to clean out the remnants of the latest steakhouse sojourn. And I know that my dentist knows I'll disregard anything he says once I leave his office and the pain has subsided. Knowing all this, my dentist still insists on giving his bullshit lecture as if I were one of the kids riding the short bus.
Last week, as the left side of my mouth was throbbing, my dentist began with his usual lecture. Predictably, I disregarded all of it. When he finally started asking me where the pain was, he had already managed to insert a suction device, three scapel-like instruments, and nearly his entire fist into my mouth. I've always wondered if this technique is taught in dental school in order to ensure that a patient can't meaningfully respond and has suddenly and unknowingly acquiesced to a few thousands dollars of dental work by virtue of the patient's inevitably unintelligible grunts and nods. After a few minutes of continuing to probe the source of my pain with complete disregard for the pain I was enduring or the gushing of blood from my gums, the dentist swiftly pronounced that I needed a build-up of my rear molar.
I'm sure most patients would have just deferred to the dentist and his experience at this point. Given my terrible teeth and the constant pain, however, I suspected something more serious was in order. I quickly asked whether the dentist thought I needed a root canal. I knew that my dentist didn't do root canals himself, and I wanted to know whether I needed to see a specialist. I was suspicious that I didn't need something drastic for the acute pain, and I told him that I preferred to just get the root canal over with if that's what I needed. My dentist proceeded to tell me that there was an 80 percent chance that the tooth would never need a root canal and even if I ended up needing one it wouldn't be for quite some time. I didn't realize at the time, however, that there was a greater than 80 percent chance he was full of shit. Instead, I reluctantly followed his advice and had the dentist perform a build-up on the tooth. (Why the procedure is called a 'build-up' when the drill just bores a hole into the tooth remains unclear to me.)
Unsurprisingly, I was back in the office a week later. The dentist had wanted to fit my tooth for a crown, but I told him that the pain was even worse than it had been when I first came to see him. As is my style, I didn't mince words. I basically told him that whatever he had done didn't work. He seemed taken aback by my candor, and he proceeded to re-examine the tooth. After looking at the tooth for two or three seconds and then basically stabbing my tooth and gums for another minute, he unapologetically pronounced, “I think you need a root canal.” If it hadn't been for the fact that he had all of the sharp instruments in his hands, I think I would have tried to strangle him. Not only did I pay him for a worthless procedure that left me in more pain than when I had come in, I was also looking at another day spent in a dentist's chair.
The next day I went to see the specialist. After looking at the X-ray for a few seconds, he immediately said that I needed a root canal. “Even a dental student would see that,” he remarked. A root canal soon followed, and my Friday afternoon quickly wasted away in the dentist's office. Even the nitrous failed to make me forget my hatred of dentists.
I'm sure that the readers of this blog (all three of them) are probably wondering what this story has to do with my children. A fair question, I suppose. Some parents are trying to pass along their love of art. Others are trying to extend a legacy of charitable giving with the next generation. I, on the other hand, am fully dedicated to passing along my pet peeves and personal prejudices. I hold out hope that my children, regardless of whether their molars are misshapen or their canines crack, learn to hate the things that I hate. It is probably not the most enlightened approach to parenting. Hell, it's probably the antithesis to an enlightened approach, a benighted break from political correctness only a true asshole like me could hope for. Undeterred by political correctness, I fervently hope that I can pass on my hate. May the next generation of Delicinos love to loathe the dentist.
I'd like to think that I am open-minded enough to allow my children to choose their own values, but what I really mean is that I hope I give my children the freedom to choose and that their choices reflect the ones I would have made. If that doesn't really sound like hoping your children make their own choices, you're probably right. Parents are almost always vicariously living through their children, fathers hoping that their own football failures will be undone by their preternaturally talented sons. I will freely admit that I am guilty of this indiscretion. I am not concerned, however, if my son or daughter is the best athlete or even mathlete in school. Nor do I care if my kids experiment with various religions or types of hummus. There is only one belief I must pass on to my children lest I utterly and miserably fail as a father: hatred of the dentist.
I'm not referring to a general dislike of dentistry or the casual dread of dental work. I am instead referring to a hatred that goes to one's core, a pre-cognitive prejudice that can never be undone. My last visit to the dentist only confirmed my need to pass on my hatred as if it were a dominant gene. It was a visit that made me re-think the genius of Dante, as he failed to reserve a special circle of hell for dentists. But before I delve into the sordid story of last week's dental debacle, let me give a little background.
Growing up, my family didn't have much money. We did, however, have dental insurance. It wasn't good dental insurance, mind you, but it was something to make sure that my sister and I didn't have British smiles and you couldn't kick a field goal through our front teeth. A candy connoisseur, I visited the dentist frequently. Naturally, I'd wait until the pain was debilitating before telling my mom, but a day without Fun Dip and Pixie Stix was almost as unbearable as the pain itself and made me ask for the dentist. Even though we lived in San Jose, for some reason our insurance only covered a dental clinic in San Francisco. We dutifully trekked to the clinic for what would always be an all-day affair.
The first part of the day would always be spent the same way: my mom would haggle over whether our insurance was accepted and then we would watch as throngs of poor people with really bad teeth, most of whom were slumped over in obvious pain, were called before us. After waiting hours, we would be called into what can only be called another waiting room. The only difference was that I would be seated in a regular dental chair. The problem was that there were way too many patients and too few dentists so one had to wait even more after getting to the chair. It was basically a tiered waiting system, ostensibly so that people who had already waited for hours would think they had made progress and would thus be less likely to take out their aggression and pain on the staff.
