Kelly Poe Wilson

I’ve always liked the word squabble: it sounds like it should be used to describe a bunch of ducks at a suburban lake fighting over a stale piece of Wonderbread–lots of noise and feathers over something that is, essentially, nothing. In other words: lots of sound, lots of fury, and lots of signifying nothing. Which is also what makes it the perfect word to describe what my children do from the moment they get up in the morning to the time they pass out in front of the TV at night.

There really isn’t any other word for what they do. You could not call it arguing, because the word argue, despite its Jerry Springer taint, still holds some degree of respectability. After all, arguments are what lawyers make during the opening and closing phase of a trial, and even though nine times out of ten those trials are about something just as inconsequential as avian Wonderbread ownership, they still at least have the potential to be about matters of life and death. This, I assure you, can never be said about the topics Clementine and Clyde have under discussion.

For much the same reason, debate is also out–unless debate teams have changed so dramatically in the years since I was in college that they now include a period during which you have 10 seconds to pummel your opponent until he or she concedes your point. (Again, Jerry Springer notwithstanding.)

Even the word bicker is not adequate, since, despite all of its connotations of mindless, unimportant back-and-forth sparring, it also is almost always associated with married couples, couples who–bizarre as it may seem–have actually chosen to be together in the midst of their arguing. Clementine and Clyde, however, have made it abundantly clear that, for them, this is not the case; in fact, were the entire population of the world to line up as for one gigantic game of kickball in which they were the captains, I have no doubt that each one would pick the other dead last.

So, until a better word comes along, the word for what they do is definitely squabble. No other word comes so close to expressing the sheer meaninglessness of their confrontations, as well as the high level of annoyance experienced by anyone who has to listen to them. I tried to explain this to my husband once, when, after taking note of my frazzled state at the end of the day, he infuriatingly told me to “just ignore them.”

Right. Like I can ignore two people who can turn a simple game of 20 Questions into 20 Squabbles by disagreeing about whether a chicken is a vegetable, or a mineral. (Argument #1: Since Mom says eating a chicken doesn’t really count as eating meat, it is obviously a vegetable. Argument #2: Since people make nuggets out of them, they must be a mineral–like gold.) Ignoring an argument like that would be like trying to ignore the two girls next to you on the ski lift who are having a heated debate about which live Phish tape is the best. It would be like trying to ignore the people behind you at the movies while they argued over which was better: The DaVinci Code or Interview with a Vampire. It would be like trying to ignore your baristas as they argued whether marijuana should be legalized because “da birds eat it” or because “hemp is mentioned in the Bible.” In other words, it would be impossible: at some point your brain simply compels you to put an end to it all by screaming out, “Enough already: you’re both idiots, ok?”

Not that verbal pleas to cease and desist ever work against inane arguments anyway; it’s like trying to get the ducks to stop fighting by throwing more bread at them. Although–who knows–throwing Wonderbread just might work with children.

There used to be an old TV show called The Fugitive, the premise of which was that, in order to prove his innocence, the falsely accused eponymous hero had to find his wife’s “real” killer, a man known simply as “the one-armed man.” (No, he didn’t look for him on all the golf courses in Florida–this was pre-O.J.). Of course, just like in the O.J. case, no one ever really believed The Fugitive, either–especially the part about the one-armed man.

And who could blame them? After all, every aspect of his story (I’m talking about The Fugitive here–I’ll leave O.J. alone for a while) seemed wholly implausible–pure Hollywood fabrication. Or, at least it did–until recently. That’s when we began to experience something very similar in our own house. In our case, however, instead of being plagued by a nefarious one-armed murderer, we have been haunted by his less fortunate younger brother: the one-legged shoe thief.

I know: it sounds bizarre, but, having examined all the evidence I can come to no other conclusion than that we must be the victims of a one-legged bandit: how else could you explain the fact that our house is constantly the setting for “The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Shoe”?

There’s really no other explanation; after all, no one in their right mind would ever take off just one shoe, walk around for a bit, and then take the other one off in a completely different location–would they? No, of course they wouldn’t, which means that, logically, where you find one shoe, you should also be able find the other, just as when you are missing one shoe, you should also be missing the other. In our house, however, this is seldom the case–or, at least it isn’t the case for my daughter, Clementine, who so far has been the sole victim of the one-legged bandit.

