Goodnight, Clarice

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 23, Verses 13 & 14

"Don't fail to correct your children; discipline won't hurt them!

They won't die if you use a stick on them!
Punishment will keep them out of hell."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

Hi!  Have we met before?  I think we have.  You might remember me as "that callous, needle-dicked fuck who blogs while wearing earbuds so he can't hear his two year old daughter screaming like a soon-to-be-murdered housecat in the next room".  

Currently, Antonio Salieri's Symphony in D Major, "Il Giorno Onomastico", is blasting its way through the circuitous paths of my ear canals, and my head is slightly throbbing, and I like it.  Sometimes the violins and the horns are so fucking loud it's like my ears can see stars.  Of course, every time it goes all mezzo piano on me, I can still hear her, which sucks.  It's cognitive dissonance for sure.  I have no doubt that children this age weren't allowed to hear live music at concert halls in Vienna, and if they were, and one started acting out like this, they'd bayonet it.  

Lord knows we tried everything.  My wife went up first, to shush and soothe.  To hug and hold.  Then, after I successfully unclogged the Danube-esque kitchen sink, it was my turn to try my hand at nurturing in the nursery.  I tried the "reset" method; repeat the pre-bedtime ritual-- the books, the cuddles, the night-time song, the tucking the covers in, the whole bit.  My son bought it last week, hook, line, and snorer.  It worked, and I felt like a hero.

My daughter, though?  She didn't bite.  Right now, it sounds like someone's biting her.  Right now, it's Mozart's Symphony No. 39 in E-flat Major, K 453.  Oh, Pandora-- thou doth have a sense of humor!

Perhaps you would not have pegged me for the kind of guy who could engage in a relentlessly narcissistic and self-indulgent pursuit like blogging while his beloved daughter is howling at the moon, tears streaming down her face less than 5 feet away behind a closed door in a dark room, and, to be honest, I wouldn't have thought I was that guy either, but, apparently, I am.  And I don't particularly like admitting that to you.

Then again, maybe I do.  Maybe that is what I like.  Maybe I like exposing my wretched, fetid underbelly to you and point to it energetically, shining a light on all that is foul and mean and cruel, to let you know what an easily manipulated dumbass you are for thinking better of me.

To teach you a lesson.  To let you know that you really don't know.  That nobody knows.  

I can tell myself it's okay.  That she's just overtired and she has to cry it out so she can go to sleep.  That no amount of re-sets or snuggling or goodnight moon is going to do the trick, she just has to knock herself the fuck out.  After, you know, whomever's biting her is done doing that.  But, I don't know-- isn't there always something else?  Something else to try?  Shouldn't I hold her until she collapses?  But, if I do that, as soon as her back even touches that mattress, no-- as soon as she feels her weight shift as I contemplate putting her down, the siren will sound again, the lambs shall scream and scream and scream loud enough to wake the dead night watchman in his pine box.  And we'll have to start all over again.  And it'll be 11 o'clock by then.  

And we'll all be fucked.  My daughter, my wife, Salieri, Wolfgang, and I.  Mediocrities everywhere, I absolve you.  I am their champion.  I am their patron saint.  I am the father of all fatherly fuck ups.  Even Father Duffy.  He was a-full-a-shit.  

Mozart got quiet for a second.  She's still going.  

ff     

That's a music joke!  

HA!

AND EVERYTHING IS GOING FINE!

(Unless you're my next-door neighbor, that is.  She's probably calling the police right now.  Fortunately, her Cambodian or Vietnamese or whatever the fuck she is accent is so thick they won't be able to understand the address and they probably won't come.)

I heard on the radio recently that, when people used to talk about "Bach", they were talking about "C.P.E. Bach", not "Johann Sebastian Bach", which is who people nowadays are talking about when they say "Bach."  He didn't really explain how that happened, how one Bach became a different Bach, how one eclipsed the other and how nobody really gives a shit about Carl Philly E-Dawg, and all I can think of when I think about that is: did either of those powder-headed, stocking-assed motherfuckers have daughters and how the hell did they deal with it when their daughters were two and were exploding their lungs all over their nursery ceilings?

They must have drank.  They must have drank a real. fucking. lot.  

Oh, who am I kidding?  They composed in some villa somewhere while some hired village wench dealt with their offspring.  And everything was going fine.  Because they still drank a real fucking lot.

I'm listening to some jubilant shit by Domenico Cimarosa now.  It's not nearly loud enough for these present purposes.  I mean, there's a refrain that's pretty loud, but then it gets quiet and I have to wait for the refrain to repeat itself before it drowns out the unChristly sounds my daughter is making from inside her crib.  

Maybe it's just the chair he's sitting in, but he looks like a fucking stuffed porpoise.

