I love my kids, I just hate parenting
Every adult asks the children they know the same thing: “what do you want to be when you grow up?”
Depending on the age of the kid, the answers usually vary from adorable to delusional. I’m almost 40 and I still don’t know! If a grown adult with actual agency and control over his life can’t be certain of where it’s going to lead – no matter how certain one may be of where s/he wants it to go – how can a young kid’s parents?
There are a lot of children’s stories about toys that yearn to become real. There’s the classic Disney flick Pinocchio, the melancholy children’s book “The Velveteen Rabbit” and the heartwarming and erotic Mannequin, starring silver-screen legend Andrew McCarthy.
These stories are all aimed at children, though some seem more appropriate for really, really dumb children (Mannequin). And there are plenty more in this vein. Oddly, there aren’t many toy-based stories for adults (unless you count porn).
But the lack of such stories for grown-ups makes sense. As a parent, it’s not often that I wish one of my son’s toys would become real, though it would be fun to pummel the life out of a flesh-and-blood Elmo.
On the other hand, I do occasionally wish my son would become a toy. At least there’d be less shit to clean up.
My son is out to get me. And I’m not just talking about the time he ordered a Big Mac at KFC.
As a kid, you have a tendency to see the adults in your life as the bad guys, especially when you’re a teenager. When you become a parent, it’s obvious that it’s the children that are the problem; dastardly little beasts who materialize in the middle of your already-in-progress life and proceed to wreak havoc.
Maybe one day my son will write a blog about how I’m the Big Bad in his life, but in my version of the story, I’m the superhero and he’s my nemesis.
In fact, there are a few famous villains from the pop culture rogues gallery that my kid has lately been bringing to mind.
Mom and Buried showed the kid an old “Mr. Rogers” episode the other day. To my surprise, he sat in rapt attention for the entirety of the the episode. He can’t get enough of it! He’s constantly asking to hear “the neighbor song.” We try not to let him watch too much TV, but heRead more about Zombie Post: Welcome to the “Neighborhood”[…]
My son has started playing pretend. With a vengeance.
And it’s freaking me out.