Of course, the less open-minded among you might be tempted to say that this only goes to prove that it is not a mysterious one-legged foot-fetishist on the prowl, but rather a neglectful child; to you I can only reply that, on the contrary, this simply narrows down the potential list of one-legged subjects to those who wear a girls size 3.

You’d think, with a physical description like that, our man would be easy enough to nab: all we would have to do once we had noticed the theft of yet another shoe would be to canvas the neighborhood, stopping to question all of the one-legged men wearing one small pink flip-flop (or baseball cleat, or Doc Marten). This, however, is wishful thinking: I’m sure that one wouldn’t get very far in the world of disabled thievery without being at least a little bit clever; in other words, no one-legged man worth his crutch would be foolish enough to be caught in the vicinity of his crime with his loot still on him. Not that it would matter much if he did, since our man is also clever enough to only strike at the most hectic time of day–right in the middle of the before school rush– when, thanks to the tsunami of book bags, half-eaten lunches and unsigned permission slips that surge back and forth throughout the house all morning, he is able to slip in and out completely undetected.

Still, even without being caught in the act, or even in the neighborhood, you would think that in a town of this size it would be easy to catch someone whose only leg ended in a little-girl-sized foot. The fact that we haven’t means that he must be holing up somewhere where he can pass unnoticed (perhaps by spending the majority of his time sitting down), and presumably one where odd footwear doesn’t look out of place.

Maybe O.J. was on to something with all those golf courses after all.

In Hemingway’s time, big game hunters went to Africa looking to bag the “Big Five”–elephant, rhino, lion, leopard and cape buffalo, and even though nowadays most people travel to Africa armed with cameras instead of carbines, the goal remains essentially the same: to “shoot” the Big Five. And then, of course, there’s Clyde.

This summer, while the rest of my family spent their days scanning the Serengeti for signs of wildlife, Clyde was content to limit his horizons to the back seat of the Land Rover. There he could usually be found playing happily with whatever he had managed to scrounge out of our bags that day, with his favorite being the handful of leftover euro coins from a European layover on the way to Tanzania.

“Clyde, look at the elephant!” we’d say, as an elephant passed so closely to our truck that we could feel the rumble of its chest; Clyde, however, would be too engrossed in some serious conversation his coins were having with each other to even bother looking up. (Question: what do euros talk about when they’re not at home? My first thought was that they would make smug little self-congratulatory remarks to each other about “coalitions of the willing” and “freedom fries,” but, as it turns out, they tended to talk about pretty much the same things all inanimate objects talk about in Clyde’s hands: who they’re going to fight.)

Clyde displayed the same utter lack of interest when we encountered cheetahs, giraffes, zebras and even lions. Finally, after I had begun to worry that the only way Clyde was ever going to view any wildlife on this trip would be if he was dragged along behind the truck as bait, Clyde’s interest in game spotting was unexpectedly piqued by the sight of an animal standing right outside the car window. Why “unexpectedly?” Because not only did Clyde make his sighting when the rest of us weren’t even looking for game (we were passing through a small village), but also because of the nature of the game he ended up spotting: it was a chicken.

“Did you see that?” Clyde asked us excitedly as we passed by someone’s yard. “A chicken!”

That was when we first realized that, unlike 99.9% of the tourists who go on safari, Clyde had set his sights a little bit lower than the coveted “Big Five”–Clyde was looking for the “Little Five.”

As far as we can tell, the little five is made up of chickens, cows, mice, toads, and those small, nondescript birds that birders the world over refer to as “LBJ’s,” or, “little brown jobbies.” However, despite the lack of glamour attached to his little five, Clyde’s commitment to finding them was so complete that, when we were especially desperate to get Clyde to look at something (say a cheetah stalking a gazelle 10 feet away), we would lie, telling Clyde to “look over there–a cow.” Of course, we had to be careful not to overuse this particular ploy, since Clyde soon became annoyed with our appallingly bad animal identifications. “That’s not a cow–it’s an elephant,” he would say, annoyed that we had tricked him into seeing yet another exotic animal standing a few feet away from his head.