The situation didn't improve once the actual dentist arrived. I never had one consistent dentist, but was instead relegated to whichever dentist had just recently gotten off probationary status for their litany of misdeeds. When we were lucky, I think we got dental students to perform the work. The students weren't retreads like the drugged-out dentists trying to get their licenses back, but it was clear even to a ten year old that they didn't know what they were doing. The dentists would look at my X-rays and then proceed to numb up my entire face. I'm pretty sure that they loaded up on extra novacaine because they knew that they would take three hours to perform twenty minutes of dental work. The dentists were always shuttling among a dozen or so patients, filling a quarter of a cavity before coming back to get another quarter an hour later. It was a painfully slow process, one that virtually ensured that even the excessive amount of novacaine I was given wore off before the dental work was completed. So there I sat, a ten year old with two partially filled cavities waiting for the dentist to finish the job while my mouth began throbbing. It was no use to complain, for the clinic was likely to kick you out with gaping holes in your teeth if you even mentioned that you had somewhere to be that day. And it is that painful throbbing accompanied by invasive dental work done with only the last vestiges of painkiller tingling in my mouth that I associate with all dentists.
To this day, I don't care if my dentist had a hand in curing AIDS, he's still a goddamned dentist. My visit last week only confirmed this deep-seated hatred. I came to the dentist for one reason: two of my molars were killing me. Don't get me wrong, I believe in going to the dentist for preventative care. I just can't bring myself to actually go before there's a major problem. Like most people, I like to delay painful experiences until they become intolerably painful and finally force me to confront reality, all the while chastising myself for being so stupid and procrastinating so long.
Upon arrival at the dentist's office, I had to listen to the inevitable lecture about why I had waited years between visits. I should confess now that the only people I hate more than dentists are moralizing and judgmental dentists. (I'm not sure if “moralizing and judgmental dentist” is redundant and covers all dentists or that it just aptly describes the ones I've had.) I know that I've been lazy about dental hygiene and that I should stop chewing gum, eating candy, or enjoying any food that actually tastes good if I want good teeth. I know I should probably stop treating flossing like an optional exercise, reserved for those occasions where I use the edge of a matchbook to clean out the remnants of the latest steakhouse sojourn. And I know that my dentist knows I'll disregard anything he says once I leave his office and the pain has subsided. Knowing all this, my dentist still insists on giving his bullshit lecture as if I were one of the kids riding the short bus.
Last week, as the left side of my mouth was throbbing, my dentist began with his usual lecture. Predictably, I disregarded all of it. When he finally started asking me where the pain was, he had already managed to insert a suction device, three scapel-like instruments, and nearly his entire fist into my mouth. I've always wondered if this technique is taught in dental school in order to ensure that a patient can't meaningfully respond and has suddenly and unknowingly acquiesced to a few thousands dollars of dental work by virtue of the patient's inevitably unintelligible grunts and nods. After a few minutes of continuing to probe the source of my pain with complete disregard for the pain I was enduring or the gushing of blood from my gums, the dentist swiftly pronounced that I needed a build-up of my rear molar.
I'm sure most patients would have just deferred to the dentist and his experience at this point. Given my terrible teeth and the constant pain, however, I suspected something more serious was in order. I quickly asked whether the dentist thought I needed a root canal. I knew that my dentist didn't do root canals himself, and I wanted to know whether I needed to see a specialist. I was suspicious that I didn't need something drastic for the acute pain, and I told him that I preferred to just get the root canal over with if that's what I needed. My dentist proceeded to tell me that there was an 80 percent chance that the tooth would never need a root canal and even if I ended up needing one it wouldn't be for quite some time. I didn't realize at the time, however, that there was a greater than 80 percent chance he was full of shit. Instead, I reluctantly followed his advice and had the dentist perform a build-up on the tooth. (Why the procedure is called a 'build-up' when the drill just bores a hole into the tooth remains unclear to me.)
Unsurprisingly, I was back in the office a week later. The dentist had wanted to fit my tooth for a crown, but I told him that the pain was even worse than it had been when I first came to see him. As is my style, I didn't mince words. I basically told him that whatever he had done didn't work. He seemed taken aback by my candor, and he proceeded to re-examine the tooth. After looking at the tooth for two or three seconds and then basically stabbing my tooth and gums for another minute, he unapologetically pronounced, “I think you need a root canal.” If it hadn't been for the fact that he had all of the sharp instruments in his hands, I think I would have tried to strangle him. Not only did I pay him for a worthless procedure that left me in more pain than when I had come in, I was also looking at another day spent in a dentist's chair.
The next day I went to see the specialist. After looking at the X-ray for a few seconds, he immediately said that I needed a root canal. “Even a dental student would see that,” he remarked. A root canal soon followed, and my Friday afternoon quickly wasted away in the dentist's office. Even the nitrous failed to make me forget my hatred of dentists.
I'm sure that the readers of this blog (all three of them) are probably wondering what this story has to do with my children. A fair question, I suppose. Some parents are trying to pass along their love of art. Others are trying to extend a legacy of charitable giving with the next generation. I, on the other hand, am fully dedicated to passing along my pet peeves and personal prejudices. I hold out hope that my children, regardless of whether their molars are misshapen or their canines crack, learn to hate the things that I hate. It is probably not the most enlightened approach to parenting. Hell, it's probably the antithesis to an enlightened approach, a benighted break from political correctness only a true asshole like me could hope for. Undeterred by political correctness, I fervently hope that I can pass on my hate. May the next generation of Delicinos love to loathe the dentist.
