Proverbs 27, Verse 9
"Friendly suggestions are as pleasant as perfume."
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CHIPPED WISDOM:
I remember when I was younger, people used to come to me for advice. About issues.
Issues, man.
And it's funny that that happened, because, as things went, I was a pretty sheltered kid and, later, a pretty sheltered guy. Even today, there's much of the world I haven't experienced. Sure, I've dated a Catholic girl and I've been to Indonesia, I've owned maybe thirteen cars or so, but, all in all, that's not saying very much. Those aren't things that necessarily qualify one as "worldly".
And yet, people came to me. They sought me out. I didn't set up a fucking lemonade stand and sit there looking erudite. It kind of just happened.
Maybe it's the glasses, or the tucked-in shirts. The conservative haircut. The way I'll look you in the eye. There's something in there that people trust. On my good days I think, well, yea-- they should. They should trust me. On my bad days, well, my bad days are bad.
I have bad days.
I can remember back in high school, my peers would come to me asking for relationship advice. I was answering questions about and giving advice on relationships before I'd even had one myself. It was pretty ridiculous. And sometimes the advice I gave wasn't half bad. I never said anything outlandish like, "To spice things up, wear underpants made of Fruit Roll-Ups," or "Show up to the prom in blackface and a kilt". It was all pretty run-of-the-mill
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So.
I started this post around twenty minutes ago.
My son cried. It stopped after a minute. I re-initiated blog 2.0. Then my daughter started. She did not de-escalate. She did not calm down. She did not nuzzle her boo-bear bankie and drift off into that good night. She didn't descend into the ether. She screamed.
Fucking screaming.
That's what I remember most about those first few weeks. Okay, months. Incessant, unholy screaming. They were bananas, those kids. And you had no idea what the problem was. Even if you knew and could fix it, it didn't matter. It was too late. Always too late.
YOU ARE ALWAYS TOO FUCKING LATE A CHILD NEEDS TO BE SERVED YESTERFUCKINGDAY DON'T YOU GET IT YOU DUMB SHIT
?
She's quiet now, so I'm writing again. About that now.
When they would both go off at the same time, I would close my eyes and silently pray for my own death.
I've only really ever prayed that I would die one time in my life before, and it was when I was a sophomore in college, and I was dating that Catholic girl. She had some kind of bizarre allergy to sugar. To lots of things, but sugar?
Come on.
Anyway, I bought her a birthday cake from Dairy Queen. A diet birthday cake. Or pie. It was a diet ice cream pie.
Why do such abominations before the Lord exist? For weird Catholic chicks, I guess.
Anyway, this diet ice cream pie was really, really good. So I ate A LOT of it.
An hour later, I was curled up on the toilet of the all girls dormitory with sweat streaming down my entire body. My hair was soaked. Head, body hair, pubes, ass hair-- sopping wet. I was shaking. Shivering. I was so cold. My intestines felt like they were warehousing an intoxicated worm colony dancing the cucaracha down to my colon. I prayed, quite earnestly, for death. I wanted nothing more than for the floor beneath that girls dorm toilet to open up and send me down the shit-n-slide to hell.
Please, God, make it come now, I thought, give it to me. I can remember that feeling coming back holding two infants, screaming the bejesus out of themselves, directly into each of my ears.
The sickening helplessness, the impotence, the blinding fear. They would scream so loud sometimes I would see colors. Spots. Stars. Things.
I saw things.
When my children are sick, I don't know what to do. I think I do, but then my wife thinks something else, and I don't know. I doubt her. I doubt myself. The websites. The chatter. My instincts.
They're not so good.
I don't know that I have instincts sometimes. I have what people tell me and then I feel like I blindly go with something.
She's screaming again.
Oh my Christ.
Maybe it'll stop this time. I don't know. I don't think so. Maybe she had too much diet ice cream pie. Maybe she's having her first nightmare. When do they have nightmares? Oh, you don't know. Nobody knows. You can't get inside a 19-month-old's skull. You wouldn't want to. It's weird in there. Applesauce and milk. Who knows.
On TV, you pick a screaming baby up and it nuzzles up against you and it goes instantly silent, like somebody pushed the mute button on the remote. In real life, there is snot and hot, steamy tears and back arching and thrashing and it's horrible.
It's funny to me that this post started out being about advice. Some people who have children turn into experts and anyone remotely associated with them who has kids has to be subjected mercilessly to their endless pontifications about parenting.
If I may? Don't ever, ever come to me for advice about parenting. Or anything. I don't know anything anymore-- I don't remember. I am Sir Knownothing. I am Lord High Asksomeoneelse. I am broken and funny and desperate and hanging in there kid and supplied and demanded and hungry and aching and I can play six chords on the banjo and make polite conversation and garlic marinated broccoli.
That's it.
That's all.
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