Sisters Joy and Sorrow

I'm realizing as I reread my blog after an almost year long hiatus that if it serves for anything it’s as a heavy dose of birth control. Parenting definitely has its fair share of frustrations, and I suppose my blog is, in a big way, there to help me to be able to laugh about those times. Because no one can deny that a free blog is a whole lot cheaper than a stay in the psych ward.

I find that sometimes it's hard to talk about how wonderful I think our kids are and about all the things I think they do well. Not only because I don't want to be one of the "Christmas card parents" (see previous post), but because there is something so personal in those things.

There's that scene in Tangled in the very beginning when the voice of Eugene says that the whole story begins with a single drop of sunlight. When I think of how to describe how I feel about our kids, that's what comes to mind: a drop of sunlight. There's nothing that can describe what it's like to have this little baby laid in your arms and it doesn't matter how she got there, whether after the tears and pain of pregnancy and labor or the tears and pain of waiting for another woman to decide that she wants you to have her baby; but you look at that baby and all of a sudden you realize that this whole time there's been a part of your soul that's been missing. It may not happen the first time you see her; sometimes you're so traumatized from the stress of getting her that you don't feel anything for a while. But at some point you will look at her and you realize that you don't know how but somehow you've managed to stumble your way through life up till now even though there's always been this missing part of you, part of you that you didn't even know was gone but now can't live a moment without, and it's lying in your arms. And there's nothing you wouldn't do for that baby. And you know it will always be like that. That no matter what else may happen through the years, this is how you will always see her.

I guess that's why the hard times are so hard; because you understand her stubbornness and unreasonableness and determination to learn her own way. Because you know she got it from you. And there's this part of you that knows it will all be ok because you turned out all right. But then there's this part of you that remembers the times when you weren't quite so all right and you know she's going to make your mistakes and you won't even know what to do because you haven't even figured out the answers yet, so how can you possibly help her to? And then she looks at you in this way and you just know that she thinks that the sun and moon rise and set on your head and it fills you with love and terror all at the same time because you know she really means it, but you also know it won't last. Because the joys and beauties and contentment of parenthood are like those of life-they're so intermingled with pain and suffering and loss that sometimes you don't even know where the one ends and the other begins. And part of why you love it is because you know that it can't be this way forever, and so you want to cling onto those good times. And even so you yearn for them to grow up and to give you more independence but you know, deep down, that with that independence comes loss. The loss of being perfect. The loss of knowing everything. The loss of being everything that she'll ever need. And it will never, never come back.

I think that's why I need to laugh about being a Mom. Because the feelings are so deep that bringing them to the surface would be too much like standing naked before a crowd: not pleasant for either of us. But even though some times are hard, even impossibly so, no matter what may happen in the empty and unwritten future, no matter what, there will always exist that memory, as strong and real and tangible as living breath, of a little baby lying sleeping in your arms and the certain knowledge that for that moment the universe was perfect, and that moment stretched across eternity.

When You Start Saying "Poopy" In Public It's Time To Go Home

Anyone who has ever been to an indoor play space knows the deafening and overwhelming cacophony that inevitably accompanies them. The place to which I am taken back in my memory was no exception, and it is the first thing that comes to mind as I mentally revisit that day. The sound of screeching children reverberating off of concrete walls and floors echoed in the brain until it began to resemble a bowl of spaghetti after having been put in a blender on "mince" for 3 hours and then boiled.

It is always so much easier to lose ones children indoors than one would think. Having a confined area of play only serves as a challenge to a child to be abnormally devious in their especial ability that they all enjoy entertaining wherein they hide themselves away so effectively as to make their parents convinced that they have been abducted by some monster never to be seen again. It is only when the parent has passed through the panic stage and is well into the third stage of mourning that the child feels it is time to make themselves known. Our little Hannah has always been particularly adept at this adorable little trait. No matter how diligently you watch them the indefinable something that children possess that let's off a siren in their head every time their caregiver looks away is extremely adapted in her.

