After my last essay, a few of you might wonder why I’ve chosen to write about kids not once but twice in one week when 1) I don’t have any and 2) I don’t particularly want any. I wonder that myself. Part of it, on a strictly administrative note, is that I’ve kind of gotten into a zone with my writing in the last few weeks, and I want to get these thoughts down before they stiffen up and I can’t get any funny out of them. As to the actual points above, let’s take the second one first.

I don’t want kids because I don’t like kids, and I don’t like kids because I can’t talk to kids. I’ve got nothing to say to a kid. A kid can’t get into any of the good shows at Irving Plaza. A kid doesn’t understand sarcasm. If I get on one of my bellowing jags about how much I hate John Updike, a kid won’t get it. Well, an older kid might help me out with, “Heh heh, you said ‘-dike,'” but that’s as good as it’s getting. And I can’t curse around kids. I mean, I can, but other adults don’t dig the idea so much, usually, because then the kid repeats whatever I said in front of company and the kid’s parents look like jackasses for saying shit like “saying shit” in front of the rugrats. At least, I think that’s the reasoning; I doubt whether my mother actually cared per se that I told Mr. Stupidhead to get his bony fuckin’ ass out of my room, but she sure as hell didn’t want either of us busting that locution out with my grandmother around. And really, what is that? I mean, history tells us that my mother used to work pretty blue, but we couldn’t even say “oh my God” growing up, all because one time my nursery school teacher asked to have a word with my mom after the morning session; apparently I’d dropped something in the play kitchen and busted out with a “god-DAM-mit.” At the time, Ma expressed relief that I hadn’t said something even more dire, but she got the message. A few years later, I read a bunch of Sayers novels and start saying “piffle” instead of “nonsense” (yeah, don’t ask) and my mother says I can’t say it because it sounds too close to “piss.” Why? Because — get this — if a teacher hears me saying the word “piss,” it means one of my parents says the word “piss” around the house, and if my parents say the word “piss” around the house, it means they also deal drugs out of the living room and swap partners in front of me and burn me with cigarettes, and I’ll have to go a foster home and live the rest of my life as a gypsy with no access to orthodonture. Yeah, exactly. Whatever, man. So the kid rips off a “fuck you, jerk-off” on the playground now and then. Who’s it hurting? Not me, that’s for sure. A seven-year-old busts that line out, that is comedy right there.

But no, in American society you can’t say that stuff in front of the small fry. You also can’t talk to them about cool stuff like baseball and true crime and whether Britney has fake boobs, not because they don’t care or won’t take an interest, but because all the other adults go around acting like the average kid 1) is stupid, 2) is more fragile emotionally than Liza Minnelli, and 3) doesn’t think about food and sex and death all the time just like the grown-ups. But the average kid isn’t dumb. The average kid might not know a lot of things, but she can figure them out, and she’s not going to shatter into a thousand pieces if she sees a dead squirrel or finds out what Viagra is for.

See, I think that’s really the issue. To have kids, you can’t think like a kid; you have to think like a grown-up, while at the same time not entirely acting like a grown-up, and since my first instinct is to go the opposite way with it, kids make me uncomfortable. I could make the Spaghetti-Os and help with the algebra and drive the carpool and all that, but I ain’t watching Barney and I ain’t saying “Jupiter Christmas” instead of “Jesus Christ” and if the kid doesn’t like Errol Morris he can bring a comic book and that’s that. I don’t know how to do that voice that adults get when they speak to children, that scary bright Office Space “someone’s got a case of the Mondays” voice. I mean, he’s four, not hard of hearing. Why do adults do that? Kids see right through that. That sunshiny “wow, that picture is GREEEEEAT” voice is tiring, and a kid will hear it in your voice. He’s four, and he’s working in the notoriously unforgiving medium of finger paints. He knows it’s not that great. Just put it up on the fridge and speak to him like a normal person about that jerk-off you saw him talking to in the sandbox. Give him a little credit.

