The Duffer

by Ian Robinson

DUFFER ……..the modern art of child rearing

By Ian Robinson  

People always congratulate you for the wrong reasons when they find out you’re half of a couple that’s having a baby.

There are, of course, certain exceptions that see the congratulations die in the mouth, like word cars on the tongue highway that collided and exploded into flame, leaving behind a taste like burned toast.  Such as when the expecting couple take up a pair of chairs in Grade 9 math class.  Or if she’s in Grade 9 and he’s 32.  (Unless, of course, he’s Jerry Lee Lewis and everybody’s just glad she wasn’t anything closer than a second cousin.  They didn’t used to call it hillbilly music for nothing, now, did they?)

Or is you and the missus just came back from attending the graduation of your youngest child from university, heave a great sigh of relief because thank God that’s over, and you get home, the missus starts puking every morning and that stick thing in the home pregnancy kit turns pink.  At which point your friends are laughing their asses off and your grown-up kids are looking at you like pervert lunatics because at your age, you’re still doing it.  Ick!

But aside from those moments, you announce you’re having a baby and people congratulate you.  Like you accomplished something difficult.  Now, I’m getting on in years, but if I remember correctly, it isn’t too tough.  I mean, the making a baby bit.  (Rising them, now that’s a different matter.  Take it from a guy who has one just about to hit kindergarten and another trapped in junior high puberty door-slamming, foot-stomping, I-hate-you-you-hate-me-my-God-I-wish-I-was-adopted insanity.)  You tell people you’re going to have a baby and the way people act, you’d think you cured on kind of cancer, hit 50 home runs or figured out how to get the Liberals out of office without hiding on a rooftop and peering through a telescopic sight.

But if you decide to have a baby, you do deserve congratulations.  Not on having a baby.  Any moron can have a baby and, it the porch monkeys I see roaming around are any indication, most of them do.  More than once.

Nope.  Congratulations ought to come due if you decide to have a baby.  That you actually thought about it for a minute before you grabbed your belt buckle, climbed into the back of the El Camino, and went for it.

That means you’re already a good 20, maybe even 30 I.Q. points ahead of the rest.  Most people don’t decide to have children,  Just sort of occurs one day and the guy is walking around saying, “Hey! How did THAT happen?” And the woman is giving him that look.  You know the one.  The Look.  The one that says, “I swear, if I wasn’t carrying his child, I’d drop a brick on his head while he sleeps.”

That one.

(And you just inadvertently and unconsciously rubbed the little dent on the left side of your forehead and are thinking: Hey!  That’s how that… and then forgot all about it because you saw something shiny and got distracted.  You thought women were naturally smarter than you, right?

Wrong.

You were about even till you started cohabitating and she broke out the brick.  I’d think a way out of the problem but…my wife’s got a brick too.  Hey, Have you seen the new two-dollar coin?  Shiny.  Very, very shiny.  Polar bear pretty.)

So anyway, you let babies into your life, wither on purpose or by mistake, and you’ve got all these plans.  First on the agenda:  You are gonna be so much better at this than those lousy so-and-so’s who raised you.  Raised you?  Hah!  As if.  You basically raised yourself didn’t you?

Had to.  Your parents were uncommunicative, unkind, unpleasant, mired in the traditions of the past, rigid about gender roles.

They actually (GULP) spanked you.

You?  You, on the other hand, as you watch your first child grow in the belly of your Significant Other, are a unique little snowflake of a person, aren’t you?  You’re special.  You’re…better than those creatures who raised you.  Oh, sure, they probably tried their best, only their best wasn’t very good.

And you get to feel all smug and morally superior until you’ve gone without sleep of three of four years, don’t get the least bit perturbed when you’re on an airplane and your kid’s head spins around like Linda Blair in The Exorcist and pukes in your lap, and are actually at the point that when any child over the age of eight walks into the room, you take out your wallet without thinking about it, and hand the kid a ten-spot.  At that precise moment in your life you forget that you’re a unique little snowflake of a person, you forget that you were going to raise children better than you were raised and you find yourself saying stuff like this:

• “Stop whining.  It’ll stop bleeding in a couple of minutes.”

• “Don’t make me get up.”

• “Because I said so.”

• “Look, this hurts me more than it hurts you.”

• “You make me get out of this chair, somebody’s going to be sorry.”

• “Actually, I was lying.  This doesn’t hurt me at all.  But your butt is gonna hurt like hell, bucko.”

• “You think the rules don’t apply to you?  You think you’re special mister?”

• “Why is it raining?  It’s raining because God is crying.  Because you made Him sad when you didn’t’ listen to me.”

• “It hurts when you do that?  So don’t do that.”

• “Seriously. You. Do. Not. Want. To. Make. Me. Get. Up.”

• “You think I’m made of money?”

• “You put it on your plate, you eat it.  Not my fault your eyes are bigger than your stomach.”

• “When you’re harrowed the ground I’ve plowed…” (I have no idea what the hell this one means, but I say it to my kids because my old man used to say it to me.  It’s some agriculture thing. Agriculture is like golf course maintenance, only you get to eat what you grow which is worthwhile even if you can’t play golf on it.  No. Seriously,  Even if you’re one of the golfers I know – and I know about six of them – who doesn’t actually eat, agriculture is where hops come from which is what they use to make beer.  All of the sudden agriculture is important, isn’t it?)

• “As long as you’ve got your feet under my table, you’ll obey my rules.”

• “What’s it say on the top of this here piece of paper?  Student Achievement Report?  Aren’t you supposed to, I dunno, ACHIEVE something to get one of these?”

• “What the hell is that ungodly racket you’re playing?  Why can’t you play something normal and nice, like Black Sabbath or Alice Cooper or Megadeath?”

• “Why, when I was young, we respected our elders.”

• “They call it dope for a reason, young man.  They don’t call it smart guy, now do they?”

• “That driveway isn’t going to shovel itself, young lady.”

• “Seriously, I get out of this chair somebody’s going to be sporting a case of red-ass.”

You catch yourself saying any of this stuff and, guess what?  You’re not disappointed in yourself.  You’re not unhappy.  You’re not freaked out and goony.  Nope.  Why not?  Why not when you had such high hopes for yourself?

You have to have had more than five consecutive hours of sleep any time over the past five years to be a unique little snowflake of a person with hopes and dreams and really goofy ideas about child rearing.

Once you’re in that situation, you are your parents.

And you’re so tired…that’s OK with you.

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