On this particular day I had just put the baby back in his carrier when I looked up and realized Hannah was nowhere to be seen. We were at one of those indoor places that are set up as a veritable maze of bounce houses and between their enormous size and the sheer force of the noise, (much of it screaming), they greatly resemble the overall effect of an alien invasion. I walked from place to place looking for Hannah and was getting seriously concerned when someone told me that they thought that she might be in *that* play set. I walked underneath the platform to try to see her between the slats. Suddenly a steady stream of water began pouring through the gaps in the wood onto the floor. "What kind of idiot would put a bucket of water in a children's play area?" was my first indignant thought. The truth came rushing in upon me like a bird of prey snatching up a mouse with the sole intention of dismembering and devouring it. There was no idiot. That is, no idiot except the mother who had in all seriousness thought that she was not putting society at large in danger by taking her newly "potty trained" child out in public.

I've mentioned before the glitches in the parental thought processes. It may be impossible to know the many and sundry ways in which these glitches are not only caused but create permanent brain damage to these poor, unsuspecting mothers and fathers. But potty training, we may safely say, is both one of the main causes as well as one of the main arenas for displaying this glitch. The pain and suffering involved in potty training is terrible and indescribable. No one can prepare you for it. When you find out you're pregnant no one tells you about it. They want you to be happy to have a baby. Plus, you wouldn't believe them anyway because your child will be a breeze to potty train, because as everyone knows there is no one whose child is more aptly raised as the standard of perfection than the child of the woman who hasn't actually born one yet.

What perhaps makes potty training even more painful is that there are 50 kajillion books out there that talk about it as if it could be done in an afternoon. Just follow this fail safe model, they tell you, and your child will be completely potty trained between snack time and dinner. The fact that the "simple methods" presented in these book generally take several hundred pages to explain should give the reader pause, but we parents never figure these things out until it's too late. We've spent the money on the book and have long since gone clinically insane anyway. Then through all the hysteria there's that sudden burst of lucidity that says "Wait! That lying liar!" But too late, too late.

In addition to the misuse of reason in parents when it comes to overestimating our children is the stories with which one comes into contact every once in a while about children who really do potty train in an afternoon. They see another kid use the potty once and that's all it takes for them to become an adept. For the sake of maintaining friendly relations with others the parents of such children should hide this information with as much vigor as they would seek to hide the fact that they had completely forgotten to feed their kid's fish and so covertly bought them one exactly like it to replace the one that they had starved. No one knows the difference and the knowledge would only cause unfortunate and unnecessary feelings.

I cannot, however, overstate the importance of NEVER NEVER NEVER VERBALLY MALIGNING SOMEONE ABOUT THEIR CHILD'S POTTY TRAINING, whether to the person's face or behind their back. I learned this particular lesson a few years ago when I went to a public pool with my sister and Aunt and all of our children. We were visiting in Utah and there had been some kind of state wide crisis involving kids getting sick from there being too much urine in the public pools or some such revolting thing that had resulted in the closure of all pools for a time, so everyone was a little on edge over the whole "bodily excrement in the pool" thing anyway. We had only been there about 1/2 hour when it was announced that the pool had to be vacated as a child had found something in the water that looked remarkably like chocolate but wasn't. It was going to take 45 minutes to an hour to clean, so you can imagine how happy all of the parents were to inform their children that they could wait an hour or go home. As for us, we dragged our sobbing group back home, vowing that we would take them back *soon*. I should have realized something was wrong when our 3 year old ran to me, before there had been any discovery, and gratuitously informed me that she "hadn't gone poopy". In my mind I wondered at the thoughtlessness of some parents for letting their children swim without protection. Some people are, after all, so very selfish. Then we got home and went to put the children in the bath. Our child's diaper was removed. It would doubtless be superfluous at this point for me to tell you that it became very evident exactly who it was had caused the pool being vacated. My Aunt still refers to this day as "Poogate". (Incidentally, if any of you ever tell my daughter I told you this story before she's old enough to be able to laugh about it, say 55 or so, I'll say you're a liar). More than once did I thank the Lord for the tremendous pressure that's put on us to not be back-biting witches, (or at least not to verbalize such), and that I had kept all my uppity thoughts about selfish, thoughtless parents to myself. Incidentally, our daughter did have on a swim diaper. Turns out they're great at not dissolving into a mess of white unidentifiable goo upon contact with water, but not that great when it comes to actually catching the stuff with which they're meant to be filled.

