They say it is a mental flaw to let things go "in one ear and out the other," but at my age it is merely a question of deciding what to admit onto the hard drive of my brain. It's a limited drive and at this point it is pretty much full. To write something new to it means I often have to delete something else. So I don't view this in one ear thing as a flaw but a necessity. I don't forget a thing so much as I let it just "slip my mind."
A common variation of this slippage is our deplorable habit of letting something slip in one ear and out of your mouth without first striking either a reflective surface or passing through a BS filter -- preferably both. Once you realize that "In-Ear-Out-Mouth" (IEOM) is an affliction of epidemic proportions in contemporary America you can spot it maiming and killing brain cells everywhere.
The latest notable example of IEOM showed up a few nights ago at a meeting of troubled Americans that I, being troubled by Americans, often attend. A woman of middle years was -- yet again -- bemoaning the fact that she is just, well, nuts. Being nuts is, according to her, part of "Being all I can be!" Even though being crazy makes her unhappy, she seems as determined to hold onto her nuttiness as she is to let go of her girlish figure -- and let God bring on the burritos.
It is not only that she is nuts. She also has a burning need to "share." These reflections on her part often give way, as such reflections do, to the nostalgic and idealistic:
"Things were better when...,"
"If only I had what I had when....,"
"Don't you all think I should have now what I had then.....?"
She thirsts for the past. It is her central theme. But last night had a variation on her theme of yearning for the past. She yearned for the deep past -- when she was a child, or, even better, an infant.
In the course of announcing this insight to the stupefied listeners counting the seconds until her 3 minutes were up, she emitted a pure bit of IEOM. She said,
"I was feeling extra crazy so I took a walk down to the town beach where all the new babies were out and all the children were playing. And I saw, so very, very clearly, how lucky the babies and children were to be so simple, and so deeply, deeply sane."
"How lucky the babies and children were to be so simple, and so deeply, deeply sane" is a safe statement to make in a troubled Americans meeting. It was an IEOM statement that was so incontestable -- lest you be labeled a churl -- that all the other females in the room (Those either presently incarcerated in mom-jail, recently paroled from mom-jail, or hoping to be soon condemned to mom-jail.) began to bob their heads in agreement like a gaggle of drinking birds over the glass.
I, of course, am a churl. Hence my only thought on hearing this statement was "In-Ear-Out-Mouth... and you really are crazy if you think that babies and children are sane for one second of the live long day. Infants and children are many things, sweetheart, but sane is not one of them."
Not sure? Let's review.
The unsanitary insanity of infants is strikingly obvious. Any adult human being who has to be spoon-fed, drools uncontrollably, and has forgotten
the rudiments of bowel and bladder control had better have loving relatives, a sizable trust fund, a pit-bull lawyer, and medicare lest he or she be put down like an old dog in this society.
It would seem that we put up with this shitty behavior from infants for more than two years simply on the grounds of "they cute." Well, so are kittens and puppies, and the time and expense spent on their basic training is considerably less. Besides, if the kitten or puppy doesn't work out you can just drop it off by the side of the road without much trouble. Try that with an infant and you are quickly brought to heel. It would seem that we are determined to protect some levels of unsanitary insanity more than others in this land. I ask you, how fair and equal is that?
After sanitation, there's post-infancy sound pollution. Children, having had some time to practice at life acquire small motor skills and a sailor's vocabulary without losing the ability to screech like a disemboweled wombat at any instant and for no reason at all. As a result they present a more interesting buffet of brain disorders.
Napoleonic complexes and the belief that their backsides produce nothing but moonbeams are common mental disorders. Children also present in the adult wards with a distinct inability to understand any time lapse at all between desire and gratification. Add onto those three items the realization that we have, as a society, decided that no actions of children -- no matter how awful -- are to have any consequences other than a disappointed look and a "Time Out," and you have the recipe for all these inmates to rule their asylum homes. Which they do with predictable results.
In a simpler time, children's misdeeds and psychotic outbursts (A frothing temper tantrum involving heel pounding and floor revolving on being denied a pack of gum was observed recently at a local supermarket.) were controlled simply by referencing the "father" who would "get home soon." No longer. There is often no father that will be home anytime in the next decade. Even when a father is home he is often inhibited in his impulse to renovate the insane child by the knowledge that the child knows how to dial 911. And that the police will respond.
In making sure that the state guardians of children always respond to 911 calls with weapons, we have given the whip-hand to the nuts in our homes. It is as if an asylum provided an armed bodyguard to every sociopath admitted, and gave that bodyguard permission to shoot the doctors if they even looked cross-eyed at the afflicted. Today the afflicted can look cross-eyed, stick out their tongues, and flip off the doctors as long as they have 911 on the speed dial of the cellular phones the doctors bought for them.
Whenever I observe young children shrieking, swearing, defecating and twitching in public while exhibiting other certifiable insanities I often long for a technological solution and training aid. But since I have been informed that cattle prods and radio-controlled dog shock collars have not been approved for humans under 180 pounds I despair.
I know that in our frantic efforts to get the control over our insane children back from the experts and government agencies to whom we've ceded it, we have often resorted to drugs, but surely some simple behavioral modification techniques can be employed to return them to sanity. Perhaps the "talking cure."
