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If there’s two things kids love, it’s repetition and
repetition. When my daughter was three she watched "The Lion King" three or four times a day
for almost a year. I think a kid must have invented the instructions for
shampoo. When I was six I read "Lather, Rinse, Repeat" for the very
first time. Six hours after the hot water ran out, paramedics had to pry
my near dead hypothermic body from the shower. Where were my parents?
Down in the basement working on the death ray. Story of my life.
The thing is, I’m an adult now, and I hate repetition.
Once I’ve seen a movie that’s pretty much it. I hate reruns, I never re-read a book, I
won’t eat leftovers and I make the wife wear a different wig every
night. I’m kidding, of course. My wife is a lovely and charming
woman who reads these articles and is far better than I deserve, plus she’s
crafty, wiry, she has a tremendous left hook and doesn’t mind telling
friends and neighbors that her husband is ‘accident prone’, so
shhhhh!
She’s also patient. She’ll read the kids the same book
every night for a month, she doesn’t mind listening to the
friggin’ same Wee Sing tape over and over, and if the kid has a favorite lullaby, well that’s the
one they’ll get until they move out. Me? Can’t do it. Can’t
be bored, can’t tolerate it, I’d rather be in pain than be bored, I’d rather have
Barbara Walters shove hot needles in my eyes as long as she keeps her
yap shut while she does it, I’d rather have that girl who played
Tuti on the facts of life force a live badger down my throat while listening to
‘Eden’s Crush’, anything, anything at all so long as it doesn’t happen
twice in a row. So when it’s my turn to put the kids to bed and
they want some game or song or rhyme they’re used to... well, I vary things.
Last night, for instance. Here’s the little nursery
rhyme I chanted for them; "Five little monkeys, bouncin’ on the bed,
One fell off and bumped it’s head, Mama called the Doctor and the Doctor said...
SWEET CHRIST WOMAN, YOU’VE GIVEN BIRTH TO A LITTER OF MONKEYS!! OH,
GOD, OH MERCY, YOU BEEN SCREWIN’ A MONKEY!! LAWZY, LAWZY, GET THE HAMMER!!"
Then I skillfully mimed crushing each baby monkey’s skull. I’m not what
you’d call a huge fan of mime, but I was in the moment and I didn’t have
a real hammer nearby, or any human-monkey hybrids for that matter, so I
made do.
My one year old was suitably terrified and cried
impressively, but my older girl at five and a half gave me the stony fish eye she has
developed for just such moments. I’m afraid I’ve spoiled her and now
she’s jaded. Tough crowd, that kid. I get nothing unless I go all out.
The break away bottles, the blood capsules and exploding squibs. It’s
exhausting, and I don’t go whole hog like that often because it’s an
expensive hobby and the woman from DSS says I have to stop.
If I were the Flash (and who’s to say I’m not) I’d use
my super speed to edit and alter the kids video’s between each viewing. Otherwise it would
take too much time out of my schedule. You know. If I did it at, like,
regular speed. Or if I weren’t the Flash. I could make it so when Simba
sees his dad’s face in the night sky, it could get real mad at him and
roar and roar and get larger and larger, and the eyes became exploding
suns. I think that would be good for the kids as well as fun for
me. You know, for their whole development and all, visa vis the concept of
paternal authority. And then my girls would be all, like "Mommy, Mommy,
Daddy made "The Lion King" all scary!", and she’d watch it, but I’d have
changed it back. At super speed. ‘Cause I’m the Flash in this fantasy.
See, life’s too short, you know? Especially if you smoke
eight packs of unfiltered camels a day and account for more than a fifth of
Jaegermeister’s profits for any given fiscal quarter. I know kids brains
are supposed to be developmentally designed to thrive on repetition, but
what if that’s wrong? What if, what if, see, you deprived them of
repetition, made their whole little lives totally unpredictable? Yes,
multiple personality disorder is the most likely outcome, but what if it
made them genius prodigy’s? What if it freed them from their grandparent’s destiny, what if they need not slave day
after day in a dank basement trying to perfect a death ray that never ends up being
much more powerful than a rest room hand dryer? What if they could
discover a cure for cancer, or limitless energy or a way To go back in
time and prevent John Stossell from being born? What if they could make
enough money by the time they were twelve so that I could retire in
style? ‘Cause that’s what I’m shooting for, here, folks. That and not
being bored.
note
#1: Max Burbank is still waiting for Jaegermeister to
sponsor these pieces he writes.
note #2: -RoG- is still waiting for Max Burbank to pay him for posting
his pieces on this site. Muahaha!
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