One of my favorite lessons that comes from potty training is finding how quickly a child is capable of completely stripping down in public places. Most of the stories I've heard regard this one. Little naked bodies have been chased everywhere from malls to fast food joints to sandy playgrounds. (The daughter of one of my friends even performed this amazing trick on a playground and then with astonishing rapidity flew down a sandy slide with a bare behind. And let it be noted as a reflection on children everywhere that even the extreme discomfort which must have followed had no impact of causing any sense of compunction in the child.) And there is probably nowhere in this nation where children are allowed that hasn't had an article of urine-soaked clothing make contact with it at some point. (Think of THAT next time you're at a cute little family restaurant). It's just when you think that they've really got it and it's time to go out that they get you. And they will get you.

In the end, in spite of all your promises to yourself of being the "big person" in all this and standing upon the principles of discipline and tough love, you end up doing whatever it takes to get your child to use the toilet. One friend even kept their little kid potty in their daughter's closet and called it the "potty room" as it was the only place where she would use it. I'm not sure how they figured this out, but it can be considered a great blessing to their family that they did. Our particular method of strong discipline and tough love involved giving the children enough candy to put them into a coma. Some let their children run around naked, give them cold baths, hold them down on the potty, sit and read them books for hours while they sit on the toilet, only to give up and let them down at which point the child runs out onto the carpet and then pees. And all of us burst into distracted, tear-filled pleadings, sometimes with the child, sometimes with the child's Maker. The point is, parents will try anything. And they should not be harshly judged for so doing. After all, it could be your carpet that the neighbor kid is messing on if their parents don't give them the right motivation not to do so.

I must say that, so far, potty training has been the most dehumanizing thing I have yet done as a parent, or as a life form. The combination of the Hell-bent determination of the child not to do it along with the horrific nature of what happens when it goes wrong all serve as a catalyst for absolute, abject misery. And, unless your child is one of those obnoxious potty training prodigies (which you've been warned not to talk about in public lest you encourage your neighbors to write messages in your yard with gasoline), there's simply no getting out of it. It HAS to be done. It's not like eating with silverware where they'll eventually figure it out but until then carry sanitizer. They have to potty train by a certain age or they can't go to Preschool. They can't go to dance classes. You can't drop them off places and get a few moment alone and thus maintain any sense you may have left of autonomy. No, it has to be done. And it hurts. But, as the great philosopher Gary Larson so aptly illustrated it in his "The Far Side" cartoon where an old cowboy was dying a horrific death from having his body shot through with dozens of Indian arrows and with his dying breath tell his buddy, "Ya it hurts, Sam, but it's a good kind of hurt".

Merry Christmas from the Grey's!

The last year for the Grey family has been rather turbulent. We've moved across the country, started a whole new (and first) career, Matt graduated from UNC with his PhD, we've built a house, went from 3 kids to 6 kids and back to 3 again, and have basically joined the ranks of the working American. Now, all I have to do is add a few little tidbits about how our 7 year old has already been accepted to MIT and the baby is speaking 3 languages fluently and this could be a Christmas letter.

But no, I shall abstain from any self-aggrandizement. Not really out of any virtue but mostly because I'm a terrible liar. In fact, it has come to my attention that I am really missing out on the real point of a blog which is, evidently, to lie up the wazoo. It is no longer enough to send out the yearly fantasy missive wherein parents glorify the perfections of a child who only 3 weeks previous they were seriously considering donating to science. Now it is a constant flood of delicately censored half-truths that, taken into combination with one another, create a lie so very separate from actual reality that it would make even someone as practiced in the art of out and out lying as, say, a Congressman blush to mention it. Here's how they go.

