After five years of parenthood I’ve finally discovered the perfect simile for what it feels like to deal with young children: it’s just like handling deadly toxic waste.
Wait, I may have stated that a bit harshly. How about this? Dealing with young children is the same as taking care of a highly poisonous cloud of death gas. Sorry, these similes aren’t getting any sweeter. Just let me explain.
This model — let’s call it the Adorable Death Theory — came to me while on vacation recently with my two sons, both under the age of five. The theory goes that if you don’t want horrible things to happen to you — skin peeled off, damage to the nervous system, grape juice spilled all over your pants — you need to assume that children will behave like toxic substances.
The start of our trip was a car ride from the Lower Mainland all the way to Alberta, more than half a day of driving in a little hatchback crammed full of luggage, snacks, and fear. This loaded up little metal box might seem like the ideal location for a deadly meltdown, but in fact our two boys handled the trip with wonderful patience and grace.
Why? Because the toxic waste was bottled up, sealed away in leak-proof carseats and fully contained by awful children’s music and just a little bit of horse tranquilizer (kidding).
No matter how deadly the material, there’s only so much damage it can do when properly stored and managed. A kid straight-jacketed to a modern car seat can’t really get up to any major mischief, so long as you move all driver-impaling projectiles out of reach.
Parents all know this is true because they’ve seen the inverse — the damage that kids can do inside a car if left unbuckled for just a few seconds. Look away for a moment and sure enough you’ll hear the e-brake disengage and watch as the car rolls into a lake. The next thing you know Environment Canada will be down there in hazmat suits talking to the media about the idiot parents who left a couple of barrels of toxic sludge rolling around their Honda unattended.
Anyway, the purpose of our holiday trip to Southern Alberta with the two mushroom clouds in the back seat was to help my in-laws move out of their longtime home into a smaller residence. Now I know what you’re thinking: not only is this guy making a heartless analogy comparing his kids to toxic waste, but he also needs to find a better travel agent. I’m going to answer “no comment” to both those charges and keep on plugging here.
Soon after we arrived at our destination my hypothesis was put through another test as my children were let loose inside a big four-level house that was completely devoid of furniture. There I observed that they were still dangerous in that location — their random free-range collisions and echo chamber screaming terrified several members of the general public — but they were actually doing less damage than usual to each other and the property due to the simple fact that there was more space to move about.
Still, the fumes that the boys were producing were bad enough that I was forced to squeegee them back into their biohazard bags and haul them to the nearest playground. Since the dawn of time parents have felt secure releasing their little chemical spills onto playgrounds safe in the knowledge that the kids shouldn’t be able to do too much damage.
Sure a nice neighbourhood girl might get caught up in an overly vigorous game of “No you’re a poopoo head!” and suffer some second-degree radiation burns, but it’s nothing a Band-Aid shouldn’t be able to fix.
The playground worked fairly well, of course. The real Chernobyl came the next morning when the children woke up in the brand new house. It’s best described as a tastefully sized, beautifully crafted acid factory (note to my mother-in-law: remember this is just a metaphor. Or simile. Or whatever.
Thanks for the wonderful visit — I sure do love that Saskatoon berry pie).
The problem wasn’t the size of the place, per se, but the containment barriers set up. Everything was packed away in precariously placed boxes, balanced and weighted in perfect position to entice-and-then-crush a small child. The only things unpacked were a few easily shattered glass lamps, some fancy pieces of furniture that were most definitely not for climbing on, and a piano that was not to be played in the child-preferred style of Smashisimo.
The basic rules for the children were no running, no jumping, no touching — sensible enough given the circumstances. Of course, less than three minutes after the boys woke up, the rest of the city was wondering why there was a mushroom cloud hanging over the new subdivision.
After I finished scraping pieces of my children off the fancy new corkboard floors, I shovelled them into the car and took them to my last resort detox zone: the wide open Prairie. The change was instant.
The same boy who just moments before had been gleefully shouting “I’m going to smash you in the face!” at his brother was now holding his hand, sweetly guiding him down a trail while constantly telling me how much he loved “the calm of the Prairies.” We spent the next 90 minutes sitting quietly together on a little bench watching a farmer feed his cows (side note No. 2 cows are hilarious) and waiting for a train to come by.
The train didn’t come until we were just about to leave, but that hour and a half flew by without a single raised voice. The same two powder kegs who had just turned a shiny new house into a shiny new pile of lung cancer were now being harmlessly soaked up by the vast magic of the wild.
My advice, then, for anyone handling a volatile mixture of adorable little elements: let them breathe. Maybe install a Prairie or some other natural wonder somewhere inside or near your house — preferably with a train running through it — and be ready to throw it over the wee Fukushimas whenever it becomes clear that a typhoon is about to hit the living room.
And, failing that, maybe build yourself a bunker.
Andy Prest is the sports editor for the North Shore News and writes a biweekly humour/lifestyle column. He can be reached via email at [email protected].
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