The History of Man, SJ style

I have become convinced that my children, and all children in a way, are replaying the development of man. Or at least, what I've remembered from seventh grade history of it.

Firefly, prehistoric man: Writes on the walls. Forages for food, with mixed success. Rarely wears appropriate clothing. Grunts. Okay, we don't actually know whether cave people grunted, but in movies they do. Finds things and makes ineffective weapons out of them. Quarrelous and grumpy with other members of humanity.Very mixed success at keeping himself alive. Short. Likes dogs.

Genome, bronze age: Writing exists, but he doesn't know for what purpose. Counts things. Eats only substances designated as food. Finds things and makes much better weapons out of them. Willing to form strategic alliances with other members of humanity to suit his particular purpose. Somewhat better at keeping himself alive. Less short. Likes dogs.

Munchkin, early history: Groping towards literacy. Has numeracy and some geometry. Wries on paper. Eats selectively of substances designated as food. Specialises -- lets other people (Genome and Firefly) fight her battles with her. Part of a highly complicated society, all members of which are small girls who cry a lot. Reasonably good at keeping herself alive, although spotty on details of modern medicine and must be reminded to brush teeth. Still pretty short, but what are you going to do. Likes dogs.

Ever Felt That You're Making a Spectacle of Yourself?

At some point between one child and three, I changed over from a moderately odd person to a traveling circus.

Today I took my mother to an appointment. The horde came along. The horde's supplies came along. This includes a backpack of worksheets and one baby doll (Munchkin), two plastic dinosaurs (Genome), and the world's noisiest and most attention-grabbing toy car (Firefly). I also had a ten-dollar umbrella stroller.

After a good hour of the children hanging out aggravating the various blind and vision-addled people, I decided to take them for a walk around the neighbourhood. Firefly eschewed his traditional afternoon nap in favour of pushing his own stroller around, with me desperately redirecting him so he didn't barge into people. That stroller has questionable steering even when used by a qualified adult, and I don't like to think that I spent my day irritating the blind.

Munchkin pushed the stroller. Firefly rode in the stroller. Munchkin's doll rode on Firefly's lap, along with the World's Loudest Toy Car. Genome . . . raised my bloog pressure, I guess?

There must be some sort of conference in town, because the streets were filled with women in yoga gear pushing their single, well-dressed, quiet infants in jogging strollers. No one was jogging. I'm not sure what the exercise gear was for. Maybe they stopped jogging to stare.

I need a sign for the stroller that says, THIS COULD BE YOUR LIFE.

When I got back to the vision appointment to pick up my mother, she reminded me that I was a bit of a spectacle even when I only had one child. This is true, but I don't want to pass up the chance to frighten organised women who would never, ever be out in public depending on a six-year-old to push a stroller.

I made to attempts to leave behind the toy car, but Firefly caught me both times.

My Underpants are Out in the Yard

All right, I just got them. But they _were_ in the yard.

Foolishly, this morning, I ventured outside.

I know. Jews do not belong outside.

I wanted to water the pants.

A bee went up my skirt and into my underpants. Feeling rustling in my skirt, I sensibly smacked at it. It stung me. This makes perfect sense in retrospect, but I'm not sure how one calmly and maturely deals with the distinct feeling that _something_ is in one's underpants, buzzing around. I, still channeling my most mature self, started jumping around. After all, now my butt really hurt. I also didn't know whether this was a bee or a wasp -- was i going to sting me again? So I drop my underpants. There's still something in there. I dropped my skirt.

I was wearing an apron. But remember: Out in the yard. Man, I'm a classy neighbour.

Do many exhibitionists  strip while jumping up and down and going "WASP! WASP!"?

I'm not sure who I thought I was notifying.

Eventually I figured out I'd better just hobble inside so I could divest myself of all clothes, remove the stinger, and call my mother. What do you mean, call my mother? Well what would you do in this situation? I had to call my mother so she could remind me whether or not I'm allergic to bee stings (I'm not) and what one does with a bee sting (put ice on it and take an anti-histimine).

See? Now you know and you won't need to call your own mother.

She also gave me a helpful lecture on bee sting prevention. Wear pants, carry insect spray, so on, so forth, thanks mom. I think I'll just stick with being inside for the next 18 months.

That said, I did eventually go out to retrieve my underwear. If my neighbours call the police, at least there won't be any evidence.

Please Don't Knit for Charity

Back in the dark days before Ravelry, there were a few lists for knitters, and that was how we informed each other about vital wool-related developments. The problem with this format, as any veteran Internet user knows, is that information that was useful or interesting to even a fraction of the several thousand subscribers was often swamped by the stream-of-consciousness of every over-sharing knitter in the English-speaking world.
One of the more common useless questions came up when someone posted some form of "My [blank] doesn't like handknits. What can I knit for him/her?" You get bonus points for extra-impossible requirements: I want to do it all with half a skein of worsted yarn, her birthday is tomorrow, she's allergic to every known fiber and refuses to hand-wash, I don't know how to purl yet.

There's a crucial mistake the aspiring giver is making. When one gives a gift, the gift should be _for the recipient_. It's not about what I _want_ to give. It's about what my recipient _wants_. Giving him or her a gift that I knit, just because I enjoy knitting, is missing something very crucial. I engaged in my hobby for you! How ridiculous is that? I might as well get a card that says, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM. I went skiing!"

This same error in thinking resurfaces in charitable donations. People give donations based on what makes the giver feel good and not based on what the recipient needs. Since people receiving charity are people with pressing needs, it's a bit more important a mistake than giving your brother a pair of mittens he hates.

