Children

"Matt, you're silly" says the four year old who sucks the ink out of blanket machine-wash instruction tags. This child clearly needs perspective on silliness. For the last five days I've been staying with my girlfriend in Park City, whose house has been taken over by the two children of her older brother. It is a veritable family gathering, with me trying to remember how to relate to people twenty years my junior.

In middle and high school I served as a counselor at the pre-school summer program "Safety Town". Those summer weeks make up the majority of my experience with children. Unfortunately, my girlfriend's niece and nephew are not interested in Mr. Yuck stickers and Stranger Danger. They want to play. They want to play screaming and running around games. I suggested that the formula be spiked with liquor in order to encourage a stupor in the children, and I don't think I won any points for that gem. Giving the subject more thought however, I believe that the parents were probably correct in rejecting my plan. The only thing worse than batshit crazy toddlers careening around the house bouncing off furniture like pinballs would be sloshed toddlers who think you're awesome and that you really don't hang out enough and that next semester we should totally kick it old school.

I don't remember being such a terror at this age. In fact, I have very few memories of my own childhood, no doubt due to my young Buddah-like state of pre-speech enlightenment. Based on the stories my parents tell when they are with their adult friends, the reason I was so well behaved as a child is because I was kept contained in my room. This isolation forced the development of a rich imagination during my single digit years. I came up with all sorts of scenerios to explain why I was fed through a slot in the door. My dog, Rufus, was a fellow prisoner of the Jumago compound and we shared many games of poker for packs of cigarettes to pass the time between comical escape attempts. Those were the days.

The children that I've been spending time with run around everywhere with no regard for destination or obstacles. There is a beautiful insistancy to children; everything must happen now because whatever is on their mind is the most important thing in the universe. A few days ago my girlfriend was going to take one of the children (the more language inclined one) to see a movie, but before leaving she also mentioned that perhaps later they would make a dessert. The child through a tremendous fit because both things, the movie and the dessert, could not happen immediately. Right now, as I blogue, they are playing a videogame and the child is making impossible demands. No, Diddy Kong cannot collect that banana: that is a green banana and Lanky Kong must collect it.