Pater Familias … because I'm your FATHER!

The Word-Size Queen

October 19, 2009 · Influences | Mad Dad | Suburban Survival

What happened to speaking simply to children?

That’s No Way To Talk To Your Baby

Blogging back to summer’s end …

So close to Manhattan, you see vortexes of uptightness and bad mood all the time, but here is the terrible F5. Total destruction to all things pleasant.   

This one bears down on me at the town pool. I can’t even eyeball the mama’s design features, man. There’s just this blur of fury by the lounge chair next to mine.

Instant dislikes:

• No joy and gratitude for scoring prime seating when the pool is packed.  
• Frowny-face, in this hallowed place, is a fart in church. Here we loll, love life, socialize, while the kids wear themselves out. Today should be max bliss because the pool closes in a few days.
• The anger comes from within. You can just tell.

While the woman jerks out pool stuff, the four-year-old (best guess) girl with her wheedles “Mommy, I want …” Can’t hear what, but the real desire, no doubt, is to be a minor nuisance and get attention.

Mom comes back, “I can’t change focus, Sweetie. I’m in transition here …”

The little one offers to assist and gets, “I really appreciate that you want to be helpful, dear. That is very considerate and thoughtful …”

Right about here, the woman unblurs and sits. I don’t actually see, though, because I refuse to look at her.  

That was verbal abuse, nothing short, to language and, much worse, child. She’s your baby, lady! You could say, “In a minute,” or “Not Now” or “I’m busy” or “Not now, dammit, I’m busy. In a minute!” And you could get out of that frenzied head long enough to look at your girl. Glare, even. If you must be torqued-off, be that way at her. She deserves it, needs it, as only Mommy can provide.    

The un-felt appreciation, when the kid wants to help, approaches absolute zero in lack of human warmth. Good God, this what you say in a board meeting to shut up a fool fronting something stupid.

More than one of my personal bugaboos gather here. For one, there’s this rampant local verbal pretension and officiousness, common, I think, to certain New York types impressed with their own educations and exquisite powers of thought. Many, many big winds blowing out of empty caves. Annoying, tedious, I hate it.

But this is really about the little ones, hearing not enough love and dangerous numbers of vacuous junk syllables from the womb on out, growing up in a world that sounds like combo Sunday pundit TV and a never-ending steering committee. Got to do bad things to their brains, and hearing plain English will confuse them.

Pater has a proposal — just jumped into my mind, but it has merit. Here and now, we roll back the syllables. We keep on rolling back until “inappropriate” is just plain old, good old “bad.”

Come on, isn’t short and simple better?

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