"Today, after running 13 miles, making a 5 course breakfast and finishing Junior's Latin lessons,"...No, Junior, put down the cat..."we went for a little stroll to the old folks home where Junior charmed his aged neighbors with Beethoven's 5th while I taught the dear things how to crochet baseball mitts"...Junior, if you don't stop swinging the cat by it's tail I'm going to have to lock you in the garage again..."Following this we stopped on the way home to serve soup at a homeless shelter and drop off some designer coats that I threw together last night with my needle (you know how using a sewing machine just smacks to me of laziness)"...Junior, I've told you, Crisco does not go in shoes! I'm serious!..."Then we followed it up with lunch. Nothing big, just bread that I ground from wheat with a stone and honey from our hives we keep in the yard. Then it was time for a nap (I insist he takes one for three hours) and then off to soccer, baseball, football, piano, Boy Scouts, swimming and Jewish harp lessons. We like for Junior to be well rounded"...Junior! I said no fire in the house!..."Then it was out to the garden where we tenderly worked our produce. We, of course, grow enough to be completely self-sustaining"...Junior! How many times have I told you that you have to be fully clothed when you go outside!...

The thing is, we all know that that's exactly what's going on. So my question is, who are we trying to impress? Don't get me wrong, I'm all for women who are strongly self-sufficient. Heaven knows that if our family ever becomes dependent on my ability to feed and clothe them with anything other than Target to provide it we'll all be dead within half a week. But why are we women so ashamed of admitting when we're in over our heads? Why are we so afraid of someone finding us out? That we're (gasp) not absolutely perfect? I'm not talking here about feeling glee in finding out a woman who seemed perfect turns out to have serious problems. To rejoice in another persons failings is simply pettiness that results from a lack of confidence. But aren't the people to whom we look up the most the ones who we know are fully aware of their faults? The ones who are hopelessly far from perfect, but who fight the fight anyway? Who see the good in themselves in spite of all the bad and consequently are able to do so in the people around them as well? Those times when we're in over our heads, and life is crashing down; is it the perfect woman we want to go see? Or the one who occasionally shows up to church with mismatched shoes, but can laugh about it? How much more inspiring are the stories of women who are strong in spite of their flaws than the one who is only strong in hiding them. I am so grateful for the many wonderful, beautiful, strong, brilliant and flawed women in my life. The ones that don't always say the right thing, but yet always manage to say just what I need to hear. Who don't always have a clean house, but the door is always open. Who don't always make it out of their pajamas, but who would give the shirt off their back for a stranger. Thank you. And in your honor I say women of the world unite! Throw off the encumbrances of an archaic perception of the accomplished woman! After all, we have nothing to loose but our stone-ground wheat.

Technology

As many of you know, I am in deep mourning right now as the result of a painful loss suffered recently. The pain is still a little near, and it’s hard to talk about, but for the sake of general enlightenment I’ll open my heart and discuss it. About two weeks ago my iPod died. It wasn’t a pleasant death. It was, in fact, decidedly unpleasant. In short, it involved the toilet. Without going into unnecessary details about my bodily functions suffice it to say that I forgot that I had put it in my back pocket. To loose the iPod under any circumstances would have been wrenchingly painful, but to see it loose its life in such an ignominious manner, spluttering its last wheezy gasps in raw sewage, was almost more than I could bear.

Compounding the general grief that is caused by loosing something one didn’t have the money for in the first place, (fortunately we have credit cards which is just like getting things for free), was the fact that my iPod was my almost only means of connecting to the internet. As stated in the previous post, which I’m sure summoned up your most deeply sympathetic feelings, I very rarely have computer time. Consequently the iPod provided my almost sole means of maintaining contact with the outside world as well as the almost sole means by which the outside world maintained contact with me. It was in thus loosing said iPod that I was instantly entirely cut off from humanity. In less than a moment I became a thing exiled from my fellow man; cast off, repudiated, internetless. As far as society was concerned I was in the same class with the Neanderthal man so long ago plucked from the evolutionary stream and drowned.

