Tag Archives: Sons

You kids can’t have nice things

I grew up in a big family. As one of the youngest, I lived under whatever reputation my older siblings had created for us, no matter how poorly I fit that reputation.

The reputation that became firmly attached to us was that of being destroyers of all things pleasant, carefully crafted, or well-intentioned. It didn’t matter that I cared for my toys and did not try to break things merely because broken was the natural state in our world. I was a cemented piece in the group, you kids, as in “You kids can’t have nice things.”

My only relief was the hope that when I grew up I could surround myself with things that were not broken and people who did not shake their heads at me with the sad knowledge that it was only a matter of time.

Fortunately, I was never able to afford the expensive sorts of nice things. The nice things I collected as a young adult were modest. My possessions were not impressive, but they were not broken either. Against all odds, I proved that I could have nice things.

For a while.

Then came children – two boys who love to use all the strength possessed by their little fingers to affect change. Everything they touch is altered by their hands. I’m learning to think of these objects not as broken, just different than they used to be.

Playing with cat and bus

Younger children sometimes labor under the misapprehension that upside-down is adequately broken. It is not. His big brother will teach him how to thoroughly break things.

At first, I tried to move things out of the reach of active, little hands. But there is only so much space up high. Some things must be left to take their chances. Consequently, I now have a fine collection of CD cases that don’t stay shut, filled with ripped paperwork and the wrong CDs, which are all scratched to hell. It’s a good thing only old people use such ancient media anymore.

The boys’ aunt gave us a German cuckoo clock. The clock is too beautiful for us. If we had any gratitude, we’d buy a better house to move the clock into. The boys, unused to seeing such fine things in our house, were overcome with the desire to handle it with their inquisitive, spasmodic hands. I quickly hung it high on the wall, much to their mutual disappointment.

Reaching for the cuckoo

A scene from the baby’s fantasy, in which he can reach the clock and straighten out that crazy bird once and for all.

Every hour, a bird shoots out of the clock to renew their disappointment. If only they could get their paws on that clock for two minutes, what happy boys they’d be.

Yesterday, I brought sleeping Little Brother in from the car as the clock struck one. The cuckoo popped out and did his thing. The boy woke and pointed at the clock. “Ooooh,” he said, before dropping back to sleep. For those not fluent in Babyish, “Ooooh” has many meanings, depending upon the context. Here, it means: “That bird is adequate. One day I’ll get up there to yank on him, and then he’ll be perfect.”

Don’t get the idea that I resent my children’s object-altering hands. I adore those four hands. I wasted years running away. Those hands have returned me to my roots.

I can’t have nice things.

I’m home.

A good zoo will have some animals to compliment its train

We’ve upgraded our zoo experience. We discovered a new zoo that is much more interesting than our little hometown zoo. Instead of merely watching freight trains pass by on the adjacent tracks, we can ride on a little train at the new zoo. If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, you know that my son judges zoos based upon the quality of trains they offer. My son judges all public attractions by the quality of trains they offer.

Zoo train

Our favorite zoo animal in our new favorite zoo.

We didn’t let any animals distract us on our way to the train depot. The engine sounded suspiciously like a tractor to me, but the boy did not take note of that incongruity. Our rail journey began at the petting zoo, where railroad gates kept the public off our track. From there, we went directly off into the woods, where the only animals we saw were the occasional squirrel and the free-range mosquitos.

The ride lasted about 15 minutes. Having gotten it out of the way, we surmised that the boy might be able to show some attention to the animals within the petting zoo. This miscalculation hadn’t accounted for the railroad gates.

If one is not actually riding on the train, the next best place to be is standing next to the railroad crossing as the train comes through. Consequently, as all the other children in the world were petting baby goats and miniature ponies, or getting spat upon by a temperamental lama, my son and I sat on a bench next to the railroad crossing, waiting for the sound of an approaching train.

Crossing signal

The best spot in the whole zoo, for those not riding the train.

The train must have gone out just before we got there, because it seemed as though we waited for a good while. Perhaps they were waylaid by a marauding band of chipmunks. Whatever the delay, my son used the time to closely examine the crossing signal. He is fascinated by crossing signals. He would have one in his bedroom if he could devise a way to get it there.

All around, children held themselves rapt in the antics of the animals. A little girl voiced her disgust that the pony seemed enamored of his own poop. Many little hands held out pellets for scrambling goats. Young people learned valuable lessons about the personal space needs of a lama. Meanwhile, one four-year-old considered the odds of being able to manually pull down the railroad gate and likely consequences of doing so.

Waving to the train

A bittersweet moment: near the train, yet not on the train.

These calculations were unnecessary, as we soon heard the train approaching. The boy stepped back and watched the gates fall of their own accord. As he stood outside the gate, the train passed by, making it a truly wonderful world. Having experienced the railroad from both sides of the crossing gate, the boy was satisfied at last.

Now, we could visit the giraffes, zebras, and other superfluous fluff that zoos sometimes install as extra frill around their trains.

