The How-Not-To Guide to Parenting and Marriage (13 page)

59. THE BACON FESTIVAL

In our house, bacon is a commodity, much like gold or crude oil. And also, like gold and oil, there is a limit to the bacon supply. This is due to the strict limitations on the smokey, hogilicious morsels, enforced by the Bacon Czar (my wife).

For some unknown reason, the Bacon Czar only allows one pound of bacon to be made per meal. This leaves the consumer with a measly four slices on average, which is just a cruel and inhumane teaser of what the proper amount of a bacon serving should be.

Well, in all honesty, I must admit that I do have some idea why the bacon regulations were put in place. One weekend when the Bacon Czar was out of town, I decided that I had had enough of the bacon tyranny and oppression, and I bought six pounds of bacon...... Two pounds each for myself and two daughters.

I fired up all four burners on the stove, and began kicking out cooked bacon at a rate that would shame any factory's production. The fan above the stove was sucking as much grease as it was smoke.
I was slinging bacon slices like a hibachi restaurant chef.

And then finally, after an hour of cooking, our food drug of choice was ready, and piled high on a tray. It beckoned to be eaten as the three of us stood
gazing at the bovine pile, in silent adoration.

At first, the bacon feast was like a festival in honor of cured, fried pork products. There was laughing
, and the singing of impromptu songs about the wonderfulness of bacon. We waved slices of bacon in the air, we made bacon moustaches and put multiple pieces in our mouths at one time. We were in hog heaven.

But somehow, around the time that we had eaten a little more than half of the bacon pile, the bacon seemed to lose some of its magic. I noticed that the girls had slowed down a bit on their gluttony as well. But being troopers, we pushed on with our bacon pile.
After all, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Twenty minutes later, I jammed the last piece of disgusting, greasy, nauseating piece of bacon down my unwilling throat and collapsed on the table. The girls were both laying on the living room carpet like two bloated, swine-filled water balloons. Moaning and groaning could be heard throughout the house.

The agony went on for the rest of the day. My guts hurt until we went to bed that night. And I had nightmares about drowning in bacon grease. The smell of bacon still permeated the entire house, and it made me ill to smell it.

The next morning, I awoke and came downstairs to find my wife had returned home earlier that morning. She was standing at the stove making breakfast.

She was making bacon.......

And she missed us so much, that she
had splurged and bought two pounds as a treat.

60. CHILDREN ARE MADE IN A CONVENIENT SIZE.

When God was at his drafting table deciding how the universe would work, it was pretty clever of him to make children start out small, and grow up to be larger. I can only imagine the challenges to a parent if children were born huge, and then grew down to be small.

I mean, can you imagine trying to change Goliath's diaper if he didn't want it changed? Or better yet, trying to enforce a "time out" on him? You'd be lucky to escape with all your limbs intact. And I imagine if Goliath wanted you to play GI Joes with him, you would not have much choice in the matter. Either play GI Joes, or have your shoulders dislocated and your ears ripped off.

And if children were big, and we were small, it would be us adults who needed to be strapped into a car seat, and have to sit on a
stack of telephone books during the family Christmas dinner.

But fortunately for us, children come in a small, convenient
size, which makes them easier to manage.

So when you tell a child "come here.....come here.....come here.......come here.........come here", you can then provide them with some assistance in "coming here"
, when words don't seem to be working.

Due to their miniature size, a parent can assist children with things like, "come here", "stay there", "sit down", "stand up", "stop hitting grandma with a wiffle ball bat", and many other simple tasks that we need them to perform.

You can even assist them in cleaning their entire messy room by employing what I call "the chop stick method". This method is where (after repeatedly telling them to clean their room, and the child repeatedly refusing) you grasp them by their little arms, and use them like chop sticks to pick up objects and put them away. I'm not sure that this method actually helps the child become any more obedient, but it seems to give the parent some satisfaction.

However, if you cho
ose to use “the chop stick method”, you need to be careful that older siblings don't see, and end up performing a perversion of it known as "why are you hitting yourself? Stop hitting yourself".

I guess if I had any complaints about the whole kids being small thing, it would be that I think they should remain small until they move out. My daughter Hannah is 17 now, and seems to be getting stronger and stronger. This, combined with the fact that I seem to be getting weaker and weaker, motivates me to find "less physical" solutions to our conflicts.

61. A SOLUTION TO THE CHILD TRANSPORT NIGHTMARE.

With both my wife and I working full time, the transporting of our darling children to school, sports, friends, the skating rink, and various other engagements, can be a logistical nightmare.

As a solution to all the chauffeuring madness, I have purchased a 1985 Chevy Cavalier for two hundred dollars from the local junk yard. The car has no motor in it, but it does have a back seat and two seatbelts.

Tomorrow morning, I will buckle my daughter's in the back seat of the motorless Cavalier, and then use our free AAA towing to have the car towed to a repair shop located a block from the girls school.

In the afternoon, I will have the car and children towed back to another repair shop located a quarter mile from our house.

Free taxi service......

62. THE INEVITABLE EROSION OF YOUR PARENTAL VALUES.

I can't help but notice that through the years, my standards as a parent have slowly been worn down. Like the tide eroding the surface of a rock, the raising of children slowly eats away at all the fanciful ideals and standards that you were so adamant about when your first child was born.

For example, when my first daughter had just been born, I firmly decreed that, "My child will not be watching mindless TV for endless hours!
” And I would say it with all the intensity of a king addressing his subjects.