Monday, September 19, 2011
The Nazi Nurse
Just a few minutes after my son was born, at a time when most fathers are overcome with emotion and most mothers are simply trying to recover from the trauma of childbirth, my wife and I had to deal with one unexpected problem. No, my son didn't have any difficulty breathing or any supernumerary digits. And my wife was recovering well, even if the anesthesiologist took his sweet-ass time administering the epidural. Instead, the unexpected problem was dealing with the aftermath of the birth. I'm not talking about seeing the mound of placenta and other assorted remnants of afterbirth lying on a table a few feet from the bed. What I'm referring to is the pain and anguish of having to listen to the world's worst neonatal nurse spew her unsolicited opinions like a newborn spews his or her most recent meal.
Our nurse was someone incapable of keeping her opinion to herself, no matter how irrelevant and inappropriate it was. She was a loudmouth steeped in scare tactics, more wretched than Nurse Ratchet. I knew things were heading in the wrong direction the first couple of hours after my son was born. Instead of checking up on mother and son at predictable and coordinated intervals, the nurse assigned to our room seemed to relish coming into our room constantly. Each time I managed to even slightly doze off for a minute on what one might charitably call the couch (an L-shaped piece of furniture likely picked up from the trash heap at the thrift store and most definitely designed for adults whose pituitary glands had seriously malfunctioned as it was approximately three feet in length), Nurse Wretched would loudly knock on the door and announce that it was time to check on something.
She was constantly monitoring and checking my wife, my son, fluid levels, and IV drips. Now, I was certainly grateful that my wife and son were being taken care of, but the nurse made sure to check one thing every seventeen minutes instead of perhaps trying to monitor three things on one visit. Though my sporadic slumber makes me wonder if I was just delusional, I'm virtually certain that she also managed to check the leaky faucet in our bathroom, the flickering of the overhead fluorescent bulb, and the minute-by-minute status of our 401k accounts—all on separate visits, of course. After her twelfth visit, I was ready to say something. I'm not usually slow to criticize or condemn, but because it was our first child, I said nothing. I figured that the nurse knew what she was doing, and perhaps letting my son or my wife sleep for more than fifteen uninterrupted minutes would jeopardize their health. I speculated that insomnia might be the preferred way to help mom recover and son flourish. It wasn't doing much for dad, but I figured that I could make it through a day or two before complaining incessantly about how little sleep I had gotten while my wife recovered from the routine and relatively painless experience of childbirth.
At some point, however, I began to feel like I was a part of some novel CIA study on sleep deprivation. The nurse repeatedly came and went, though she did less and less each time she visited. A few dozen times, she just asked if things were ok. I'm not sure if she thought we were too dumb to figure out the complexity of the emergency call button (it did, after all, require one to push it) or if she was genuinely concerned that we might actually be sleeping and felt the need to awaken all of us. I know that there are some who, when pressed by incessant interrogation techniques and sleep deprivation, maintain their cool, but I would have confessed to being the gunman on the grassy knoll if it had meant six minutes of sleep. Little did I know, however, that sleep deprivation was only the first tool wielded by Nurse Wretched.
On one of her myriad visits, the nurse decided to give us her opinion about circumcisions. Apparently ignorant of the fact that my wife is Russian and that most Eastern Europeans don't practice circumcision, she told us that people who didn't get circumcised were dirty. She didn't rely on any studies or other empirical evidence to support her position, instead preferring to rely on the time-honored power of persuasion better known as unsolicited and uninformed personal prejudice.
Naturally, disparaging an entire continent of people wasn't enough for our nurse. She also decided to employ scare tactics. I wasn't sure if her scare tactics were also gleaned from CIA training manuals, but I was an easy mark—a first time dad who didn't have a fucking clue about how to raise kids. It was thus unsurprising that I tried to follow her ludicrous advice when she told me that I shouldn't give my son a pacifier because he would get used to the pacifier. She regaled us with stories about how hard it would be for my son to give it up, and I naturally envisioned my son walking around his college campus, steadfastly refusing to spit out his Superman pacifier.
The first night at home, my son woke up crying uncontrollably. I'm not certain what he was upset about, primarily because he wasn't very helpful in telling me what was wrong. Hell, he didn't even try to mutter anything intelligible between cries. But rather than blame him for his stubborn behavior, I'll move on. While he was crying, my wife and I were trying to console him without his pacifier. As most seasoned parents well know, that approach was about as effective as asking him what was wrong. My mother and my mother-in-law, both of whom were staying with us since we were scared shitless to be alone with this screaming monster, came upstairs to help. They both suggested that we give our son his pacifier, to which we responded that the nurse told us that doing so was a bad idea. I started to tell them about how babies get hooked on pacifiers and some never give them up, but the grandmas just laughed. They both recognized the absurdity of the advice we had received. They insisted that we give him a pacifier, and we eventually relented—only after it appeared that he crying so hard an eyeball was about to pop out. We gave him the pacifier, which he immediately took. He quickly calmed down, his eyeball settled in nicely, and he was asleep in seconds.
