As a parent, I have noticed many contradictions between life as I perceived it to be when I was a child, and life as I now know it to be as an adult. For one, there is the little matter of, despite our catty slighting of her as a “dumb blonde” back when we were children, judging her now by her elegant clothes, fancy cars, extensive stable of Thoroughbreds and vast collection of “dream homes”it is painfully obvious that Barbie was always much cleverer than we gave her credit for–much cleverer, in fact, than we were ourselves. Looking at the evidence, it becomes clear that at least she had enough sense to buy Flagstaff real estate back in the early nineties, when the rest of us were still waiting for the bubble to burst.
Then, of course, there’s the food issue, and the fact that the food we wished most desperately to eat back when we were children–sugar right out of the bowl, McDonald’s three times a day–is now, ironically, the food that would actually be the easiest and cheapest to procure, while the food that we wouldn’t have touched with a ten-foot tongue back in our youths–lobster, brie, chanterelles–is now the food that we most desperately wish to be importuned to take “just one bite” of. And don’t even get me started on the fact that now, when we really need it, hardly anyone ever tells us it is time to take a nap.
I think that the biggest contradiction in a parent’s life by far though must be the one surrounding the whole issue of drugs. Why is it that when expectant mothers first arrive at the hospital, when the baby is not even actually present, but, like the forthcoming bill still in some rosy-hued hypothetical state, there are drugs a-plenty: pills, injections, creams–even general anesthesia? In fact, the number of drugs people are not only willing to let you take, but will even go and get for you seems to be endless. What’s more, it’s like the birthing room is a party co-hosted by Kate Moss and Robert Downey, Jr.: after a while you don’t even have to keep asking for more; the good stuff just keeps showing up.
Fast forward a few years, though, when the birthing room seems even more like some delirious Moss/Downey, Jr. party (vaguely remembered and frightfully expensive), and when the baby itself is no longer merely a hypothesis, but a real, live three-year-old capable of opening doors, disabling child-proof locks, and “misunderstanding” the word “no” to mean “not while I’m looking”, and suddenly there are no drugs to be found.
And of course, that’s when you need the drugs: during those dreadfully stark hours between the end of the morning cartoons and the beginning of the afternoon ones (the space between Teletubbies and George Shrinks–the long, dark Charlie Rose Hour of the soul); that’s when you need to open your front door and miraculously find a sympathetic nurse with a tray full of lovely painkillers. Even the sight of an epidural needle would be welcome, as long as it not only numbed your extremities but all ability to hear anything in the whiniest upper registers of the hearing spectrum.
Alas, it will never happen: drugs, like youth, sleeping, and the ability to eat whatever you like and not gain an ounce, are wasted on the young. Barbie obviously knows this, which must be why she has chosen to stay so young despite her forty-odd years of existence. If only I hadn’t been so busy mocking her in my own youth, I might have picked up on this sooner. Who knows? Maybe she would have even let me in on some of her real estate secrets, as well.