The odd thing was, as I kept reminding myself, I had grown up almost my entire life without the internet. Some of you young things may find this astonishing but there was actually a time, not so very long ago, when, if you wanted to get hold of someone you would pick up your phone, dial a number, and talk to them. (Back then the numbers on a phone actually represented numbers, not letters. We were crazy like that. Also, generally speaking, the only times that you called people were when you weren’t already talking to a real, live, present person. This is quite different from now when the only time people seem to talk on the phone is when they are physically with other people with whom, in a more barbaric age, they would otherwise be expected to communicate). If you wanted an item that was hard to find you had to manually hunt it down. And if you wanted to get a song you had to buy the entire album in a store. All of these actions, of course, requiring genuine personal contact. The fearful result of such enforced associations was, of course, an alarming potential for the breaking down of natural societal barriers that resulted in sometimes appalling personal exchanges, (for example, when you bought gas you had to go inside and talk to the cashier). I kid you not. You can read about it. Which brings up another point, that when you wanted to research a subject, you, in all truth, had to read books about it. Entire books. On paper. With bindings. If you were lucky you could find one with a good index so you could skip as much as possible and get back to calling people on the phone and grinding wheat in stone bowls.

As I say, most of my life was spent in such pointless interpersonal communications. It’s only been the last few years of my life in which I have had the luxury of being able to research, purchase, and generally waste away entire years of my life in a mindless barrage of intellectual compost all without having the plebian inconvenience of having to associate with anyone. What a shock it was, therefore, to find how blank my existence suddenly became. At this time Matt was also out of town with his precious computer, and the shock was severe. What if there was a crisis? How would it come to my attention? What if a disaster was looming? Who would think to tell me? What if Jennifer Aniston started dating someone? I would be the last to know. The consequences may have proven catastrophic. Fortunately, our house phone, (that’s a phone that is connected to wires and you put it on your counter or a table), still worked and I was able to call my father in Utah for emergency emailing.

Fortunately the computer came back, and Matt along with it, and I am able, of an evening, to sneak said computer away and consume my life in self-indulgent waste as unknown ever in the history of the world until the advent of said internet. Now, if only I could get back to carrying it around in my pocket and thus be able to avoid ever being forced to think or interact under any circumstances…ah, the joys of the technological age.

Grad school is not for the faint of heart

A few years ago I was talking to a friend of mine whose husband had just finished his PhD at Harvard. We asked her what she had thought of the whole experience and I was more than a little surprised when she commented that she had "HATED IT". I was disappointed in my friend. I expected more. It hurt me to know that she had so little support for her husband. A wife should be supportive. After all, I was supportive. I liked what my husband did. I didn't complain. How sad that more wives weren't like me. It was unfortunate to hear about my friends experience, but oh how gratifying to realize my own impressive wifeliness. At this time I hardly need mention that Matt had only just started his PhD. But that mattered little. I knew my character well enough to know that whatever was important to Matt was important to me. What a blessing it is to know oneself so intimately.

As the years progressed there were little changes. I should say that, as much as I love my husband, he is a neurotic. It's not that he's ambitious as much as he expects perfection of himself not only unequaled in his peers but inconceivable even to the most aesthetic monk. For example, during his Greek class for a Master's degree he took his test and KNEW that he had failed. FAILED. There was no hope for how impossibly he had failed his exam. Consequently he was going to fail the program. He would never graduate. He would be lucky to get a job at McDonald's. The only chance we had was if the highest grade scored was low enough to make the curve advantageous. He was the only student in the class to get 100%.

I was used to Matt's anxiety and took it into due consideration when congratulating myself on my filially supportive nature. Then came the oral exams. That was a period of blackness to which I wish never to return in thought or act. Still I bubbled with wifely enthusiasm. Because I knew, after the exams, came the writing of the dissertation. This phase was to my imagination as manna in the wilderness. The nice break before "real life" started. Matt would have his own schedule. Be writing only about things that interested him. Could work wherever he wanted. It would be a time of traveling, vacations, family bonding galore. Things didn't quite work out that way at first. But that was just because Matt was in the research phase. Research is always laborious and time intensive. It was hardly an example of the glorious days to follow. All we had to do was wait for the research to be collected. Any day now. Any time...