I immediately recognized the folly of my way. I had just assumed that a nurse who had dealt with children all her life would dispense worthwhile advice. And I knew that I knew nada about babies or being a dad. What I had failed to recognize, however, is that there is one immutable and indisputable fact of life: there are know-nothing assholes eager to share their ignorance in every profession. It took me awhile to realize that Nurse Wretched was one of those assholes. Blinded by my fear of being a deadbeat dad, I ignored the early warning signs and suppressed my inner cynic. Now on child number two, I know that I would do anything to soothe the suffering of my children. Not only do I freely give my two-month old daughter her pacifier, I've come to rely on my own innate sense of how to parent. I don't need the prejudice and senseless suggestions of Nurse Wretched to know that a handful of mixed nuts is a good substitute for a lost pacifier. And don't worry, I'm careful not to give her really big almonds or cashews since I know from experience with my son that they might lodge in her small windpipe. Thus far, my innate parenting skills have worked well. While she took a bit longer than expected to recover from the rash that the Brazil nuts caused, the mixed nuts have been just as effective as the pacifier I can never seem to find. Unsurprisingly, we all now sleep more soundly after rejecting Nurse Wretched's advice even if I must confess that I occasionally worry that my daughter will be walking around her college campus with a handful of nuts in her mouth—though I'm certain every dad worries about that.
Our nurse was someone incapable of keeping her opinion to herself, no matter how irrelevant and inappropriate it was. She was a loudmouth steeped in scare tactics, more wretched than Nurse Ratchet. I knew things were heading in the wrong direction the first couple of hours after my son was born. Instead of checking up on mother and son at predictable and coordinated intervals, the nurse assigned to our room seemed to relish coming into our room constantly. Each time I managed to even slightly doze off for a minute on what one might charitably call the couch (an L-shaped piece of furniture likely picked up from the trash heap at the thrift store and most definitely designed for adults whose pituitary glands had seriously malfunctioned as it was approximately three feet in length), Nurse Wretched would loudly knock on the door and announce that it was time to check on something.
She was constantly monitoring and checking my wife, my son, fluid levels, and IV drips. Now, I was certainly grateful that my wife and son were being taken care of, but the nurse made sure to check one thing every seventeen minutes instead of perhaps trying to monitor three things on one visit. Though my sporadic slumber makes me wonder if I was just delusional, I'm virtually certain that she also managed to check the leaky faucet in our bathroom, the flickering of the overhead fluorescent bulb, and the minute-by-minute status of our 401k accounts—all on separate visits, of course. After her twelfth visit, I was ready to say something. I'm not usually slow to criticize or condemn, but because it was our first child, I said nothing. I figured that the nurse knew what she was doing, and perhaps letting my son or my wife sleep for more than fifteen uninterrupted minutes would jeopardize their health. I speculated that insomnia might be the preferred way to help mom recover and son flourish. It wasn't doing much for dad, but I figured that I could make it through a day or two before complaining incessantly about how little sleep I had gotten while my wife recovered from the routine and relatively painless experience of childbirth.
At some point, however, I began to feel like I was a part of some novel CIA study on sleep deprivation. The nurse repeatedly came and went, though she did less and less each time she visited. A few dozen times, she just asked if things were ok. I'm not sure if she thought we were too dumb to figure out the complexity of the emergency call button (it did, after all, require one to push it) or if she was genuinely concerned that we might actually be sleeping and felt the need to awaken all of us. I know that there are some who, when pressed by incessant interrogation techniques and sleep deprivation, maintain their cool, but I would have confessed to being the gunman on the grassy knoll if it had meant six minutes of sleep. Little did I know, however, that sleep deprivation was only the first tool wielded by Nurse Wretched.
On one of her myriad visits, the nurse decided to give us her opinion about circumcisions. Apparently ignorant of the fact that my wife is Russian and that most Eastern Europeans don't practice circumcision, she told us that people who didn't get circumcised were dirty. She didn't rely on any studies or other empirical evidence to support her position, instead preferring to rely on the time-honored power of persuasion better known as unsolicited and uninformed personal prejudice.
Naturally, disparaging an entire continent of people wasn't enough for our nurse. She also decided to employ scare tactics. I wasn't sure if her scare tactics were also gleaned from CIA training manuals, but I was an easy mark—a first time dad who didn't have a fucking clue about how to raise kids. It was thus unsurprising that I tried to follow her ludicrous advice when she told me that I shouldn't give my son a pacifier because he would get used to the pacifier. She regaled us with stories about how hard it would be for my son to give it up, and I naturally envisioned my son walking around his college campus, steadfastly refusing to spit out his Superman pacifier.
The first night at home, my son woke up crying uncontrollably. I'm not certain what he was upset about, primarily because he wasn't very helpful in telling me what was wrong. Hell, he didn't even try to mutter anything intelligible between cries. But rather than blame him for his stubborn behavior, I'll move on. While he was crying, my wife and I were trying to console him without his pacifier. As most seasoned parents well know, that approach was about as effective as asking him what was wrong. My mother and my mother-in-law, both of whom were staying with us since we were scared shitless to be alone with this screaming monster, came upstairs to help. They both suggested that we give our son his pacifier, to which we responded that the nurse told us that doing so was a bad idea. I started to tell them about how babies get hooked on pacifiers and some never give them up, but the grandmas just laughed. They both recognized the absurdity of the advice we had received. They insisted that we give him a pacifier, and we eventually relented—only after it appeared that he crying so hard an eyeball was about to pop out. We gave him the pacifier, which he immediately took. He quickly calmed down, his eyeball settled in nicely, and he was asleep in seconds.
