Distracted Dad
Richard Hearn: The Boy is pushing his buttons
There are certain minor tasks I have to let The Boy do, otherwise all hell breaks out. Let me list some of them: opening the microwave; sticking a straw in a carton of juice; pressing the button on the pay and display (and grabbing the ticket); undoing the straps in his car seat; putting the soap on his flannel; turning the tap on to brush his teeth; pressing the button at the pedestrian crossing.
A quick note on the microwave: I am so used to a small boy getting into a tantrum if I mistakenly open it myself, I now don’t open microwaves even if he’s not around. At work, awaiting some warming minestrone soup, I just stand motionless, even when its bell has pinged, expecting any moment a five-year-old to rush past and open it.
I suppose his eagerness to undertake these tasks is healthy. He wants to do things for himself, assert his independence. ‘Help’. (Any parents will understand why the word ‘help’ is often enclosed by quotation marks in this column). I wish he’d actually help by asserting his independence in tidying up, say, or not deciding to make a camp just as I‘m trying to get him ready for school.
“You need a sleight of hand to re-insert the pay and display ticket back into the machine”
It’s buttons in particular. The Boy loves buttons. Perhaps all boys, all five year olds of any sex, love buttons. In fact, I know they do, because I have witnessed other parents out and about suffering the same fate. Absent-mindedly pressing the button at the pedestrian crossing I can hear another adult’s lies: “No, no, I haven’t pressed it, Gabriel, you press it now. Please stop hitting me.” Sometimes you need a sleight of hand to re-insert the pay and display ticket back into the machine. I’m no magician, but any parent has to learn tricks like these.
I might be imagining it, but The Boy always seems to be so determined to press these buttons, I’m not sure he’s going to grow out of it. This makes me wonder where it will lead, what possible career path it could indicate. I’m assuming it will end with the ultimate button. Like a scene in the film The Dead Zone where Christopher Walken shakes the president’s hand and realises he’s the one to press the button to start the nuclear war.
Perhaps that’s what reading back issues of this column will be like in the future. It turns out I am unwittingly documenting the childhood of a megalomaniac, and these columns will become collector’s items in a post-apocalyptic world, traded for food amongst the charred remains of the earth.
Alternatively, he might just grow out of it by the age of six.