But eight years of trying to keep reins on two wild, destructive daughters, had worn away at the stone that my decree had been carved in. I now find myself turning the TV on, and setting both girls in front of it, knowing that its hypnotic blue glow will keep them motionless and silent for as long as I wish.

"My child will never act like that in a restaurant, my child will be well behaved at all times or they will suffer the consequences!"

Five years later, I find myself sitting at a booth in our local family restaurant. My youngest daughter is standing on the table screaming at the top of her lungs, and throwing ketchup soaked fries at everyone sitting around
us. I hardly even notice. In fact, I'm complaining about someone else's child behind us, who laughed a little too loud.

"My child will have a well-balanced, organic diet, and will not eat junk food"

By the time both girls have entered elementary school, the fight over finding something they like, and getting them to eat it, has reduced me to quivering mass of apathy. I will feed them whatever they will voluntarily eat. Natalie prefers mayonnaise and mustard on white bread, and Hannah will only eat Fruity Pebbles cereal with chocolate milk on it.

I shudder to think how low I may sink by the time they have both graduated. My goal is to still have enough resolve left in me to enforce the Ten Commandments on them, "thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery..........."
  But I’m not holding my breath on that either.

63. THE WALL OF SHAME

Whenever there is a task that my wife wants me to complete, such as taking a bag to the garbage, or a box downstairs, she will leave that box or bag laying in the middle of the entry-way between our dining room and living room. On the object will be a sticky note with the objects destination written on it, like "basement" or "garbage". I have even come home from work to find my oldest daughter sitting in a chair with a note stuck to her forehead that read "girl scouts".

After several years of this, it began to annoy me more and more. The object that she wishes to have something done with, is always right in the middle of the entryway, leaving me no choice but to do something with it, just so I can get by it. And I really don't appreciate the notes either. It's like I'm a short order cook filling customers’ orders. If she wants something done, she can ask me eye to eye, and use the magic word.....please.

One particular day I came home from work to find four large boxes blocking my path to the dining room. On each box was a note with its intended destination written on it.

I was angry.

I decided then and there, that I was putting a stop to this sort of oppression. I was not going to move a single box.

When my wife came home from her errands, she looked at the boxes and then at me sitting on the couch.

"Didn't you see the boxes?" She asked.

"Oh, I saw them alright" I replied in a tone that I hoped would relay my protest.

With a piercing look that was a little frightening, she let out a "grrrrr", and stomped off. The boxes were not mentioned for the rest of the night, so I figured that I must have won the battle.

The next day when I got home, the boxes were still sitting in the entryway, only now, there was also a shoe rack that had a sticky note on it that said "shed".

Now I was really angry. I realized that the battle of wills was on, and I had no intention of losing, so again, I ignored the shoe rack and boxes.

Within a week of the silent battle raging on, it became impossible to walk from the living room to the dining room. The entire entryway had boxes, bags, shoe racks, and even my collection of Star trek memorabilia (just to make me angry) all stacked nearly to the ceiling. It had become a wall that divided our house into two halves.

For a person to go from the living room-bedroom half of the house to the kitchen-dining room-bathroom half, you had to walk out the front door, and around to the back door that entered into the kitchen.

Days went by with neither my wife
, nor I giving in. I had begun to get used to our new divided house. At first, I would always go around the north side of the house when traveling from the living room to the kitchen because it was seven steps shorter than going around the south side. But then I realized that I could further make the trip easier by leaving my car parked in the front yard. That way I could simply walk out the front door, get in my car, and drive to the back door.

This was working great until my whiny neighbor Robert complained about the fact that my one set of tires was rolling through his flower bed in order for me to fit my car around the corner of my house. I, not willing to give up so easily, realized that if I removed a small section of fence, it would allow me to drive around the other side of the house and into the back yard, leaving Roberts precious flowers unhurt.

I could tell that my wife was getting closer and closer to either giving in or killing me. I had an unfair advantage, in that, if I had to go to the bathroom while watching TV in the living room, I could simply step out the front door and pee behind our large rose bush (being very mindful of the thorns). She, on the other hand, had to make the entire journey from front door to back door. I could see her anger mounting with each trip to the bathroom or kitchen.

And then one day it finally happened. I was sitting in the living room watching TV, when I heard my wife behind the wall of boxes in the dining room. Looking through a small gap in the clutter, I could see her setting the table for dinner. Putting my mouth up to the small hole, I politely asked, "Could you get me a glass of iced tea
? My car is low on gas and I don't want to chance running out on the trip to the back yard".

Like a flash, my wife's eyes appeared in the hole in the wall, piercing me like lasers. She began to scream at me, putting her mouth up to the gap when she was yelling, and then switching to her angry eyes peeking through to give me dirty looks
, in between sentences. For ten minutes, the fight raged on, followed by the both of us walking out and slamming our respective doors. I went to my shed, and I heard my wife get in her car and leave with squealing tires.

Several hours later, I walked back in the front door and into the living room. To my amazement, the pile was completely gone.

"HA! I won!" I said to myself, somewhat amazed.

At that very moment, my wife came in the back door. She paused for a second, and then said, "I won!"

We were both very confused.

As it turns out, our
teenage daughters had gotten sick of the wall dividing our house, and had (for the first time) voluntarily taken care of each and every object that made up the wall. They then sat my wife and I down, and lectured us both on getting along and resolving our conflicts peacefully and fairly, sometimes quoting some of my own lectures that I had given them.

In the end, it was decided that my wife could leave things with notes on them if she included the word "please", and I would take care of them. But I also had to replace the section of fence, fix the tire tracks in the lawn and stop peeing on the rose bush. I guess you can't have everything.