I immediately recognized the folly of my way. I had just assumed that a nurse who had dealt with children all her life would dispense worthwhile advice. And I knew that I knew nada about babies or being a dad. What I had failed to recognize, however, is that there is one immutable and indisputable fact of life: there are know-nothing assholes eager to share their ignorance in every profession. It took me awhile to realize that Nurse Wretched was one of those assholes. Blinded by my fear of being a deadbeat dad, I ignored the early warning signs and suppressed my inner cynic. Now on child number two, I know that I would do anything to soothe the suffering of my children. Not only do I freely give my two-month old daughter her pacifier, I've come to rely on my own innate sense of how to parent. I don't need the prejudice and senseless suggestions of Nurse Wretched to know that a handful of mixed nuts is a good substitute for a lost pacifier. And don't worry, I'm careful not to give her really big almonds or cashews since I know from experience with my son that they might lodge in her small windpipe. Thus far, my innate parenting skills have worked well. While she took a bit longer than expected to recover from the rash that the Brazil nuts caused, the mixed nuts have been just as effective as the pacifier I can never seem to find. Unsurprisingly, we all now sleep more soundly after rejecting Nurse Wretched's advice even if I must confess that I occasionally worry that my daughter will be walking around her college campus with a handful of nuts in her mouth—though I'm certain every dad worries about that.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Living and Loving to Lie
From hearing the initial cries after birth to watching a toddler battle yet another bout of the flu, parents are constantly and often futilely struggling to protect their children. In this valiant struggle, the pain endured by the children is vicariously felt by the parents. I'm sure that the vast majority of parents would tell you that the most heart wrenching experience of parenthood is to watch your child suffer while you are powerless to stop it. To know that an innocent child is suffering despite a parent's endless love and devotion leaves a parent feeling inert, beset by a feeling of helplessness that is likely the most painful experience of parenthood. A close second—and at times possibly even more devastating—is the searing and unmistakeable pain of having to sit through your child's music recital.
Indeed, I can think of few experiences more painful than listening to a group of tone-deaf delinquents butcher a seemingly endless list of insipid songs—songs selected simply because even a mildly-retarded monkey could follow them. I must shamefully confess, however, that not only did my mother have to endure my second grade music recital, but that I couldn't even master music meant for a mildly-retarded monkey. I am writing, of course, about my holiday recorder recital.
For some inexplicable reason, elementary schools insist on such drivel as holiday music recitals. I'm sure it's occurred to the school staff that most seven year olds sing or play instruments like geriatrics fuck—sloppy, uncoordinated, and woefully in need of more practice. (Ok, so maybe this comparison hasn't occurred to the school staff, but my general point is unassailable.) Despite their obvious limitations, seven year olds are asked to entertain a room of adults, whose objectivity has obviously been colored by consanguinity. Like all young kids, I was asked (ok, forced) to participate in the annual Christmas (this was pre-Kwaanza political correctness) recital.
For some inexplicable reason, the practices for the recital were scheduled in the hour before school started. For anyone who knows me even slightly, let's just charitably say that I am basically the Antichrist when someone wakes me up before noon. Now imagine how hospitable I was to the idea of waking up an hour before the ungodly hour I was already waking up for school. Needless to say, I wasn't thrilled with the idea and my attendance at these practices reflected my enthusiasm. In those days, my sister and I would walk to school together after my mom left for work. My mom was a single mom with no other way to get us to school. Besides, the school was only a few blocks away and back in the days before the Internet and sex offender registries, one just assumed that the questionable neighbor whose house we passed on the way would be scared off by the fact that my sister and I were walking in tandem. (These days, I'm sure some cynic would just remark that the pedophile down the street would have thought it was Christmas upon seeing a veritable two for one snatching, but since I'm no cynic I still believe that any potential pedophile was no match for me and my older (eight year old) sister.) Anyway, I decided to sleep in a little later and walk to school with my sister rather than suffer through the practices for a music recital. I made all of two practices, the first practice where the recorders were distributed and the last practice before the recital. Little did I know that my laziness would be rewarded with one of the greatest insights into the tricks of parenthood. Before the big reveal, however, let me set the stage.
Instead of faking an illness or begging off the recital like a smarter and more sinister child might have done, I concocted another plan. I knew that I knew nothing about the recorder. It was painfully obvious that I had no innate musical talent during the lone practices that I'd attended, but I still felt the need to impress my mom with my dedication and musical know-how. Like any dutiful son would have done, I decided to simply fake my way through the recital, shamelessly piggy-backing on the efforts of those suckers who actually went to the practices. I'd like to regale the reader with some impressive story of childhood ingenuity, a master plan that only a true genius could have pulled off. I'd like to say that I hunkered down amid the Star Wars figurines in my room and learned to play the recorder in such a short time that years later people still tell their friends about the seven year old savant dazzling the crowd with his mastery of the instrument. Alas, I have no such story. Instead, I simply puffed my cheeks throughout the songs, and anyone other than a lazy seven year old trying to get away with something would have known immediately that I was faking it. My cheeks were puffed out as if I had filled my mouth with three hundred Jolly Ranchers since I apparently thought the key to pretending to play a mean recorder resided in the ability to fill one's cheeks with as much air as possible. Never mind that no one else there puffed his or her cheeks out like me, I was convinced that repeatedly puffing my cheeks would convince my family that I knew what I was doing. Hell, maybe someone would think I was a virtuouso on the recorder, a mini-Mozart in the making.