Perhaps our use of the word "No" as a functional part of the conversation with our children would help. Upon reflection, however, that seems doomed to failure as long as the word "No" functions only to instill in our children the rudiments of a gambling addiction.
Think about your own children or children you have observed in the full grip of a "I-want-you-buy-me-crappy-thing-or-I-die-now" dementia. Do you ever see "No" used as a final answer? If you have then you have also seen winged monkeys thrashing about in the parent's pants. Adults who tell demented children "No" are seen by those children as mere slot-machines:
"Can I have?" "No."
"Can I have?" "No."
"Can I have?" "No."
"Can I have?" "No."
"Can I have?" "No."
"Can I have?" "No."
"Can I have?" "No."
"Can I have?" "Oh, all right."
JACKPOT!
Another example of how demented children are can be seen in their fashion sense. Yes, from the time they learn to fasten their shoes' little Velcro flaps (Another indulgence we've made so they don't ever have to suffer learning how to tie a bowknot lest a life moment dent their "self-esteem."), children left to dress themselves will emerge from their cells in outfits that would frighten circus clowns.
So unremittingly awful is a child's insane concept of couture that mothers will go to extraordinary lengths to dissuade them from appearing outside the bedroom closet in certain combinations. Indeed, the dictum of "You are not going ANYWHERE dressed like that!" seems to be the only requirement still enforced by parents. Yet, every so often, one does slip past comatose parents to a school where the psychotic fashion plate promptly becomes the envy of his fellow inmates. "Whoa, stained underwear over the plaid pants and a penis gourd? Cool!" This is how trends are born.
Of course, by the teenage years, this ability to dress in a myriad of ways suggesting the increasing degeneration of the cerebral lobes has paired itself with the ability to attack parents in their sleep with edged weapons, so all restraint is lost. This accounts for many children -- during the peak teen-aged years of their unbridled psychopathic and sociopathic insanity -- emerging from their million dollar homes and their personal SUVs with the look of a feces-smeared Balkan refugee with multiple facial piercings and a 'message' t-shirt promising to fight for the right to party like demented schnauzers.
Any responsible adult appearing in any of our cities and towns with this "look" would immediately be reported to Homeland Security, surrounded by Navy SEALS locked and loaded, and find themselves on a one-way flight to Guantanamo. But for our children, its "Hey, they're only kids. What can you do?"
Absent accepting long prison terms should the bodies be found, I guess the only thing we can do is increase our medications faster than we increase those of our children. It's the American Way.
In the meantime, as real adults who have survived our childhood and adolescence and been returned, somehow, to sanity, we might want to think about letting concepts concerning the sanity and innocence of our children stop passing "In-Ear-Out-Mouth."
Posted by Vanderleun at March 8, 2008 10:35 AM | TrackBackMy three offspring are between 46 and 50 now. One of my funniest memories is of me at the paint store with all 3 under 9 years old. As I checked out, I asked for a few more paint stirrers, and softly tapped the one he gave me on the palm of my hand. He looked puzzled and then grinned, saying, "Oh, you mean 'hearing aids'!" And he was right!
Posted by: Josie at March 8, 2008 8:51 PMI used to think just like you until, after 18 years of marriage, my wife and I were blessed with a child. Only now do I realize how right I was.
Posted by: Gagdad Bob at March 9, 2008 9:23 AMI used the theory of dealing with children, and all the other wonderful tragedies of life, by clearly defining the long term results I wanted, then taking it one day at a time.
Parents can see a number of different things when they look at their baby offspring. The wrong thing to see is the adorable cutie pie whom you simply cannot bear to make unhappy, ever, for any reason. The right thing to see is the 21 - 35 - 60 year old person who must find meaning and contentment in a world where competition can be ferocious and Mummy/Daddy are not there to grease the skids.
My kids hated me when they were teens. Vegetables. Grades. Chores. Politeness. Respect to the doddering elders of the clan. Cleanliness of word and deed, as well as of body and surroundings. Mandatory family dinners. The hundred greats of western literature. Vigorous outdoor activities often, television rarely.
They swore they would abandon me at the first opportunity and prove how wrong I was by raising my grandchildren, whom I would never be allowed to see, very differently.
They're all adults now and have children of their own. We're best friends, and the rules of the house have been reproduced almost verbatim and are posted on their kitchen walls.
When my grandchildren are teens, they are sure to hate their parents. If my children are wise, they'll think about THEIR grandchildren, and persevere.
Actually, psychology studies have shown that the vast MAJORITY of teenagers actually get along with their parents fairly well— and not because Mom and Dad are doormats. It's a popular conception that all teenagers hate their parents, especially when they fight with them, but even those that fight don't necessarily hate their parents.
I was a pretty quiet teenager, no big fights, no "I hate you"s. I spent most of my time in my room, reading. I think the only problem my Mom had (which is the same as now) is that I didn't tell her about my life much. But honestly, that's not my way. Most of the time is "same old, same old" so I don't talk about it much.
And you can bet I'm going to raise my kids like they raised me. Some things just work, and rules such as "Don't ever say you'll do something and then don't" are invaluable for parenting, IMO. (That applies to both threats and promises.)
Posted by: B. Durbin at March 10, 2008 7:52 PM"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated to combat spam and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.