When someone asks you for something they can’t find on their own, telling them, essentially, “It’s right where I put it! How is this unclear to you?” is just a tad less than helpful.
Remember, the person you’re rude to today, may be the person who may or may not be giving you CPR tomorrow.
“L. was so adorable the other day when you let him play with his first piece of toilet paper that he tore from the roll all by himself,” L’s mother said to me this morning. “It was so cute when he tore the paper in half, and had this look on his face like, “Hey! Now I have two!”
“Yes . . . it was.” I agreed slowly. “Wouldn’t have been quite as adorable if it had been his first puppy though.”
Over the weekend I ended up doing a little impromptu research, and made an important discovery:
There is direct correlation between the chance that I will not enjoy an event, and the number of porta-potties said event requires.
I was tormenting someone earlier today (No, not like that, it was on the phone . . . and not like that either.) to such an extent that she felt the need to be snarky and give me her “safeword” (Ahem . . . you’ll have to look that one up yourself) if I wasn’t going to change the subject. While I felt this was uncalled for (I wasn’t being that mean to her, honest!), I still felt it only fair to give her my safeword in return:
“Back off or I swear before all that is holy you’d better kill me now because if I get my hands on you, I will tear out your spleen with my teeth!”
Hers took less time to say.
Fatherhood, on occasion, brings its own little . . . unexpected moments into one’s life. Some things (like diapers not smelling like roses), if you don’t see coming, you really only have yourself to blame. Other things however . . .
Let me put it to you this way:
L’s newfound mobility I saw coming, and even though I didn’t specifically see coming his current fascination with crawling over to and chewing on cords and cables, the general behavior was one I anticipated.
Just not enough to get a wireless trackball for my computer before this started. Still, I’m nothing if not inventive in the face of damage involving electricity and baby teeth, so I dug out an old wire mesh play cage we used to have for a ferret, prompting L’s mother to say “You’re not putting him in that when you’re at the computer!”
“You’re right,” I agreed. “I’m not,” I said as I used the cage to set up a temporary barrier shutting my work area away from the rest of room. So as I write this now, I’m sitting behind bars.
Sometimes it feels like I’ve spent my entire life being the “wrong” age, be it too young or too old. The older I get, the less this makes sense to me.
I’m pressed for time today as L. (a.k.a. Bu) has been a real handful today, as befits his “Bu Nature.” Being his father (or “Da” as he seems to be in the process of starting to call me), I do my best to take days like this in philosophical stride as befits my . . .
(Wait for it.)
“Bu-Da Nature.”
At a gathering the other night, I mentioned to someone how painfully aware I was of the extent that L. is going to imitate me as he grows. This prompted the person I was talking with to cite a study that he’d seen recently that found that girls base their behavior on about 75% of what they’re told to do, and 25% of what they see; boys on the other hand, were found to base their behavior on 10% of what they’re told to do, and 90% of what they see.
I’m not sure I buy that, particularly the implication that this is some sort of Y-chromosome nature thing as opposed to nurture, but not having seen the study, I can’t really say how valid their procedures were.
What I can say is there’s never been a more perfect study to inspire nightmares in me (and yes, I’m including the ones that came out of Nazi Germany), because this one scared the **** out of me. Because damn it, I mean darn it, son, I’m doing my best here, but 90%! Cheese and crackers! 75% I might be able to handle, but I know I spend at least 25% of my time telling myself ways I can do better next time and doing my best to listen. If you only pull 10% . . .
What I’m sayin’ is that one way or the other, I’m gonna need some slack here, kiddo.
But despite that fault (which seems far too widespread for my tastes), I still have faith in humanity, and I can easily explain why:
Despite the frustrations and disappointments humanity has brought to me, I don’t get bitter about it so long as I keep in mind that humanity really is a relatively young species in the grand scheme of things, and is still actually fairly new to the concept of civilization. Even the icons of Western civilization, the ancient Greeks, really weren’t all that ancient, and for all their accomplishments, never manged to outgrow the crippling provincialism that kept them squabbling amongst themselves. I believe humanity as a whole just needs time to grow up, and if the species doesn’t kill itself or otherwise die off in the process, I believe humanity will grow up.
I believe humanity not only will reach for the stars one day, I believe humanity deserves to reach for the stars, to truly grasp what a wide and wonderful Universe this can be. Even if humanity never encounters any other sentient life out there amongst the stars, I believe the sheer scope of colonizing other planets and other star systems will force a perspective shift just like leaving home tends to force such a shift in young adults.
Mind you, if after all that, say after a small handful of star systems are colonized, if humanity still hasn’t grown up, that . . .
Well that would be a different matter entirely.
But for now, I’m still keeping the faith.
Now I’ll forgive you if you had the thought, “That was a long walk for that joke,” because it really was a long walk.
But I’m not joking.
Certain professions tend to attract a certain type, and when the profession gives one money, influence, and direct power over others, I assure you that you’ll be right more often than you’re wrong to assume that anyone in that profession is there almost exclusively for personal gain. Of course some people compete for political office because they have good intentions and want to make the world a better place, but I very much fear those people are in the minority. To make matters worse, too many people who start with good intentions simply aren’t strong enough to stand against the temptations that power brings, and quickly become indistinguishable from those who started their careers motived by destructive selfishness. I understand the system involved well enough to not be surprised by this, and really can’t find it in myself to fault a scorpion for insisting on being a scorpion.
But since nobody gains political power alone, I can and do find fault in those that keep putting these scorpions in power.
Candles & Curses 