I love my kids, I just hate parenting
Children will never admit to being tired.
They’ll shake their heads while they’re yawning if they think it will buy them five more minutes of doing whatever stupid bullshit they’re doing. My son hates going to bed more than I hate trying to put my son to bed!
They simply don’t know what’s best for them. So it’s up to us to decide.
I’ve never really liked post-apocalyptic movies.
You know the ones, where the world is shit, whether by circumstance or calamity, and everyone left is fighting for survival and scrounging for sustenance. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome‘s dry, desert dystopia just depresses me (although I definitely enjoyed Fury Road). Everyone is so dirty! It looks miserable. One of the reasons people prefer The Empire Strikes Back to Star Wars is because for once, Tattoine isn’t involved.
The good news is I’m almost 40; the odds of having to experience such a hellscape in real life dwindle with every birthday I have. The bad news is that with every birthday he has, my son may actually be getting closer to experiencing such a life.
Thankfully, I don’t really care.
It’s rare to find a parent who didn’t measure the passage of time by juxtaposing pictures of their kid’s first day of school in September with their kid’s last day of school in June.
And then, with a mixture of pride (“He did it!”) and petulance (“He’s growing up too fast!”), they bemoan the passage of time, whine about how fast it’s all going, and bitch about how quickly kids grow up.
I call bullshit.
Parenting is an experiment.
You keep trying new things, seeing what works (nothing) and what doesn’t (everything), and shifting your techniques accordingly until you land on the perfect (read: imaginary) combination and tend to your impressionable child until he sprouts into a flawless adult.
Unfortunately, that’s all a waste of time. Not only because parenting is impossible to game plan, and because it turns out we’re the test subjects.
These days, parents have it easy. Stop laughing. I just mean we have it easy when it comes to introducing our kids to our favorite shows and movies.
I don’t have a lot to pass down to my son. There’s my sense of humor, my inexplicable collection of Garfield books (the same seven jokes reprinted over and over for 40 years = PRICELESS), and a complete and utter inability to build or fix things.
But I do have opinions, and many of them center around pop culture: Superman is better than Batman; Die Hard is the best action movie ever made; “The Wire” is required watching; Han shot first; etc., etc.
You better believe I’ll be passing those down.