Of course, to Clyde’s credit, he did stick with his version of game viewing much longer than the rest of us stuck with ours. In fact, even after the safari ended and we were at our next stop he remained completely focused on adding to his list. Which would explain why, in the picture I have taken of Clementine and Clyde standing in front of a windmill outside Amsterdam, you can only see half of Clyde: the other half of him is busy dashing out of the frame, in hot pursuit of–what else–a chicken.

Back in the days when my kids were small enough that I had to do (read: wipe) everything for them, I couldn’t wait for the day when they would finally come to me and say those five little magic words: “I can do it myself.” I pictured us–if not exactly sailing smoothly out of the door every morning–at least making steady daily progress towards that goal. What’s more, I saw those mornings in between the two stages of helplessness and self-sufficiency as being filled with scenes of youthful fumbling so charming that it would look like something straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t long after I had conceived of this delightful vision that the reality set in, and I learned that, when it comes to children, the words “I can do it myself” are usually only uttered in the final three minutes before we absolutely must be out of the door or else be irrevocably late for school, movies, kidney transplants, etc. This means that, although the picture of a child sitting haphazardly on the floor and struggling to put his new shoes on not only upside down but on the wrong foot as he chants “I can do it myself” may very well be Rockwellian, the truth is it soon becomes lost in the much larger, much more Daliesque vision of ticking clocks and an anxious mother dancing worriedly to and fro and saying, “Here…if you just…can I…maybe if we…” until finally, in a fit of frustration, she snatches the shoe from the offending party’s hand, shoves it on the offending party’s foot, and heads out the door, one very offended child in tow.

I know. I KNOW. These are the “teachable moments.” These are the times when I should dredge up my inner Andy Griffith (the Sheriff Taylor version, not the Matlock one–he’ll come in handy later, when they come home smelling of booze and cigarettes and try to pull off some crazy story about arriving at an intersection just in time to witness a tragic pile-up between a beer truck, a cigarette salesman, and, just possibly, a 1968 VW bus). These are the times when I need to exercise all of my saintly patience, knowing full well that my reward will come later in the form of never having to sue for visitation rights to see my grandkids. These are the times when I need to see that these are not only Rockwell moments, but Kodak and AT &T long-distance commercial moments combined. In other words, these are the times when I totally lose my cool.

Part of it is because, in order for a child to ever perform a task on their own, they must first be given instructions which have been broken down so thoroughly that, if you were to just add a few lines of code, could probably be used to program a computer. Take sewing. The other day Clementine wanted to sew a patch onto her favorite pair of jeans “all by herself;”she just needed a little help. First she needed “a little help” to find the needle. Then to find the thread. Then to find the needle threader. Then to learn how to use the threader. Then, after giving up on that, to find someone to thread the needle for her. Then to find a patch. Then to know where to put the needle. Then to know why the thread just pulled through. Then to know “what kind of knot” to put in the thread. Then to have someone else put the knot in for her… And so on.

By the time “she” was done I had put so much work into it–and received so little credit in return–that I felt like I had just produced a Paris Hilton album–and there’s not a thing that’s Rockwellian about that image.

I have decided that when the time comes for me to grow old and crotchety (ok: more crotchety), there will be at least one indignity of old age that I will not have to suffer: I will never have to become one of those poor, shivering old souls who are forever complaining about how cold everyone keeps their restaurants and theaters–the kind who travel everywhere with a cardigan and an extra pair of socks. And no, it’s not the prospect of global warming that has me so optimistic, but rather a lack of retirement planning: in all likelihood I’ll be spending my twilight years with my daughter, Clementine, a person who lives surrounded by a large personal climate bubble that is not only always a delightful 75E inside, but also has the added benefit of being completely impermeable to any type of rain or snow on the outside.

I know this to be true because every time I have tried to help her pack her bags for an upcoming trip she goes ballistic over the mere suggestion that she pack clothing suitable for any weather that could be described by a word other than “balmy.” In fact, judging from her most recent extremely hostile reaction to my suggestion that she take at least one long sleeved t-shirt along with her to summer camp, I thought that maybe there had been a last minute change of venue, and that this year’s camp was being held in Hell.