As deluded as my plan was, I still knew that any adult paying attention would realize something was amiss. I therefore tried to pick a spot among my classmates that was the most inconspicuous and, in a rare moment of shrewd deceit, I chose a spot behind the fattest kid in the class. Everyone has gone to school with the one kid who appeared to have eaten three of his classmates, and the corpulent kid I stood behind was no exception. (With all the press about the fattening of America, I sometimes wonder if all the kids are now that fat kid and the lone skinny kid is the target of all the relentless taunts. It is indeed a sad and sobering thought to think that a lifetime of well-honed and time-tested fat kid jokes will have to be tossed aside in favor of new punch lines and hazing targeting the ectomorphs of the playground. You shouldn't lose too much sleep over this predicament, however, as I'm quite certain that America's fat kids have the creativity and ingenuity to think up a new generation's worth of slights—if they have the energy to pull themselves away from the corn syrup long enough to come up with any, that is.)
I'd like to think this fatty's name was Augustus (like the whale-boned whiner from Willy Wonka), but I really don't remember and it's not that important. What's important is that this kid's mounds of seemingly endless blubber managed to obscure my mom's view. Indeed, my master plan seemed to be working well as I hid behind the jelly rolls of a 175 pound seven year old until I noticed my mom in the crowd jockeying for a new position. I immediately thought to myself that if I could see her then she could see me. Naturally, I did what any seven year old fraud would do—I picked up the pace of my puffing, feverishly moved my fingers all over the recorder in a truly haphazard fashion, and I crouched even lower behind the gargantuan shadow that only a seven year old reared on an IV drip of gravy could cast. While there were moments when my mom's maneuvering paid off, I'm pretty certain that she could only glimpse me occasionally. When there was a break between songs, however, I would re-emerge from the nether world of Augustus's shadow long enough to make certain that my mother knew I was still there and hadn't been squashed or eaten alive by my corpulent classmate. Better yet, I knew I wasn't going to be caught as a fraud during these breaks no matter how juvenile my shenanigans.
I labored through the rest of the recital, and I was greeted by my mother as soon as I descended the stage. My mother gave me a big hug and uttered the words I will never forget. As she hugged me, my mom said in a tone conveying sincere pride, “you were great.” (Now's when I should I probably preface the rest of my story with a simple, inarguable truth: I am an asshole, and I became one at an early age.) Curious, I decided to press my mom a bit further about her pride for her delinquent son.
“Could you really hear me, mom? I mean, just me?” I asked.
“Yes, Jeremy. And you were great. I'm so proud of you,” she exclaimed.
I hadn't blown a single breath into the recorder, and my mom was now telling me that my performance was great. I knew then and there that parents, perhaps drunk with love in their hearts, will lie to their kids. It was an innocent lie, one meant to reassure and comfort me. It was, for lack of a better description, a lie of love. Rather than recognize my mother's lie for what is was—an expression of love for her truant son—I instead took home a different lesson. I learned that day that a good parent will shamelessly lie to his or her child in order to keep the kid happy. It's a lesson that has served me well as a father. Like any loving father, I constantly lie to my son.
When my son asks me why he can't watch any more cartoons, I simply reply that the power is out and the television won't work. Never mind that the rest of the lights in the house are on. Forget also that the DVD player is still running—he's two and a half years old, and he'll believe anything. When my son “forgets” to pick up the toys in his room, I politely remind him that the monster living in his closet feeds on toys that aren't put in their proper place and the only way to keep the closet monster from visiting at night when the lights are off is to clean up his room. Sure, it's a little white lie, but it seems to do the trick. He scurries around the room picking up toys, muttering in between sniffles and tears that he'll do anything to keep the closet monster away.
Lying to one's child is the path of least resistance, and if there's anything I deserve after a long day it's less resistance. I just hope that one day my son will recognize that every lie I've told him isn't just a convenient way for me to make my life easier, but instead each lie is an expression of love. Indeed, I hope that I am instilling in my son a respect for the power of lying. Not only is it my family's legacy, but it's really the only respectable thing to do. I eagerly await that day in the future when my son takes at look at his own three year old son's drawing, one that will inevitably be an incomprehensible mess, and tell him that the drawing is beautiful and that he's so proud of the artwork. I will know when I hear that little fib that my struggle as a parent and my loving lies were worth all the work.
Indeed, I can think of few experiences more painful than listening to a group of tone-deaf delinquents butcher a seemingly endless list of insipid songs—songs selected simply because even a mildly-retarded monkey could follow them. I must shamefully confess, however, that not only did my mother have to endure my second grade music recital, but that I couldn't even master music meant for a mildly-retarded monkey. I am writing, of course, about my holiday recorder recital.
For some inexplicable reason, elementary schools insist on such drivel as holiday music recitals. I'm sure it's occurred to the school staff that most seven year olds sing or play instruments like geriatrics fuck—sloppy, uncoordinated, and woefully in need of more practice. (Ok, so maybe this comparison hasn't occurred to the school staff, but my general point is unassailable.) Despite their obvious limitations, seven year olds are asked to entertain a room of adults, whose objectivity has obviously been colored by consanguinity. Like all young kids, I was asked (ok, forced) to participate in the annual Christmas (this was pre-Kwaanza political correctness) recital.
