thoughts are a menance and should be better regulated

The only explanation I have for this is that Child was still pre-verbal when I first watched Tarzan, so this part of Tarzan--to this day, as in, five seconds ago--still sets me off into fits of tears. Basically, anytime the gorilla mom or the human mom are on-screen, I have this total connection and also, being me, hoping a gorilla mother would take in Child should I be killed by tigers. Fuck tigers. Just, fuck parent and baby gorilla eating goddamn tigers.

Parenthood, let me remind you, is rarely sane, and I'll be honest, the first year of parenting should be considered a viable entry in the DSMIV on principle. It manifests in two very distinct ways and I think most parents will agree with me on this one; you will spend a significant amount of time being paranoid--and I do mean paranoid--about completely normal things like killing the kid by changing his diaper wrong, or you're copacetic with putting a baby seat on a motorcycle but like, the likelihood of aliens actually existing goes up like whoa and a certainty kidnapping is imminent. Sometimes both at the same time but in general, the human brain does get there are limits, and when air itself becomes a viable threat to your sprog, it does eventually reset itself to sanity or something less likely to require medical intervention via IV with concerned strangers asking what the voices are telling you.

To give you perspective on this, my nightmare scenario--born of a goddamn Dean Koontz novel turned shitty TV movie but strangely having very little actual relation to it--was a home invasion where I'm tied to a chair, Child (pre-verbal, remember?) in his high chair, and the burglar for sadistically inclined reasons is willing to trust in probability and sets a whole bunch of small legos on the high chair for Child to choke on while I watch. Child never once choked on anything in his life that I remember--and believe me, I would--but that stuck in my head and became this Thing. I mean, I get there was some deeply symbolic subconscious meaning going on, but dude, the literal was plenty nightmare fuel for me. Which is why I was like the only parent in the world who didn't worry about their kid setting the world on fire with his discovery of matches--though this could also be because Child's hand-eye coordination has never been what we'd call advanced for his age--but did spend valuable time considering how to trick the hypothetical burglar in question into tying the ropes badly or working out how to secret a knife on my person without that leading to dramatic questions on my intentions should it come out I was carrying one in less dangerous conditions, like say, going swimming.

It's also the reason that to this day, the four times--I can count this--when I was genuinely shocked into terror at home, my first act was to palm a knife from the kitchen. A steak knife at that, I wasn't picky here, I wanted sawing capabilities as well a pointy tip. Writing it out looks insane, but I can promise you that if someone were to break into the house--or like, there's a sound like that is going on--today, I won't even think about it, I'll go for the first I find in the drawer. You also have to keep in mind my one and only work-related event of the flying squirrel guy when I was a caseworker, after being knocked over by the door, I crouched there holding an unfolded stapler guarding the erstwhile door with ninja-like thoughts on how I'd use it even as at the time my brain was screaming at me what the hell are you doing to do to the guy with a stapler? Staple him? and my internal answer every time was YES. YES I WILL. A THOUSAND TIMES. because apparently, that's just how I roll. Apparently, that includes not being sure if a stapler refill has a thousand staples, which I'm looking up right now, just in case.

In case anyone is curious, Child has officially entered true teenage surliness, but this is my kid and so, it has variations. Everything is out to get him and unfair, but he expresses his pain both normally (as TV has taught him, of course), but also in reciting blank verse at the top of his lungs and gets my five year old nephew to add performance art to the entire situation. It is really, really difficult to hold onto parenting values--I am still working the entire raise him not to be a serial killer or menace to society rock bottom minimum parental accomplishment and it's working out well so far--when he's treating me to at least college-quality improv in the living room and I don't have to even pay for tickets. Being a parent, I think he's genius, but also as a realist, I think he's a genius at knowing how to work with my weaknesses by reciting the equivalent of teenage-level Gilgamesh in which he fights the good fight against parental monsters and symbolic representations of heroic tasks like taking out the trash. It's unreal. I mean, I don't know whether to send him to his room to think about what he's done or applaud, so I end up doing both, which may be the very definition of a mixed message.

I'm wondering when he'll realize his guitar is also a viable weapon of obfuscation of parental wrath. He's tone deaf--I mean, his singing can actually make my eardrums want to burst, he's discovered notes I didn't know existed and really shouldn't, not unless we're summoning Cthulhu for a personal visit--and his ability to navigate strings is very iffy, but I'm honestly not sure what I'd do if he started setting his teen-pain to a beat with terrible accompaniment. This ends in Elder Gods or sheer shock, but both ways will include insanity, and I do not yet have a plan to deal with this well. It may be the unbeatable weapon.

Comments

[azurelunatic]

Are you recording the performance art for future family hilarity? If not, do consider it.

[seperis]

Dude, if I could, I would, but I'm kind of frozen in admiration during.

[belleweather]

I <3 this post.

For my most recent baby, my first pregnancy nightmare was that we were at a swimming pool and I was laying in a lounge chair reading and went "Huh... where's the baby?" and did not get up and check. And then, of course, saw a little blue body at the bottom of the pool. Freaked the bejeezus out of me. So even now, when we're swimming (which we do like, daily, of course...) I can barely let the kidlet in the water and insist that a parental hand be physically ON HIM at all times, even when he's in the zero entry in like half an inch of water.

