If like me you’ve never had much interest in having or raising children, congratulations - despite what neighbors and family try to tell you, you’re not that much of a unicorn. More women are electing either to never have children, or to wait until later in life to become mothers for the first time.
Before me and my sister, that didn’t really happen much in my family. Grandma Richardson was a mother at 18, and Dad’s mom was 21 when she had him. Mom was 20; her sisters were a little older when they became mothers. I went through a brief period in my later teen years were I figured it was more or less inevitable I would eventually have children … and then I just decided I didn’t want them. And, what do you know, the world kept turning.
This isn’t to say I wouldn’t be good at it; after all, I underwent plenty of parental advice growing up, and even I admit it’s sort of sad I won’t be able to pass those glimmers of genius along to a next generation. I’m talking about such life lessons as:
“I’m going to tell you a little story.” This was a Dad classic, usually accompanied by literal finger-pointing, and never in response to anything good. The only guarantees were that the story was rarely little, and usually featured the phrase “you’re your own worst enemy.” I must say, after nearly 30 years of adulthood, I can point to plenty of enemies who have been more detrimental to my life than I am.
“At least I got my trip in.” This was Mom’s version of “it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission” or, more pointedly, “you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.” Now I want you to guess how many times I was rewarded for doing a thing and then confessing it to this woman. If you genuinely come up with a positive integer, you weren’t raised on this planet.
“Life isn’t fair.” The problem with this old saw is while it’s true, it continues to remain true because people are conditioned to accept that life is innately unfair, instead of understanding the unfairness comes largely from other people wanting to give themselves an advantage at your expense. In my case, this stemmed from Mom wanting to make her life easier by expecting me to do things like “listen” and “behave” and “learn lessons.” As though those are things children ought to do. Pffft.
“Don’t assume; it makes an ass out of you and me.” Mom drew this out for me on an actual piece of paper by putting slashes between the letters: ASS / U / ME. I recall being notably impressed, as at age 13 I was still young enough to think this was Mom’s own wordplay instead of a thing parents had been telling their kids for approximately 9,000 years.
“Did you do XXX?” Fill the Xes in with whatever chore you like - putting dishes away, walking the dog, finishing the laundry. Mom would say this to me while staring directly at whatever it was she was asking about, making her either the blindest sighted person in history or parenthood’s best smartass. I’ll let you decide.
Of course, childhood’s best lessons come from observation, not merely dry instruction. The most valuable thing Mom taught me about consequences was when I was maybe eight years old. That was the year Schaper debuted one of the best childhood toys to ever be invented: The Stomper 4x4 truck. These were like if Hot Wheels actually were, you know, fun, because they could be powered by something other than your own hand. Stompers took an AA battery and when you clicked on the switch underneath, they would drive over absolutely anything in their path that didn’t measure over about a quarter-inch high.
Mom and Dad and I were all essentially children in 1980; they were in their late twenties (an age when, later on, I was still dressing up in costume at sci-fi conventions). So all three of us at the store each chose “our” Stomper truck and would sometimes play on the floor with them at home. One Sunday afternoon Mom and I were home alone and playing with the styrofoam “mountain range” playset when we decided to do Science and see what all these little trucks could conquer without flipping over and spinning their soft little wheels in the air.
So, we started with things from the TV commercial. Ruler? Check.
Bunched-up rug? Check.
Hand? Check.
Then we branched out into what I like to call experimental physics. The tilted bottom of a sheet pan to climb uphill? Check.
Up an arm? Check.
On the cat? Inconclusive. Bootsie refused to cooperate. (Likewise, the dog fled. In retrospect, these were not stupid animals.)
Up a sweatshirt? Worked just fine.
Then Mom eyed her Stomper and, in a rare misjudgment - for reasons almost forty years later I’m still unclear on - put it on her head. And because I was eight and my mother was still the smartest person in the world, I followed suit. I can only speculate it had been a long day and it was 1980 and there was nothing boredom-breaking on the three channels the TV actually received.
Well, that day Science taught me, inescapably, that rubber wheels, small gears, and human hair do not combine favorably for nerve endings. And that same afternoon, my father taught me that sometimes the kindest thing anyone can do when walking in on to witness a decision made by a loved one that can only be described as “poor” is to shake their head and walk straight through and out the back door, before the laughter escapes.
December 4, 2018