Eventually the research was collected. Now it was time to relax. Just as soon as the introduction was written. Anyone whose ever written anything knows that the introduction is always the most difficult. So much depends on it. The way that the reader views the whole work is dependent on how you introduce it. The regular chapters would be much easier.

Needless to say, not only did it never get easier, but the difficulties of writing the %$&@ thing was compounded by Matt's own native hysteria. Before when Matt was stressed he would display it with bouts of pathological lapses in reason. (The conviction of an inevitable future asking "would you like fries with that" in five different languages, two of which are living, usually being the end result.) With the dissertation, however, the effect has been different. Not the end result of perpetual minimum wage, mind you (although he has moved up to the possibility of working at Home Depot), but whereas before his anxiety was demonstrated by persistent and unreasonable dismay it has now evolved into a state of neurotic and pathological despair. He lives under constant conviction that he got into UNC under false pretenses and under some sort of cosmic combination of powers entirely outside of his control his professors have labored under a perpetual delusion that he actually knows what he's talking about. With each new assignment or test he writhes under the conviction that this time it will be brought to bear upon them that Matt, in fact, was lucky to graduate from kindergarten. How does one support ones husband when he lives in a state of a perpetuity of unreasonable illogic?

Now, don't get me wrong. I love and support my husband. I think he's wonderful. I know that he's going to do awesome. But right now he's hanging over my shoulder saying that he has to have the computer back and I HATE IT.

Why parents were never meant to have children

There's a disturbing misunderstanding that's been circulated throughout humanity, since approximately, (as far as my sources are able to indicate), the dawn of time. It is that otherwise sane, healthy, happy people should have babies. Evolutionarily, there is so much evidence against this notion that one barely knows where to begin. If we were meant to have children, why only two hands? Why the bestowal mental capacity in any form when, beginning with labor, it's just to be turned into radioactive goo anyway? Why no hidden weapons that pop out at opportune moments for the purpose of terrifying said child into docility? You see? It just doesn't make sense.

Some of you already know the purpose of my doubt. After all, if we were meant to have children, why would we need sleep? Our little baby, John, has made the decision-on behalf of our entire family mind you, (well, me anyway)-that we don't need to sleep anymore. His control over such measures is impressive. Basically, it consists of screaming at such a decibel that it may result in permanent hearing damage as well as bleeding ulcers. Upon feeding for several hours it is then his delight to head-butt me over and over and over and over and...well, you get the point. This he does until I get up and take him on a little unscheduled tour of his domain. It comforts him to come up all unawares upon his little kingdom and surprise it like, just to make sure that everything is running according to specifications. It's good for morale, believes John, and creates a sort of underlying anxiety in the environment that is highly advantageous to all children in creating an atmosphere of perpetual stupefaction in their caregivers, consequently giving the child a permanent sense of moral and mental superiority over their elders.

After a general overview a more specific inspection is usually called for. This is done by his throwing himself out of my arms, with me barely preventing him from crushing his head in, and going through all his toys. At this point I usually do a run of the Netflix on the BluRay player. The other night, for example, I saw a documentary on stress. This particular documentary may have been an unfortunate choice, as it hit a number of tender nerves. It certainly seemed to me that they could have saved a lot of time and money by simply filming us.