Also, for me it wasn't knives. It was frying pans. Our big cast iron -- food prep and home defense, all in one attractive package! -- has to be hung up and available at all times, just in case. When I'm worried I sleep with it -- regardless of whether what I'm worried about could be defeated by 20 pounds of cold iron. Hurricane? Sleep with the pan. Earthquake? Pan. Potential ungoing hearing issues for the middle boy? Better be sure... sleep with the pan.

The parental brain is not, strictly speaking, a sane one.

[seperis]

I LOVE YOU LIKE A LOT. HOLY SHIT THE FRYING PAN.

I did take my steak knife to bed a few times, but I can't explain the logic at all. I admire and agree with your logic.

*SENDS HUGS* There is nothing sane about the parental brain sometimes.

[tygermama]

I have a bokken, wooden practice sword, I keep it by my bed (or try to, the boys want to play with it) The sword came in really handy one night when my drunk neighbor (I live in a half-sunk apartment) tried to break in my bedroom window because he lost his keys.
I said 'hello'
he said 'Dave?'
I said "Nope, no one here by that name, go one apartment over.'
He went one window over and tried to break in my living room window. So I'm standing there, too tired to realize I should be shit-scared, wrapped in my sheet and holding this sword, explaining to a drunk guy he still is trying to break into the wrong apartment.
He very kindly apologized.
Then he paused for a moment and said 'You know, you really should block your windows shut.'
best drunk burglar ever.

And I hide my knives because when they were three, I caught my kids sword fighting with them. I gasped. They dropped them on the floor, ran right past me into their room and slammed the door shut.

[seperis]

YOU HAVE A SWORD?

*throws self on couch, pouts*

I love your sword.

[tygermama]

http://www.bokkenshop.com/

everyone should have one of these, I think

[green_grrl]

The awesome thing about old school telephones? They were heavy as shit, and excellent candidates as a bludgeoning instrument. Telephones these days are made from seriously flimsy plastic. Anyway, I've known some heavy ass staplers in my day, several of which I would have relied on for wreaking blunt force trauma rather than stapling an intruder. (Yeah, I think of these things, too, and I don't even have the excuse of motherhood.)

Could you pull off congratulating child on channeling his inner Justin Bieber the next time he attempts singing? I imagine it would be horrifyingly effective as long as it wasn't obvious as a ploy.

[seperis]

...I dind't think of the Justin Bieber angle.

And yes, I remember those old staplers. You could staple wounds with those things after you bludgeon your enemy to death with it.

[devon]

http://chirontraining.blogspot.com/2007/09/why-i-dont-pretend-to-teach-knife.html

Knives are very effective, even in untrained hands. Try your best not to go up against someone with a knife. Your insane parental brain was doing something right. Go with it.

[devon]

I mean don't go up against someone who *has their own* knife. You go with your knife! Sorry for sloppy English.

[seperis]

I forgot to get back adn tell you--this was interesting. I had no idea.

[inoru_no_hoshi]

Considering my last Actual Nightmare (as opposed to just a Very Weird Dream) involved one of my siblings falling out of a 4th (I think?) story window, I think Older Sibling brains are probably not very sane, either.

I also linked this to my mom, as I figured she'd appreciate it. She agrees that it's very accurate. :D

[seperis]

*g* Thank you! Also, sorry! That would suck as well.

[nagasvoice]

I was hearing this spoken, as a TED talk might be, and laughing myself sick until I was requested to read what was so funny to my mom. She started laughing too. And yes, agreeing with the commenter about the pans. She's been known to take frying pans to actual disputes that could've turned into nasty brawls. She says this is because she saw my grandmother using hers in a just cause. Since my grandmother weighed about ninety pounds soaking wet, there's a certain awe involved in this vision--my grandmother started whacking a man with her biggest pan to stop him from hitting toddlers with his cane and then chasing him down the street.
I do wonder about how much you can plan on dealing with Elder Gods, though 20 pounds of cold iron certainly wouldn't hurt.

[seperis]

Those old cast iron frying pans are freaking dangerous. We have one and I can barely lift it with one hand.

welcome to my nightmare

[auroramama]

Oh dear heaven, you've just described my first year postpartum (not to mention pregnancy, which was worse in some ways because I couldn't *see* them.) I lost all sense of relative probabilities. If there were ten thousand dangers I could come up with, starting with things that are real threats (your nightmares are perfect) and ending with all the oxygen molecules in the room migrating away from the crib, I found myself thinking as if they were almost equally likely. So: ten thousand kinds of doom, set against the alternative reality in which everything is OK, hence a 1/10,001 chance of OK-ness.

In fact we were very fortunate, and the kids are all right. But anything going wrong with a baby needs a trigger warning for me. I hope I never end up there again: that terrifying place where the absence of bad things happening is just one of thousands of outcomes, and the only good one.

Re: welcome to my nightmare

[seperis]

THIS. THIS SO MUCH.