For example, I know it’s just a movie, but Stand By Me is really a wonderful depiction of what kids do and how they act when adults aren’t around. They do some dumb shit, and some naughty shit, and some dangerous shit, but they don’t generally get into any acute trouble. They can cook, they can read maps, they can run — they’ll manage fine most of the time. Ninety-nine percent of kids, left to their own devices, will not get into anything lethal. But when I said before that you have to give a kid credit, I meant it, because…okay, I don’t want to scare any of the parents in the readership, but if you don’t know these things already, it’s time for you to hear them. Ready? Okay, let’s get started.

Your child wants to fly.

You heard me.

Almost every stupid, weird, dangerous, ridiculous, injurious thing your child will ever do proceeds directly from that premise. Whizzing down a 30-percent grade with no hands? Building dirt-bike jumps at the back of the dump? Jumping off the swings six feet off the ground? All in the service of flying, if only for a second or two. You can prevent these attempts to go airborne, up to a point — and on that note, I would strongly advise you not to give in to the begging for a trampoline, because that way, madness lies, not to mention broken teeth and drunk neighbors marooned in trees, and if you have a pool in the backyard, well, I probably don’t need to go on, but try to remember the word “lawyer” — but you’ll never succeed in extinguishing their hope that they will one day fly. Think back to the last time you saw l’il Jacob on his Hoppity-Hop. Yeah. The dream is alive.

In other news, your child is a pyromaniac.

Well, sure, “the benevolent kind.” Still.

Kids love fire. Kids always want to help their dads build a fire in the fireplace. Kids can’t wait to learn match tricks, Zippo tricks, and that thing they learn in the Scouts with the twig and the twine and the dried-out leaves and the pretty pretty flames that call to them, “Kid? Oh, kiiiiiiiiid — come to me. Set me! Plaaaaaay with me.” I too heard the siren song of burning stuff. All kids do. It’s not that they want to destroy things or hurt people; that’s the last thing most of them want. They want to watch stuff burn, though, and at one point or another, your child is accidentally going to melt or sear something in the service of that desire. Maybe it’s a Dixie cup. Maybe it’s the heel of her shoe. Maybe it’s a small patch of kitchen counter. Declare a semi-annual Supervised Conflagration Day at your house and let them do it where you can keep an eye on things. Buy a fire extinguisher for every floor (you should do that anyway, or so I read). And see what I said last time about hiding things. Putting matches in a twee little canister on top of the fridge is just asking for a house filled with the stench of singed Barbie hair. Trust me. No, no, no…trust me.

And finally, your kid truly believes that, if he’s seen it done enough times, he can do it himself. “It” usually refers to cutting hair, but can mean anything up to and including driving, drying things in the oven, minor surgery on younger siblings, operation of the sprinkler, fist-fighting, rapid chopping of scallions using a wicked cleaver, and just about anything else that he’s watched his parents or people on TV do. Kids think if they’ve watched carefully four or five times, they know enough to proceed; it looks easy, therefore it’s easy. Any adult who doesn’t have a story about giving herself quarter-inch bangs will have another, scarier story involving incorrect un-application of a parking brake. You know she’s wearing Oshkosh overalls and has no front teeth. She knows she can scale the side of the house with spurs on her Keds. Just a little something to think about the next time you hire a babysitter.

Something else to think about — if you can’t find it, it’s broken and hidden, because your kid broke it and then hid it. Yeah, I could swear you used to have a lamp on that table too. That lamp, she gone. Your kid smashed it during a game of dodge-shooter-marble, flipped the fuck out, ground it up into powder, and mixed it into a bag of flour. The good knife? The blade is snapped clean in two. Go out on the back lawn with a metal detector if you want that shit back, because that’s where she buried it after trying to carve her initials into the railing of the deck. Hey, what did I tell you about “why”? Don’t bother. Go to Bed & Bath over the weekend and take it out of her allowance. It’s over.

And you know what else you shouldn’t ask? You shouldn’t ask your kids why they can’t get along. Unless you had no siblings, never knew anyone growing up who had siblings, never watched TV or saw a movie, and live under a rock, you know damn well why they can’t get along. They can’t get along because each of them wants all of your attention, every minute, and although they love each other, they want each other dead. You know the answer to that question, so don’t ask it — order them to get along, or failing that to shut the fuck up for five minutes because you can’t hear yourself think.

Got all that? Good. Sleep well, now.

August 22, 2002

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