Wednesday, September 15, 2004
 
Good Pops/Bad Pops
Just one quick thing about the Russia stuff from yesterday: here's a quote from a NY Times story (you may need to register... go on, it's free and you can put in fun fake information) about the lack of outrage in the face of Putin's power grab. It's from a governor, one of those who has had his democratically-elected power stripped and then benevolently granted back to him by his president:

"[A]s Gov. Vyacheslav Y. Pozgalev of Vologda put it to one of the state's television networks, First Channel: "Executive power must be whole.'"

Wow. That is awesome. It gives a whole new meaning to "One man, one vote". Putin is the Man, so he gets the Vote.* My only question: when does the first Putin statue go up?

There's a long exegesis of Dostoyevsky's The Grand Inquisitor in there somewhere just busting to get out, but I'll spare you.






This is a story about how I'm a bad father and how the worst thing you can ever do for a child is to give him or her exactly what they ask for.

My son goes to Catholic school. The parish church is directly across the (very busy) street. The parking lot at the school is about the size of the desk/table your computer is sitting on. And like every other school, even though God obviously prefers ours, traffic is a nightmare at drop-off/pickup times.

So what I've been doing is parking at the church, loading up the two smaller ones in the cumbersome city-bus-sized double stroller and walking the oldest boy across the street. Convenient? No. But when you're a parent par excellence as I am, no annoyance is too minor to be endured for the sake/safety of your children.

What I cannot endure, however, is lots and lots of whining. Or having the same question asked over and over and over and over again. I know, I should have taken that into consideration before I had kids, but really, there's no way to know until they're here and by then it's really too late.

So my oldest sees his little friends (none of whose names he knows yet... we call them all "that one kid") getting curbside service and starts bugging me about it incessantly. I started noticing the morning backup isn't so bad since I'm anal retentive about punctuality and I get there about a half hour before school starts. So I decide "OK, I'll just drop him off in the front in the morning."

Remember, Monday he damn near busted his two front teeth out, so he's still a little raw, emotionally speaking.

Begin drop-off sequence.

Yesterday? He was a little reluctant about the whole thing, but I got him out of the car. Chalk it up to fear of the unknown.

This morning? Ach.

"No Dad, I don't want you to do this. I want you to park by the church."

The line of cars behind me is getting longer. I get out and open the door for him. He stares at me. I stare back. I'm still bigger than he is, so he gets up. I make the mistake of mentioning I forgot to help him tuck in his shirt (uniform code and all. If you don't tuck it in, God will hate you).

Cue panic.

I decide to pretend it isn't happening and plow right through the routine. Bye kid, have a good day.

I get him inside the glass door (about ten steps from the curb) that leads through the building to the playground out back. I can see him staring at me.

I point and gesture that he should walk through and go to school.

He stares.

I wave.

He stares.

I drive away.

He stares.

Intellectually I know that he's not still standing there in the hallway in front of the school office starting with his little nose pressed against the glass, but goddamn if that's not the picture I can't get out of my head.

This really isn't going to look good on my Parent-of-the-Year application.

Maybe he'll do better tomorrow. Oh yes, we are going to try it again. I find that in any parenting situation stubbornly sticking by a bad decision is infinitely more important than being flexible and responsive to your children's needs. If you give them what they ask for, they find some reason to be pissed off about it anyway.

Plus if you show any vacillation, any sign of weakness, they'll be on you like a pack of dingoes.


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.0


Pops


*=Thanks to Terry Pratchett who put those words in that general order first. If you haven't read any Pratchett, well then, you suck.

Comments:
I so wish my mom had done that. Good job, dude. He'll be fine.
 
I'm tough as nails, me.
 
Why don't you just eat your young, like I would?
 
Because my kids got a healthy dose of my wife's DNA, which means they're long and skinny. I think they'd be kind of stringy and tough eating.
 
"What I cannot endure, however, is lots and lots of whining. Or having the same question asked over and over and over and over again. I know, I should have taken that into consideration before I had kids, but really, there's no way to know until they're here and by then it's really too late."

Tell your wife that another woman is in love with you.
 
Actually, I tell her that all the time. Oh how she laughs...
 
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