But no, it was just our usual packing struggle–the usual tears and recriminations, the usual wails of “Why can’t I just wear what I want to wear?” and, finally, the usual grudging acquiescence to the inclusion of one tiny piece of inclement weather gear–like, maybe a pair of socks.

The thing is, it’s not as if I am going to make her wear the clothes in question: I just want her to have them in her possession, if for no other reason than that if I don’t–and she ends up being the kid who has to run through the rain in a Hefty garbage bag–I might start to pull even farther ahead of Britney Spears in the “Worst Mother of the Year” competition. The other reason, of course–the more altruistic one– is that I really do want her to be warm and dry, and I an still naive enough to believe that if I pack it, and she needs it, she will wear it. After all, even the most hardened of fashionista wouldn’t stand around shivering when she could simply reach into her bag and pull on a coat–right?

Maybe not–judging from the tiny blue co-eds I see mincing their way home from the downtown bars every winter, maybe going coatless is the new thing. Maybe it’s not just a fashion statement, but a statement statement. Maybe today’s’ kids burn their coats like the women of the 60’s burned their bras; maybe even showing up at an event wearing a coat (or rain jacket) is now considered the lowest expression of bourgeoisie. Maybe there’s a bunch of kids sitting around the Everest Base camp in shorts and t-shirts even now, greeting all of the “sell-outs” who show up in their brand new Gore-Tex jackets with sneering comments like, “What–did your mommy pack that for you?”

I hope not. I’d much rather believe in the “Clementine’s personal climate bubble” theory than have to face up to the fact that all of these clothing fights might really be stemming from some kind of a misplaced concern for fashion, because if we’re already already fighting about clothing choices at age ten, then what are we going to be fighting about at age fifteen–public nudity? (“But Mom, naked is the new black.”)

Call it my own “personal denial bubble” if you like, but for now it’s all I go– and I’m keeping it.

One of the things I do every morning in our house is walk around to all of the rooms and collect the various glasses of water that have sprouted like mushrooms on top of every flat surface(and some not so very flat). I then pour the remaining water into a pitcher that I use for my plants. Given the desperate nature of our current drought situation, this has always seemed like a win-win situation to me: firstly, because this means that I no longer feel the need to hound my kids every time they come into the kitchen for a new glass of water (which is approximately every fifteen minutes), and secondly because my plants are thriving off of water that otherwise would have gone to waste (or at least have gone to the wastewater treatment plant, where, in the fullness of time, it might have suffered the ignomity of one day becoming the tiny little bump of artificial snow under some Phoenician’s Gore Tex-clad butt–an unnecessarily humiliating ending, I think, even for a product that did start off as at least 20% kid spit).

Sometimes, though, I start to feel as if all my efforts at saving water are for naught: it’s hard to feel too good about saving a few ounces of water everyday when the guy up the street is hosing off his sidewalk. Unfortunately, the same can also sometimes be said of child-rearing.

I have always liked to think that if my children have only learned one thing from me, it is to be tolerant of other people’s differences. My technique–developed way back when my daughter, Clementine, was just getting to the age when she would point at people in the grocery store–is as follows: as soon as my children start in on the “why is that person short/tall/thin/fat/in a wheelchair/wearing a veil/etc.”-type questions, I tell them that it is because if we all looked the same it would be impossible to tell each other apart, and, as nice as they might think it would be if we all looked like Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, just imagine the how difficult it would be to find each other in a crowd: we’d have to start sniffing each other’s butts, like dogs. ( I then go on to point out that, if they thought it was embarrassing for me to pick them up from school now, think how embarrassing it would be after I started sticking my nose into their butts every afternoon in the school parking lot–right in front of their most recent crush, no less.)

Not too surprisingly, this argument (or perhaps the dread of hearing the words “butt sniffing” again) has always been quite effective, and so far both of my kids have turned out to be fairly kind and tolerant individuals. Which is why, just as with my efforts at water conservation vs. the hose guy up the street, it is that much more disheartening to see what other people are teaching to their children.

