Most families have a variety of things hanging on their refrigerator: a calendar, emergency contact phone numbers, a picture of Hello Kitty colored in completely by glitter nail polish, a business card-sized magnet from the local crematorium advertising 2-for-1 specials.
In our home, we have this:
Mr. Madison, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul. (Billy Madison, 1995)
"And, no, as a matter of fact, I do not want a piece of pie."
It has become my serenity prayer.
Being a parent will do that to you. At least once a day I find myself listening to something that one of my kids has said, shaking my head like an Etch-a-Sketch in hopes that I can get better reception, and thinking, Was that even English? I recognized all of the words, but I can’t make them fit together in an understandable fashion, like trying to force a Lego block onto a Duplo block.
Of course, at least some of this is my fault. I’m learning that it’s as difficult as an adult to listen to a child as it was to be a child listening to an adult. Have you ever listened to a pre-teen girl talk about the middle-school drama she encountered that day? I don’t need to hear about how Brianna was fighting with Destiny because Destiny found an eraser that Brianna thought was hers but really belonged to Mackenzie and how Jasmine broke up with Cameron because Cameron wouldn’t hold Jasmine’s hand during study hall because he likes Chloe but Chloe likes Logan but it’s all okay now because Jasmine and Cameron made up after lunch and were holding hands at recess and by this time I’ve completely zoned out and started running a highlight reel from The Dukes of Hazzard in my head.
The majority of that highlight reel is comprised of this image.
My wife, Hillary, and I have become expert interrogators. We have to be just to be able to piece together a story from beginning to end. Every time my son, Dude, comes home with a note from his teacher my heart drops into my stomach because I know the next three hours are shot, as I try to ferret out the truth. The note from his teacher doesn’t help, because as often as not she’s as confused as we are. The boy will be in trouble for… something, but nobody will know what. Four times out of five, his teacher’s note will boil down to something like “I don’t know what the hell happened, you figure it out.”
I think it’s one of the dark, unspoken truths of parenthood: At some point, whether we recognize it or can admit it, we all jump this fence that separates adult logic from adolescent logic. And no matter when we cross this fence (for my wife it was when she was 14; for me it was probably last Tuesday), it’s one we can never cross over again, and we can only get shaded glimpses of through a knothole, so kids can never fully understand why leaving the bathroom light on wastes energy and helps the terrorists win, and adults can never understand why Twilight is the greatest piece of American literature since the beginning of ever.
Our only real hope is to make connections with our children on things that are important to everybody, like why pizza is nature’s most perfect food, or how the Snyders down the road who are always laughing and hugging are really ax murderers and that they’re the weird ones, not us.
