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23rd Aug 09
M. R. Sellars
It is a moral imperative that parents warp their children. Now, don’t get the wrong idea here… By warp I mean teach them the basics of sarcasm, satire, and acerbic humor.
That kind of warp…
Granted, we don’t want our kids being bitterly sarcastic with us. That only serves to make the old Mark Twain bromide about putting them in a barrel and corking the hole in the side when they hit sixteen sound like a truly excellent idea. But, by the same token, if you have a kid who is packing around an IQ that has the local chapter of MENSA handing them pencils and brightly colored bookmarks as incentives to join up, then you had best seize the moment and teach them about sardonic humor, otherwise they’ll just end up being boring people with big IQ’s. Trust me, I’ve met a few, and I prefer hanging out with the warped people with big IQ’s. They aren’t as… Well… Boring.
And so, this is why I warp my kid’s sense of humor at every opportunity. I want her to not be boring because the operative not portion of that trait will serve her well later in life.
Of course, you have to keep a close watch on this process and take note of when your child is properly warped; otherwise you end up with a smartass. I’ve met a few of those too. The general rule is that once you’ve put a sufficient bow in the lumber of the mind it will break free of the jig and smack you right between the eyes. This is the point when you can be truly proud of a job well done, and as of the other day, let me tell you, I was beaming.
It was a Saturday as I recall, because E Kay was home and it was the middle of the day. We were sitting at the table having some lunch before heading out to take care of grocery shopping and all that other jazz. As sometimes happens when the O-spring becomes a bit animated during a meal, some “foodgitives” escaped her plate. In this case, a few kernels of corn went over the wall and were trying to make their way across the tablecloth. At a point such as this it is the job of one of the parents to gently remind the kid that the food should go from plate to fork to mouth without any furniture or lap detours along the way. This is especially important if she ever wants to be invited out to a nice restaurant on a date (which is something we will allow her to start doing approximately 20 years after I die). This also goes along with the not chewing with your mouth open, not blowing bubbles in your milk, and not building scale replicas of Devil’s Tower out of your mashed potatoes.
Anywho, since I was sitting next to her, with E K on the other side of the table, it was my duty to point this out. Which I did… Of course, I then promptly slopped corn off my own plate to join hers in a bid for culinary escape.
Now I had a critical situation. I had just done exactly what I had just finished telling the child she should be careful not to do. Since I had yet to receive a sign as to the present “warpedness level” of the O-spring’s mind, I decided to punt.
Pointing at the freshly emancipated corn kernels I said, “Look what you made me do.”
Without missing a beat the child looked across the table and said, “Yeah Mommy, look what you made Daddy do.”
E Kay’s brow furrowed with understandable confusion. She shook her head and replied, “I’m way over here. How did I make Daddy do anything?”
It was at this very moment I knew the O-spring’s brain was ready to take on the world, because once again without a single pause she answered, “That’s simple. You used your evil powers.”
Even the Evil Redhead did a spit-take on that one.
Yeah… My work here is done. 😛
More to come…
Murv