For example, there’s this new Palestinian kids’ TV show which features not only a Mickey Mouse-like character being beaten to death by an Israeli, but also the subsequent calls for the other characters to avenge Mickey’s “martyrdom.” (I bet it was hard to figure out where to put the laugh track on that one). I know: we all watched questionable TV when we were kids, but come on–it’s not like Bugs Bunny ever declared a fatwa on Elmer Fudd.

It’s almost enough to make me wonder what’s the point of teaching tolerance to my children when they have to live in a world that is clearly filled with intolerance. But, just like with the water I save, I guess when it comes to teaching tolerance every little drop counts.

Still, I wonder how well “butt sniffing” would translate into Arabic.

This summer, for the first time ever, there were several weeks when both of my children were home with me full time; whereas in previous summers I could always count on at least one of them being in some kind of daycare/ daycamp situation, there were now great swathes of time when all three of us would be alone in the house together–a prospect that filled me with more than a little bit of dread. Not because I was worried I wouldn’t be able to find enough stuff for them to do ( I can always find things for them to do–usually involving a broom). And not because I was afraid that hours of summertime TV would turn their brains to mush. (Heck: I grew up watching bad TV all summer long, and–if I do say so myself–I turned out to be pretty…uh, what’s that word, the opposite of not good? Oh yeah: good). What I was worried about, however, was being caught in the crossfire of the Great Sibling War of 2007.

Taken one at a time, my kids are great: they’re fun, interesting and thoughtful individuals that I am proud to know. Put them together, though, and you’d think you’d stumbled into the negotiation sessions for the recent Police reunion tour.

To put it another way, consider the case of the Austro-Hungarian Empire: I’m sure that the Austrians were lovely people, as were the Serbs. However, put them together in a carriage and the next thing you know you’re not only running low on Archdukes, but someone is coming up with the idea of mustard gas..

Not that I’m comparing my kids to World War I. That would be silly: after all, World War I was only fought on two continents, and so far my children have already fought on three. However, just like WW I, where the worst battles were the ones that took place right in the middle of somebody’s backyard, in our case, the worst battles take place right in the middle of somebody’s living room–mine.

Here’s a typical scenario: one will get up early and claim their spot in front of the TV. A little while later, the other one will get up, see that the TV has already been claimed for the morning, and determinedly begin to undermine any possible enjoyment the first one is getting out of it. Nothing overt: perhaps they will bend over in front of the TV to tie their shoes–for twenty minutes. Perhaps they will sing this “great” song they just wrote (at a volume just slightly above the volume of the TV–and increasing incrementally as the TV volume creeps up to adapt). Perhaps they will, like the voice of self-doubt made visible, mutter deprecating comments about the show and the viewer just under their breath, responding to each “What did you say?” with a sly smile and a “Hmm? Oh, nothing–nothing.”

Whatever they do it is guaranteed that the whole thing will end in some sort of physical altercation, with the entire screaming/crying scrum rolling into the kitchen in a blur of tears and fists reminiscent of the fights in the old Andy Capp comics.

Of course, five minutes later they will have forgotten all about it–or it will start all over again, depending on the alignment of the planets and whether or not they think they have a chance of talking me into a trip to the ice cream store later on (as if: Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat had a better chance of Jimmy Carter taking them out for ice cream after Camp David).

In warfare, the term for non-combatants who get killed is collateral damage. I’m not sure what the term is for one who gets so frustrated she wants to join the war as a third combatant, but I’m beginning to suspect that it is Mother.

Despite the fact that he is only in kindergarten, and that some of the students he goes to school with are literally twice as old and twice as tall as him, my son Clyde decided to participate in this year’s school talent show. Actually, “decided to participate” makes it sound like it was some kind of wrenching decision for him, something he agonized over; in reality, it was not: Clyde heard about the show, and, when they said they were looking for “talent,” naturally assumed that they meant him. More to the point, he assumed that they meant his talent on the dance floor. (His signature moves include “guitar solo jump,” “power slide,” and, of course, the real crowd pleaser: “Mr. Roboto arms.”)

