by Michael Dare
CHAPTER FIVE
Today he saw his first puddle and turned into a Max Fleischer cartoon. He took one step into it, looked down, saw himself, and jumped back in awe. Who was that little boy looking up at him from the puddle? He stepped up again, a bit more cautiously this time, determined to get to the bottom of THE MYSTERIOUS BOY IN THE SIDEWALK. He stepped on the sidewalk boy’s face, and millions of shimmering circles glided away from the image. He jumped back again, looked around and grabbed a stick. He advanced towards the puddle, armed with a trusty stick, and he poked at the other little boy, who once again broke up into abstract geometric patterns, beautiful and intoxicating. He wanted to be the boy in the puddle. Finally, he started making faces at the boy in the puddle, who responded with the very same faces. He discovered he was the boy in the puddle.
There was smoke coming from the kitchen, so I ran in. The coffee was boiling, the popcorn maker was smoking, and a plastic spatula was in flames. I put out the fire, turned off all the burners and looked at the baby.
He could tell by the way I looked at him that he had done something bad. I held his hand to the stove knobs and gave him a little smack, saying “No! Bad!” He gave a yelp and ran into the living room in search of a bottle. I felt like an idiot. I had just treated my baby like a dog. At the time, it certainly felt like the right thing to do. But now I wasn’t sure. Did he really learn what I was trying to teach him, that he must never ever turn on the stove? Or did he just learn that sometimes, when he does things that he doesn’t understand, daddy smacks him. Watch out for daddy. Only do cool things when he’s not around.
I condensed my thoughts onto the actual problem - the genuine possibility that my baby might burn the house down if I take my eyes off him for just ten seconds. The solution had nothing to do with discipline. I took all the knobs off the stove. Taa-daa. I was the daddy in the puddle.
1989
Imagine this. You walk into a deli and ask for a Pepsi but all they have is Coke. Instead of taking the Coke and pretending it’s a Pepsi, you actually start crying because you want a Pepsi and that’s that. Adults who act this way are called assholes, but we are supposed to casually accept this attitude in little children because they are truly sensitive and innocent. They don’t know any better.
The very first time a baby is deprived of something, which is immediately upon his birth, he starts crying because he thinks it is forever. In the case of his birth, he is right, his whole world has changed, now he’s got to breath and eat and shit just like the rest of us.
To a baby, every sensation is forever. It never occurs to them that it will go away, so they cry. Daddy left you in the crib and disappeared. You don’t know that he just went in the other room to watch the news. You don’t even know that there’s another room. You might be here, all alone, FOREVER, so you cry and cry till daddy returns.
So the very first thing a baby ever learns is that pain makes you cry, and crying brings you relief, in the form of a daddy or mommy who will feed you or change you, or somehow figure out what the problem is.
At first, you totally understand. I mean who wouldn’t cry if their diapers were full of toxic waste, or if they haven’t eaten in two hours. But at the age of two, they realize that it’s the crying that gets the results, not the pain. The kid turns into an actor. It’s inevitable. Their ability to express anguish, whether there’s anything wrong or not, completely outweighs any sense of reason.
I first learned this when Buster came up to me and asked me to change his diaper, and it was empty. Up to this point, every time he had ever asked me to change him, there was good reason. But this time he was just fooling. He wanted my attention, and he knew that would work. Once. Now that I know his cries aren’t necessarily real, I have a free license to ignore him.
He expresses anguish because we’re going somewhere, he expresses anguish because we’re staying home. He will cry real tears if I give him the piece of bacon on the right instead of the piece of bacon on the left. I sit back and laugh my superior laugh, Ha, you little pip-squeak, I will show you which piece of bacon you can eat, none of them, breakfast is over, get out of here.
Then he will fall and scrape his knee, and he will run up to you in real pain, and you will recognize the real thing immediately. You give comfort.
But if he’s acting, it’s another story. I never understood the concept of hitting a child in order to stop them from crying, but now it makes total sense. If he’s crying because I won’t let him close the front door, I want to smack him and say “Aaahhh, shut up!” The ultimate version of that is when he cries because you won’t let him run in the street. What can you do but let him cry. You know you are right and he is wrong. How can this not put you on a power trip? I mean it is your duty to let somebody cry real tears, just because you know you are right. And the first time you slip up, the first time they catch you in any sort of lie, the will start believing nothing. They will break into the kitchen cabinet and drink the bleach just because you told them not to.
Babies are the ultimate lie detector. Just as you start zeroing in on what they really mean, so they start scoping you out. They can understand the difference between stop tickling me and stop throwing rocks. Your tone of voice lets them know when you really mean it.
Which means you spend your days looking at each other and wondering who really means it.
If he cries because he bit his tongue, I know he means it. If he cries just as loudly because I’m giving him ice cream, I know he’s kidding.
It’s all just a game to a two year old. The whole idea of SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES is beyond their grasp. You cannot take your eyes off them for one nanosecond, because they will almost definitely try to do something behind your back that they know they can’t do in front of you. They will throw everything in the room on the sofa, then they will climb on the sofa and throw everything on the sofa all around the room.
When Bobbe brought Nisa to visit, she and Buster became the best of pals. It seemed imperative that we give it a try, to make a family, to keep our kids together. We had our third child, Alice, nine months later. For the first time, I attended the birth.
For the rest of 1989, we were the Simpsons, just your standard warped American family.
Chapter Six
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