Carnival Fever

After cotton-candy negotiations, sidewalk tantrums, and the worst days ever, finding a way to live in the inescapable shadow of bedtime.

My little boy just turned four. He’s as articulate as any other boy his age, but he still sometimes treats speech as an optional thing. And when he gets upset, he’ll often opt out.

Speech, as any linguist or psychiatrist will agree, is fraught with inaccuracy and dishonesty. But after a few minutes of screaming, crying and hitting, speech starts to look pretty good.

Mid-tantrum, I’ll have to coax the boy back towards speech wrong through a series of questions answered by screams of greater or lesser intensity. My negotiating position often devolves to: If you don’t use language to say what you want, then I will be forced to upset you even more. No fun.

The worst day ever

One Saturday a few weeks back, I took him and his older sister to the pool. On the way home, we needed to go stop for milk, so I made the kids a deal - we’d go to the deli and they could each get a treat. At the deli, another deal - they could each eat a portion of their candy on the way home. So far so good. Walter eats the agreed-upon portion.

Then Walter decides he wants to change the deal. I say no way. He slumps to the ground, declares it the worst day ever, and refuses to move. He learned the phrase from his sister, now eight years old. Lately, she’s experimented with adding to its sting by saying this is the second (or third) worst day ever, to underscore the strict records she’s keeping.

How I got boring

The other day, my daughter asked me when I became boring. It may have been a jab, but. I took it seriously. I remember childhood, and how how incomprehensibly dreary adulthood appeared. It looked dreary enough to inspire all sorts of dangerous behavior.