And just like that I was left to wonder once again where in the world this child came from. Not that I’m a shrinking violet on the dance floor: on the contrary, I’ll get up and shake my booty with the best of them, (or, if the best of them are too reticent, all by myself). And, thanks to an early decision to limit my participation in dances like “YMCA” and “The Hustle” to a minimum, I’d like to think that through the years I have managed to shake said booty without causing myself any serious embarrassment. However, my personal record as a Macarena abstainer aside, I’m still not so confident in my dancing skills that I would ever enter myself into a talent contest–not even one where all of the other participants had to get permission from their parents to stay up past 9 pm. And that’s where Clyde is different.

Whereas I get dressed for a party and immediately ask myself: “Does this decade make my butt look big?” Clyde puts on his party clothes, looks at himself in the mirror and immediately says, “I look fabulous!”

And whereas I am more reluctant to get my picture taken than some kind of mutant cross between Michael Jackson and a vampire (wait–is that redundant?), Clyde is always ready for his close up. In fact, when he was a baby, one sure way to get him to stop crying was to hold up our hands, pretend we were taking a picture, and yell “Cheese!”: like a seasoned professional hitting the red carpet, he would go from “despondent” to “delighted” before we even had a chance to find out what the problem was (although, in retrospect it seems like not enough fawning had been the problem all along).

For a while I was afraid that Clyde’s “movie-star quality” meant that the real reason for his odd (for this family) anti-anti-social behavior was a touch of the dreaded acting bug (just what we need in our house–more drama); luckily however, before I had completely resigned myself to living with a (shudder) thespian, I noticed that, for Clyde, it’s not really about being the star of the party–it’s just about the party, period. (Not that it’s much better to be harboring a future Kato Kaelin instead of a future Charlie Sheen, but still: you take what you can get).

And yet, even with all of this–even with knowing about Clyde’s love of the spectacle–the talent show still had me worried. What if they laughed at him? What if they booed? What if, worst of all, they did neither, but just sat and stared, blankly uncomprehending? After all, even though I might not quite understand my little extrovert, that doesn’t mean I want him pulled back down in the gutter with the rest of us.

In the end, though, with luck (and, I must say, talent) all of my worries proved groundless: Clyde rocked the house. So what if the end result was more on the Napoleon Dynamite-ish side than Saturday Night Fever–at least it wasn’t Little Miss Sunshine.

As I was listening to the list of confessions attributed to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on NPR the other day (apparently, he is responsible for every American tragedy from the Hindenburg to the mussing of John Edwards’ hair), I was struck by the fact that it is obvious my children don’t keep up with current events, because if they did, they would have been all over this story like a soccer Mom on an iced Venti Carmel Macchiato. After all, what could be more fortuitous for them–two people who seem intent on passing through life in an entirely blameless state–than the appearance of a man who is ready to take the blame for everything? (Or rather, nearly everything: I notice that even Sheikh Mohammed wasn’t foolhardy enough to take responsibility for inventing the multiply redundant layers of packaging that cocoon every newly purchased CD; this, no doubt, is due to the fact that–after he cut his finger opening the new Dixie Chicks CD–Osama himself is reported to have declared that particular individual to be the new “Great Satan.”)

Regardless, however, of the few things he won’t admit to (I think he’s also keeping mum on whether or not he was the one who shaved Brittney’s crotch), the sheer breadth of the things he has admitted to would be enough to keep Clementine and Clyde in fine form for years–if only they knew.

If they only knew the opportunities they were missing out on, they could replace their current method of assigning/avoiding blame (a thunderous crash, immediately followed by the sound of running feet and a double cry of “I didn’t do it!”) with a new, improved, and entirely blameless one. (There would be the same thunderous crash, to be sure, but this time, instead of the usual sounds of fleeing and denial, what would follow would be a casual stroll into the kitchen and a careless “Yeah, uh, you know that antique vase your Great Aunt Charlotte gave you? The one we were never allowed to touch? Well, Sheikh Mohammed just broke it. No, really, he did; if you don’t believe me you can ask him yourself–he’ll tell you.”)