After a few minutes it suddenly occurs to John that several seconds have gone by in which he hasn't been the center of the universe. Such injustice is not to be born and so he crawls to me, all pathetic like, and raises his arms up to me as if all of the energy he had left was entirely expended in the effort. He then looks up at me with an expression that embodies all the pain and sorrow in the universe. Somehow it happens, (though logically it doesn't make any sense) that at this point I feel like I have done something horrible to the boy. That I have neglected him in some tragic way that, was it not for his angelic temper, would result in his inevitable future delinquency. So I pick him up, and walk. And walk. And walk. Why I haven't lost 30 lbs with all the walking is a mystery unexplained by even the most technical science, and one I resent forcibly. By this point it's about 6 in the morning. (This generally starts between 1 and 3) and it's Matt's turn to take him while I go back to bed where I lay cursing everything I can think of until I fall asleep. By the time I wake up it's time for Matt to leave for work and he passes off the boy to be put down for his morning nap. It is now when the greatness of John's baby power and subversiveness of his tyrannical nature comes to light. After a literally sleepless night, wearing out the carpet and wishing for death, I look at John, ready to give him what for, and he smiles at me. Invariably, the first thing he does when he sees me in the morning is give me a smile that would make the angels weep. Suddenly the previous night is erased. The baby not only has never caused one moments anxiety but is such a pinnacle of infant perfection that I would personally tear limb from limb anyone who even suggested the possibility that any other child was in any way comparable to the perfections of ours. It's a plot. An elaborate plot plotted by babies everywhere for all time to slowly but surely degrade the mental and physical capacity of adults everywhere so that by the time they are teenagers all that is left of their parents is a mass of undulating jelly that can be appropriately molded to their own purposes. I've figures it all out, you see. Not that there's anything I can to do impede its inevitability. It makes the whole thing rather sad, really.

Now you all know the reason why I haven't blogged in two months. It's the baby's fault and I take absolutely no responsibility for it. Feel free to blame him entirely. I know I do.

Life-Proof Your Child in Only 3,865,029,526.3 Steps

As a result of reading the latest addition of Parent’s magazine I just wanted to take a moment to shout out a “congratulations” to all of you who were born before 1990. Clearly the only reason that you are still alive is due to highly evolved genes and superior breeding on behalf of your progenitors. Apparently the survival capacity of children has reduced at a rate so drastic that the only hope of actually keeping them alive is in strapping them in body pillows and locking them in a sterilized room.

This is best evinced in the evolution of the playground slide. None of these wimpy plastic slides for us. No sir. Not only were the slides all 30 feet high and made of metal that was designed to harness the heat and power of the sun specifically to radiate it into the child’s nether regions, but they were built at such an angle that by the time you got to the bottom you had reached such a velocity that you were shot out at about 45 miles per hour and covered with 3^rd degree burns. And none of this bark stuff. When you finally did hit the ground it was onto cement or dirt so compact that it would destroy a jack hammer. Those were the days.

Parenting advice today is made under the assumption that you have an entire entourage of assistants who do nothing but follow your child around like a veritable force field protecting said child from any object that could cause danger in any potentially conceivable way, such as knives and high fructose corn syrup. The amount of vegetables alone that are absolutely necessary for children to eat lest they become comatose or, worse, overweight (break to wait for screams of horror to die down) according to all the latest research is enough work for 13 professionals who do nothing else but feed the kid. First, there are the sheer numbers. Today’s child must eat, on a daily basis, enough vegetables to feed entire Eastern European nations.

Next, there can be no repeats. If you try to give your child two servings of the same vegetable, or even the same colored vegetable, they will probably die. Nor can they be cooked. Nor can they be made in any way edible. They must be taken rectally.

It is absolutely necessary today that children must be perfect physical and intellectual specimens. If you don’t play Mozart to them in utero they may run the risk of growing up with a (gasp) average intelligence. By the time they start kindergarten they must have a sound understanding of the theory of relativity and strategic business sense. And as far as a child having the chance to work out their own arguments with their friends, the modern advent of play dates supervised by 15 parents have ensured the utter impossibility of it. Add to this that everything you read about raising children well always advertise with catchy little slogans like “the happiest baby”, “the most well behaved child”, “the best student”, “the best eater”. Do we really only teach our children good behavior so as to ensure that they are better than other children, and to consequently feel that we must be better than other parents?

For myself, I’m on the lookout for a nice metal slide.