For some inexplicable reason, the practices for the recital were scheduled in the hour before school started. For anyone who knows me even slightly, let's just charitably say that I am basically the Antichrist when someone wakes me up before noon. Now imagine how hospitable I was to the idea of waking up an hour before the ungodly hour I was already waking up for school. Needless to say, I wasn't thrilled with the idea and my attendance at these practices reflected my enthusiasm. In those days, my sister and I would walk to school together after my mom left for work. My mom was a single mom with no other way to get us to school. Besides, the school was only a few blocks away and back in the days before the Internet and sex offender registries, one just assumed that the questionable neighbor whose house we passed on the way would be scared off by the fact that my sister and I were walking in tandem. (These days, I'm sure some cynic would just remark that the pedophile down the street would have thought it was Christmas upon seeing a veritable two for one snatching, but since I'm no cynic I still believe that any potential pedophile was no match for me and my older (eight year old) sister.) Anyway, I decided to sleep in a little later and walk to school with my sister rather than suffer through the practices for a music recital. I made all of two practices, the first practice where the recorders were distributed and the last practice before the recital. Little did I know that my laziness would be rewarded with one of the greatest insights into the tricks of parenthood. Before the big reveal, however, let me set the stage.
Instead of faking an illness or begging off the recital like a smarter and more sinister child might have done, I concocted another plan. I knew that I knew nothing about the recorder. It was painfully obvious that I had no innate musical talent during the lone practices that I'd attended, but I still felt the need to impress my mom with my dedication and musical know-how. Like any dutiful son would have done, I decided to simply fake my way through the recital, shamelessly piggy-backing on the efforts of those suckers who actually went to the practices. I'd like to regale the reader with some impressive story of childhood ingenuity, a master plan that only a true genius could have pulled off. I'd like to say that I hunkered down amid the Star Wars figurines in my room and learned to play the recorder in such a short time that years later people still tell their friends about the seven year old savant dazzling the crowd with his mastery of the instrument. Alas, I have no such story. Instead, I simply puffed my cheeks throughout the songs, and anyone other than a lazy seven year old trying to get away with something would have known immediately that I was faking it. My cheeks were puffed out as if I had filled my mouth with three hundred Jolly Ranchers since I apparently thought the key to pretending to play a mean recorder resided in the ability to fill one's cheeks with as much air as possible. Never mind that no one else there puffed his or her cheeks out like me, I was convinced that repeatedly puffing my cheeks would convince my family that I knew what I was doing. Hell, maybe someone would think I was a virtuouso on the recorder, a mini-Mozart in the making.
As deluded as my plan was, I still knew that any adult paying attention would realize something was amiss. I therefore tried to pick a spot among my classmates that was the most inconspicuous and, in a rare moment of shrewd deceit, I chose a spot behind the fattest kid in the class. Everyone has gone to school with the one kid who appeared to have eaten three of his classmates, and the corpulent kid I stood behind was no exception. (With all the press about the fattening of America, I sometimes wonder if all the kids are now that fat kid and the lone skinny kid is the target of all the relentless taunts. It is indeed a sad and sobering thought to think that a lifetime of well-honed and time-tested fat kid jokes will have to be tossed aside in favor of new punch lines and hazing targeting the ectomorphs of the playground. You shouldn't lose too much sleep over this predicament, however, as I'm quite certain that America's fat kids have the creativity and ingenuity to think up a new generation's worth of slights—if they have the energy to pull themselves away from the corn syrup long enough to come up with any, that is.)
I'd like to think this fatty's name was Augustus (like the whale-boned whiner from Willy Wonka), but I really don't remember and it's not that important. What's important is that this kid's mounds of seemingly endless blubber managed to obscure my mom's view. Indeed, my master plan seemed to be working well as I hid behind the jelly rolls of a 175 pound seven year old until I noticed my mom in the crowd jockeying for a new position. I immediately thought to myself that if I could see her then she could see me. Naturally, I did what any seven year old fraud would do—I picked up the pace of my puffing, feverishly moved my fingers all over the recorder in a truly haphazard fashion, and I crouched even lower behind the gargantuan shadow that only a seven year old reared on an IV drip of gravy could cast. While there were moments when my mom's maneuvering paid off, I'm pretty certain that she could only glimpse me occasionally. When there was a break between songs, however, I would re-emerge from the nether world of Augustus's shadow long enough to make certain that my mother knew I was still there and hadn't been squashed or eaten alive by my corpulent classmate. Better yet, I knew I wasn't going to be caught as a fraud during these breaks no matter how juvenile my shenanigans.
I labored through the rest of the recital, and I was greeted by my mother as soon as I descended the stage. My mother gave me a big hug and uttered the words I will never forget. As she hugged me, my mom said in a tone conveying sincere pride, “you were great.” (Now's when I should I probably preface the rest of my story with a simple, inarguable truth: I am an asshole, and I became one at an early age.) Curious, I decided to press my mom a bit further about her pride for her delinquent son.
“Could you really hear me, mom? I mean, just me?” I asked.
“Yes, Jeremy. And you were great. I'm so proud of you,” she exclaimed.
I hadn't blown a single breath into the recorder, and my mom was now telling me that my performance was great. I knew then and there that parents, perhaps drunk with love in their hearts, will lie to their kids. It was an innocent lie, one meant to reassure and comfort me. It was, for lack of a better description, a lie of love. Rather than recognize my mother's lie for what is was—an expression of love for her truant son—I instead took home a different lesson. I learned that day that a good parent will shamelessly lie to his or her child in order to keep the kid happy. It's a lesson that has served me well as a father. Like any loving father, I constantly lie to my son.