With the new Sheikh Mohammed defense in place, instead of having to respond to my demands to know who ate the last English muffin; who started the toothpaste fight; who thought it would be a good idea bring the hose into the living room; with the same old shifty-eyed shrug and a mumbled “I dunno”, they could instead hold their heads up high, slip the hose behind their backs, and proudly declare, “Sheikh Mohammed did it.” And what could I say? After all, given the chance, he probably would admit to it.

Come to think of it, maybe that is actually his nefarious plan: to give the children of America carte blanche to commit any misdeeds they choose, secure in the knowledge that all of the blame (and punishment) will be given instead to the “master of confessions.”

Unfortunately for him, though, if that indeed was his plan, then he made a severe miscalculation when he estimated the media savvy of America’s children. One wonders, in fact, quite what he was thinking; did he really believe that a country that produces adults who–less than six years after 9/11–can’t find Afghanistan on a map could really be capable of producing children savvy enough to get their lost homework excuses off of CNN?

They say that youth is wasted on the young; I think a truer aphorism would be that age–and all of it’s accompanying treachery and cunning–is wasted on the old. After all, by the time you’re old enough to know when it’s time to shut up and call your lawyer (or your terrorist co-conspirator fall guy), most of your really good crimes are behind you. Especially those that involve hoses in the living room.

This summer my family will be taking a long-anticipated trip to Tanzania. Even for an inveterate list-maker such as myself, the amount of planning involved for this trip has been quite daunting. There have been the passports, the visas, the immunizations–not to mention all of the special (read: expensive) gear to purchase– times four. Then there has been the mental planning: we have piles of books all over the house about every aspect of life in Tanzania–the people, the politics, the wildlife, the beach scene–we even have a beginner’s guide to Swahili installed on our computer (not that it has done me any good–after six months I can still only say “yes” and “no”–and sometimes I even manage to mess those up).

In fact, I’ve been planning so much about this trip for so long now that even when the only variables left are the ones upon which I have absolutely no control (the weather, currency fluctuations, nearby political upheavals), I feel as if I must still exercise whatever last vestige of controlling powers I have left. And so, of course, I turn to my children.

“Clementine!” I snap when my daughter rejects yet another item of food at dinnertime (this time there was “too much cheese” on her macaroni and cheese), “You know that in Africa, there won’t be a lot of choices, so you’ll have to try new…” Blahblahblah goes the look on her face–obviously she’s heard this one a few hundred times before. So I turn to Clyde:

“Clyde–you know, in Africa, things will be different. The animals will be different, the plants will be different, (blahblahblah goes his face, too) the people will be different–

That gets his attention. “The people? How?”

“Well,” I say, “for one thing, almost everybody will be Black”–

”What?” says Clyde, confused. “Black people? I don’t want to see Black people; I’m scared of Black people!”

Yikes–where did that come from? This certainly puts a new spin on things:“The Cracker Family Goes to Africa.”

In an attempt to fix the problem I have somehow just created I immediately launch into a listing of every African American we know, making sure to highlight all of their “non-scary” attributes. (Although, given the paucity of the resulting list of people, I am beginning to think that maybe we do deserve the “Cracker Family” moniker after all). Not that it matters–Clyde dismisses my pitiful little list out of hand: “But Mommy, they’re not black–they’re brown. Like Daddy.”

Okay, now I’m the one who’s confused. Daddy’s brown? Then what color am I?

“Yellow.” (I really need to get away from the computer screen more.) As it turns out, census forms in Clyde’s world would be simple–you’re either brown, or you’re pink. (Disturbingly, I am the only fluorescent mole rat in his life–and therefore the only “yellow peril”). Suddenly it all makes sense: with a classification system like that, a truly black person would be quite frightening; I realize that it’s not Black people that Clyde is scared of–it’s black people. Not that this knowledge does me any good–even if I follow him around and explain to everyone we meet that “He’s saying black with a little ‘b’–a little ‘b,’” this will not change the fact that I am about to travel to Africa with a child who has no problem loudly and publicly declaring “I don’t like black people.”

I wonder if it’s too late to change our trip to Idaho? Of course, that would take some planning, too. And I’d probably still end up saying something stupid like “there’ll be a lot of White people.” Which means I’d still have to follow him around, only this time I’d be explaining, “He’s saying white with a little “w”–a little “w.”