I shouldn't be making fun, but, honestly?  To me he looks like a guy who never put a crazy two-year-old girl to sleep, so he doesn't get much respect from me.  Besides, Cinnamon Roll: you in my house.  Now, play: and make it forte like SHIT, motherfucker.

Teachable Moments

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 25, Verse 3

"You cannot understand the height of heaven,

the size of the earth, or all that goes on in the king's mind!"

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

In third grade, there was a kid named Ari.  You went to school with Ari, too.  He had a ton of curly blonde hair and, somehow, defying the predominant mental image you are now conjuring up of him in your mind, he wasn't cute.  How you can have your scalp kissed by such golden locks and not be punim-pinchably adorable is an exasperating mystery, but, hey; that's Ari for you.  

Ari drooled.  That mental image changing yet?  It should, because, when you're nine weeks old, drooling's pretty much a given.  But no mother or father wants their nine-year-old son going to Mrs. Griffin's classroom wearing a bib.  Adding to Ari's increasing list of misfortunes was his lisp, which was just about as subtle and endearing as Truman Capote's.  

And, he was chunky.  Not fat, per say.  Just, you know-- fat in the ass.  

As you can maybe see now, all in all, at least outwardly, Ari wasn't quite the prize package, and, sadly, some of his teachers let him know it.  While I don't have too many memories of this particular time of my life, I do distinctly remember one moment in third gradery where Mrs. Griffin was showing us some words on butcher-block paper propped up on an easel.  She had written the words in austere, thick black Sharpie.  

"What's this word?" she asked us, pointing to the word "Determined" with her marker, peering at us from behind her Sophia Lorens.  We looked at the word, then we looked back at her.  Ari might have raised his hand.  Maybe he didn't and she called on him anyway.  Either way, she said his name.  And he said,

"DEETER-MINDED!" 

And we laughed, because that wasn't how you said that word.  Looking back on this display, this obviously would have been the moment where Mrs. Griffin sharply admonished us for making fun of Ari, but the way I recall the event, she rolled her eyes, looked at him and said, "Deeter-minded?  Really, Ari." and proceeded to call on somebody else who gave the correct pronunciation, while Ari quietly contemplated suicide or, more accurately, said to himself, "One day I will be wealthy enough to buy and sell all of you and you, Mrs. Griffin, will be festering and rotting under the ground onto which I shall gleefully piss while my square-jawed chauffeur warms up the Shiatsu massaging Alcantara-hide throne in the back of my Bentley Mulsanne."

I don't fault Mrs. Griffin necessarily.  It's hard to always know what to do and what to say in a given situation, especially when you're an authority figure.  I was once the Assistant Director at a summer camp.  One of the young girls I had as a camper was a sweet girl with albinism.  As with many people with albinism, she had an eye condition called nystagmus, where the eyeballs move rapidly back and forth.  She also had extremely poor vision, and so when she read she had the book almost quite literally pressed up against her face.  And her hair was the color of straw and her skin as pale as 1% milk.  But she was one of my special girls, because, when she was three, my wife had her as a pre-school student, and we had become close with her family.  Well, one day, we were rehearsing a scene and another young girl looked over at her and said, "What's wrong with you anyway?"

Instantly, my body temperature soared to 164 degrees and my spine began to sweat.  I could have torn that little fucker's face right off with my fingers.    

"HEY!" I shouted, my head spinning towards her so fast I thought my neck had snapped, "WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?!  Don't you EVER talk to her like that again, do you understand me?"  

The girl bit her lip and I thought she was going to take a shit in her shorts, which she very well might have done.  And that would have been alright with me, actually, though I probably would have gotten fired.  And maybe I should have anyway.  It wasn't a very good conflict resolution strategy, and I certainly didn't mediate in a positive, affirming way that turned it into a "teachable moment",  and I don't think I did my flaxen-haired favorite any favors either.  But I did what I had to do to stop the situation in its tracks, as I was deeter-minded to do.

And, in that moment, I felt for old Mrs. Griffin, who did wrong by Ari, and by all of us by not showing us the way with grace, skill, and tact.  This from a woman who told a room full of nine-year-olds that the most memorable moment of her recent trip to Australia was when "a drunk Koala I was holding peed all over me", so maybe tact, skill, and grace wasn't her thing.  

It's not my thing either.  Of course, I try.  I try to be good.  I overcompensate with deference and candied words, but if you read me and know me and have spent any longer than a minute-and-a-half inside a car piloted by me then you know.  I can be mean and spiteful and cruel and, if I ran into Ari today, I'm not so sure that I wouldn't say, "Hey, have you learned how to pronounce 'determined' yet?"  I'm not exactly sure I was one of the kids who laughed at him, but I'm reasonably sure I was.  

Unless, of course, I was very different then.