When my son asks me why he can't watch any more cartoons, I simply reply that the power is out and the television won't work. Never mind that the rest of the lights in the house are on. Forget also that the DVD player is still running—he's two and a half years old, and he'll believe anything. When my son “forgets” to pick up the toys in his room, I politely remind him that the monster living in his closet feeds on toys that aren't put in their proper place and the only way to keep the closet monster from visiting at night when the lights are off is to clean up his room. Sure, it's a little white lie, but it seems to do the trick. He scurries around the room picking up toys, muttering in between sniffles and tears that he'll do anything to keep the closet monster away.
Lying to one's child is the path of least resistance, and if there's anything I deserve after a long day it's less resistance. I just hope that one day my son will recognize that every lie I've told him isn't just a convenient way for me to make my life easier, but instead each lie is an expression of love. Indeed, I hope that I am instilling in my son a respect for the power of lying. Not only is it my family's legacy, but it's really the only respectable thing to do. I eagerly await that day in the future when my son takes at look at his own three year old son's drawing, one that will inevitably be an incomprehensible mess, and tell him that the drawing is beautiful and that he's so proud of the artwork. I will know when I hear that little fib that my struggle as a parent and my loving lies were worth all the work.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Whichever Way the Wind Blows
Life as a parent is a schizophrenic existence. One minute you're a 34 year old father on the verge of tears because your two year old son is running to greet you with a slobbery kiss, his excitement to see you unmistakeable. Five minutes later, however, you swear that the same child is Satan's spawn when he starts writhing on the floor, his cries and ear-piercing screams triggered by something as trivial as your refusal to let him stab his little sister in the chest with the scissors he somehow managed to reach on the kitchen counter. Before children, there was a certain level of predictability in your life—you went to work and came home at roughly the same time each day, you may have even managed to enjoy an entire meal, and you were able to actually follow a television series or two. After children, however, the only thing that is predictable is that your children will act unpredictably. They will ravenously devour every morsel of spaghetti one day as if it were the last meal on Earth, and then they will throw the bowl on the floor the next, making sure to dump the contents on whatever surface has actually been cleaned recently.
If you think that your children will be the only ones in the house acting erratically, however, you're profoundly mistaken. When your child's behavior is all over the place, I'm guessing that your reaction to his or her irrationality will be all over the place as well. I'm sure that the ubiquitous parenting books all counsel parents to be firm and consistent in their approach, meting out discipline in a structured and even-handed manner so the children will learn from watching a calm, collected parent express his disapproval. I've got a few choice words for those perusing the pages of parenting books for advice: those authors don't know shit. And if you claim to actually follow their advice you're probably a Holocaust denier, someone willing to confront reality by ignoring it altogether. More likely, though, you're simply a bad parent like me, one whose approach depends on how close you are to losing your shit that day. A simple whine may set you off one day, particularly if it was preceded by your son smearing poop all over his clothes and your hands while you try to change a diaper filled with an amount of chunky, colored feces fit for a four hundred pound glutton who just gorged on Cornuts and Cheetos. Other days, when your son is spilling his orange juice on the couch for what just has to be the three hundred and fortieth time, you are somehow as calm as you were when you dabbled in “medicinal” marijuana on a thrice daily basis.
Instead of following any of the parenting advice I've read, I'm taking a more Zen-like approach, willing to embrace my unmeasured and erratic reactions as simply a new, unorthodox parenting style. I have come to accept that I will not be able to change the things that I cannot change, a philosophical approach perhaps beset by tautological incoherence but one that provides someone incurably stubborn and perpetually irritable like me a dose of comfort. Yes, I'm sure my son is confused by my inconsistent reactions at times. Hell, with even the slightest bit of introspection, I'm confused by my inconsistency. And perhaps I should try to learn some modicum of patience in my parenting technique. In all likelihood, however, my reactions to my children's tantrums in the future will be forever predictable in their unpredictability—parenting books be damned.
If you think that your children will be the only ones in the house acting erratically, however, you're profoundly mistaken. When your child's behavior is all over the place, I'm guessing that your reaction to his or her irrationality will be all over the place as well. I'm sure that the ubiquitous parenting books all counsel parents to be firm and consistent in their approach, meting out discipline in a structured and even-handed manner so the children will learn from watching a calm, collected parent express his disapproval. I've got a few choice words for those perusing the pages of parenting books for advice: those authors don't know shit. And if you claim to actually follow their advice you're probably a Holocaust denier, someone willing to confront reality by ignoring it altogether. More likely, though, you're simply a bad parent like me, one whose approach depends on how close you are to losing your shit that day. A simple whine may set you off one day, particularly if it was preceded by your son smearing poop all over his clothes and your hands while you try to change a diaper filled with an amount of chunky, colored feces fit for a four hundred pound glutton who just gorged on Cornuts and Cheetos. Other days, when your son is spilling his orange juice on the couch for what just has to be the three hundred and fortieth time, you are somehow as calm as you were when you dabbled in “medicinal” marijuana on a thrice daily basis.
Instead of following any of the parenting advice I've read, I'm taking a more Zen-like approach, willing to embrace my unmeasured and erratic reactions as simply a new, unorthodox parenting style. I have come to accept that I will not be able to change the things that I cannot change, a philosophical approach perhaps beset by tautological incoherence but one that provides someone incurably stubborn and perpetually irritable like me a dose of comfort. Yes, I'm sure my son is confused by my inconsistent reactions at times. Hell, with even the slightest bit of introspection, I'm confused by my inconsistency. And perhaps I should try to learn some modicum of patience in my parenting technique. In all likelihood, however, my reactions to my children's tantrums in the future will be forever predictable in their unpredictability—parenting books be damned.
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