Let us review three things that almost no one needs:

1. Hand knits. Especially people in hot climates. Most homemade clothing is of poorer quality than what is available for a lower price, premade. People in Afghanistan have many needs, but knit hats is not in the top ten. This is a very inefficient way of getting hats on the heads of babies.

2. Short term visitors to their country or area performing manual labour. Unless you have some highly valuable skill (i.e. you are a doctor), visiting a foreign country is always something you do for you, not the residents. That's fine -- might as well make yourself useful if you're going to travel -- but if your object is to get orphanages built, use your airfare to hire local labour. This goes double and triple if your purpose in traveling is to blog for charity.



3. Awareness. Yes, yes, I know. White people like it. But with relatively few exceptions, people are already "aware" of whatever it is that is causing them misery.

When I was growing up, my mother was overwhelmed sometimes raising an autistic son. I could think of forty things that would have been useful to her, none of which involved knit hats. Do you want to be of direct service? DON'T KNIT. Mind someone's child. Cook food. Clean their house. Walk kids to school. Walk kids home from school. Change diapers. Give money, and not to anyone whose purpose is "promoting awareness."

Minor Cosmetic Flaws

The worst part about growing older is realising that those character flaws I had at six are permanent. Recently some people happened to suggest that perhaps I've been, ahem, difficult, because I've had difficult times since my father died. While there is absolutely nothing good to be said for losing one's father young, the types of things people complain about me for now are exactly the same things that showed up on my kindergarten report card.

This has caused me to dwell on the many character flaws that I have never overcome. It's easy to assume that when the child arrives one is going to become a responsible, functional person, but it doesn't work that way. Here's a partial list:

- I still stay up too late. I trust the time stamp on this entry makes that obvious.

- I'm still bad with paperwork and appointments.

- I couldn't find a clean pair of pantyhose the other day, despite the fact that I wear the same type of hose every day and have 15 pairs (Old Navy black tights).

- I go out with a scarf over my hair all the time rather than wear a sheitel as a mature Orthodox Jewess would do.

- I buy useful educational books that should teach me things, such as how to teach my child to be less of a basket case, and spend months crawling through them one chapter at a time, even though I am a fast reader and digest collections of political or social essays over night. I just shrink from reading that could teach me anything useful.

- I hate using the telephone.

- I have absolutely no will to enforce standards with anyone else, including my husband, and so I have the only three-year-old in town who's seen all of the Jurassic Park movies.

- I listen to ridiculous music with bad politics and then teach it to the children, who become the only Jewish children in the world familiar with, say, Green Grow the Rushes O. Although they sing it as Green Grow the Russians O. I don't know why my daughter can learn a rather esoteric song such as this, but can't for the life of her remember that "au" and "aw" are ways of writing the same sound. Maybe I just do it for the pleasure of seeing her remember something.

- I still don't engage the brain-to-mouth filter. I'm kind of like the opposite of what you want someone to be when that person is running for president.

Rather than alleviating these difficulties and turning me, basically, into my own mother (who was very organised and read lots of useful books as well as several intellectual magazines), children are making me worse. Now I never sleep properly. I have more things I ought to be reading books about and less time to read them. I have phone calls and paperwork and appointments for four people instead of one.

Two weeks ago, I lost my wallet. Twice. In one week. The first time I dropped it on the street. The second time I left it in my mother's car when I dropped her car off for repairs. Both times it was returned to me with the twenty dollars and change still in there. This is a city of two million people, and the nice fellow at the pet store acted as if he really had nothing better to do on his way home than to deliver my wallet.

I had thought that it was my husband coming home and allowed my preschool aged son to answer the door in nothing but Spiderman underpants.

This is why homeschooling is ideal. If you homeschool, no one cares that you wore your pajamas all day. No one cares if you don't get out of bed until nine a.m. No one cares that you couldn't find your baby's boots all week and put him instead in the pink fuzzy ones his sister had worn.

Well actually, my husband cares about that last one. He'd rather I not put the baby in fuzzy pink pompomed boots. But I haven't exactly seen him deciding to spend his night tearing apart the house in search of the other gender neutral one, either.

Not long ago, my daughter declared that Firefly had prevented her from sleeping well. She said, "I didn't get my beauty sleep."

Her younger brother, not to be outdone, replied, "Well I didn't get my Spiderman sleep!"

They say that brands seek to hook children as early as possible, because if you are a Heinz Ketchup buyer at five, you will be a Heinz Ketchup forever. This has not held true in my life. I think my parents bought off-brand ketchup, and I find ketchup oddly repulsive in an at-home setting and never buy it. Any ketchup purchased is my husband's doing. Ketchup in restaurants doesn't bother me at all.

If brands do hook children forever, it is safe to assume that Genome will be wearing Spiderman underpants well into his middle age. Or he will do as Husband does, and have a son to purchase Spiderman underpants for instead.

Inequalities

The 1 < 4 type, not the Occupy Wall Street Kind.

"Now Munchkin, does the alligator choose three cookies, or two cookies?"
"Three cookies."
"Does the alligator choose two cookies, or one cookie?"
"One cookie."
"Does he choose three cookies, or five cookies?"
"Both."
"He has to choose one."
"Okay, he chooses one cookie."
"No, he has to choose one number."
"Okay, he chooses eleventy-billion cookies."
"No, which is bigger, three, or five?"
"Three."
"How is three bigger than five?"
"Because you drew a bigger three there, and that's kind of a little five."
"No, which represents the larger quantity of cookies?"
"Can I have a cookie?"
"If you do this page of arithmetic I will give you a cookie."
"Can I have five cookies?"