You can lead a kid to water, but it might cost you

Sometimes the idea of a thrill ride is very inviting, especially when that thrill ride is somewhere else.

As you get closer to the ride, and begin to appreciate how tall it is or how fast it goes, the thrill can slip into fear. I’ve had this experience, and now my son has, too.

We were visiting a hotel that housed a couple of enclosed water slides. We had to bide our time in a regular pool for a while because a thunder storm had closed down the metal slides. My son has a love-hate relationship with water, so we passed the time having a squirt gun war that consisted of him squirting me and then complaining of Geneva Convention violations every time I attempted to squirt him back.

He rarely entered the pool, though the water barely reached his waist, because standing up to your hips in water is half-way to the horror of putting your head underwater. It’s a slippery slope, and even a four-year-old can figure out that the slopes must be slipperier around the pool, or they wouldn’t yell at you so much for running.

Just as our little swimmer was in danger of getting wet, we learned that the slides had reopened. We hurried back, excited about the thrills that lay in store. In our minds, those thrills were enclosed completely within the envelopes of our comfort levels.

1900 water slide

I didn’t get a picture of our water slide. Fortunately, these 110-year-old kids got one of theirs. Just imagine this, with more metal, curves, and color.

At the stairs leading to the top of the slides was a wooden squirrel with a measuring stick. The squirrel said you had to be yea tall to ride the slides. While I picked out a two-person tube, my son approached the squirrel. Every step of the way he carefully examined the stairway that rose so high that it disappeared into the roof of the building.

I could see the exact moment when that squirrel changed his tune. As my son drew close, the squirrel whispered that you have to be shorter than the line to have an excuse for not riding the slides. My son stood up next to the yard stick. Too his dismay, he learned that he stood a good two inches above the exemption line.

Stripped of his technical disqualification, the boy’s only recourse was the ugly truth. “I don’t want to go.”

Caution can be a good thing. This boy’s cautious nature has surely saved us trips to the E.R. Yet, what parent wants their kid to be the one who is sidelined by caution while the other kids are having fun? There has to be a middle ground. That middle ground was the tube slide.

Mother and father conspired to trick coax the boy into helping us carry the tube up the stairs. At the top, it took 15 minutes of negotiation and the bribe of new camouflage shorts and a trip to the toy store to get him into the tube. We had to launch quickly, so he ended up riding with his mother.

playing in the kiddie pool

Fearlessly protecting his little brother from water spouts in the kiddie pool. No time for any more thrill rides.

I went down both slides, and the one he took was much less intense. Still, he did not enjoy it. This made us feel bad for a while, but it didn’t harm him, and now he gets to collect his rewards. All in all, he’s a better man for it.

As for the parents, well, the slides were supposed to be cheap entertainment. Let’s see how much that one ride ends up costing us.

It’s a long story

Lately, whenever I ask my son a question like, “How did the [busted item of the day] get broken?” he heaves a big sigh and replies, “It’s a long story.”

He does not attempt to relate that long story, because it is clear that a father with such a short attention span would not be interested in the burdensome details.

“It’s a long story,” is not at all an introduction to an informative tale. Rather, it is the boy’s way of telling me that a lot of unnecessary information will not fix [busted item of the day]. It is his counsel to not cry over spilled milk and just get on with the business of living life. What’s done is done.

I could not figure out where the boy picked up such an evasive strategy, until I recalled a conversation we had at a restaurant a while ago.

Out of the blue, and just as I was about to shovel the first forkful into my mouth, the boy asked me, “When I was a baby, how did I get into Mommy’s belly?”

Why do they always pounce when I’m weak from hunger?

Put on the spot, my panicked mind bounced between two options. “You see, son, when a man loves a woman . . .” was the option from which my mind ran screaming.

“It’s a long story,” was the defense mechanism for which my mind leapt. It worked, or so I thought at the time.

Before the boy could renew his assault, a man wearing an Air Force uniform was seated nearby. My son, who is going through a period of fascination with all things military, forgot about the origins of his species. “Is that man in the Army?” he asked.

I explained that he was in the Air Force, which was like the Army, but with jets. My son soaked it all in. “Why don’t you go in the Army, Daddy?” he asked.

“I’m not so good at following orders,” I replied.

“You could be the boss of the Army. Then you could give all the orders.”

“But I’m too old. They wouldn’t even take me.”

“Well, you wouldn’t have to be in the battle,” he assured me, as if the Army has a row of rocking chairs ringing the combat area for its aged recruits.

Old soldiers

Maybe I could join up with this outfit of old soldiers. We’d play cards, listen to the battle on the wireless, and, time permitting, argue about where babies come from.

We then went on to discuss related topics. The subject of where babies come from was forgotten. I congratulated myself for dodging a bullet, for the time being anyway.

Well, maybe he forgot about the topic of the conversation, but he did not forget about the device Daddy used to steer the conversation elsewhere. He remembered that all too well. Now I have a house full of broken stuff and a child full of long stories that are too cumbersome for Daddy’s simple mind.

You reap what you sow.

And that baby question will come up again anyway. How will I handle it next time? Well, that’s a long story.