Feed the Child

Last week before our service/worship started, one of the young guys (early 20's) was sitting at a table doodling on a sheet of paper with a pencil. Let me note, as an aside, that everyone in my church is young compared to me. I think I even have the Pastor by a decade. Good thing that I act silly sometimes. Working with teens keeps me in the now of youth I suppose.

I am a study in silliness, seriousness, and stupidity. Paradox Man. I can be sweet, I can be sardonic, I can be sarcastic, I can be spiritual. I can be schizoid in a sane way I suppose. Enough self in one sentence. My Dad calls me a Narcissist. I suppose he should know. We are all Narcissist. Every last one of us walking this earth.

The young guy  was tracing a shape. He kind of looked like one of those kids at a restaurant who has a loose pile of crayons, a fag of Crayolas, coloring away on a sheet. That activity that is designed to keep kids engaged in something so that they don't get distracted and start raising a ruckus, disturbing other diners.

You know, where other restaurant goers shoot glances at the parents like piercing flaming arrows of anger, questioning their parenting and burning down their pleading looks for clemency. I think some of the problem with the noise of kids, the tantrums, the fits of rage of "I don't wanna," are that parents acclimate to that toddler tumult. It is the new normal. Perhaps how those who move to Portland come to accept that it rains a lot.

Granted, some parents and their kids are insufferable because they are totally self-centered, like a train-wreck, off-the-rails inconsideration to the hilt. Can I also mention that those stupid stickers that parents slap on the back of their rear windows of their cars of their family unit, including the dog and cat, rendered as smiling stick figures, are really grating. I would love to put a rendition of myself on a sticker alone on my back window. So there!

We say that the Church honors singleness. No we don't. We singles are seen as social lepers, and the older we get, the more we have to hang out with our fellow "losers" in a colony. I am part of the subset of Divorced and middle-aged, with little desire or options to get back in the game. I am still nursing some wounds and will be for a while I surmise. I don't buy the single as loser label  but it is the message that the church sends and don't dare tell me it doesn't. So many marry because of fear of social ostracism which is a terrible reason to get married.

For those of us who have no kids--and even more so if we never plan to have kids--these little bossy self-centered creatures who seem designed to be disruptive, are highly irritating. I was chowing at a so-so new Pan-Asian place in town last Sunday, where one of the kids showed signs of brattyness but the Dad picked him up and walked him around the place and that seemed to placate the boy. The little kid was cute but I was harboring some distrust that he might escalate his attacks and thwart my wishes of having a quiet lunch. Sure lower my defenses by your cuteness then unleash that full frontal scream assault.

Since I work in a high school that is naturally caffeinated by hi-jinks, drama, and all the good and bad of adolescence, I seek out peace when I am not there. It is an occupational challenge and I love it, but exposure to kids 24-7 is not in my agenda. I make a better Older Brother with the kids than a Dad. I have advisory responsibility but not the final say. I like being influential but not the final authority.

When parents coo about their kids in the baby stages, I wonder if they are at all thinking about the road ahead and how difficult and thankless it is to be a parent sometimes. They seem to be stroked by their infant's needs as a way of affirming their importance. Then, when the kids becomes teenagers, the kids are more likely to give the parents a stroke. I feel sometimes that I have to warn these new parents, like I said, it is an occupational hazard from working with teens.  I may not be a parent but I have worked with thousands of them in my career. Let me tell you, being a parent is not for sissies.

Anyway, back to my original story of the young guy at church with the pencil and the paper. I said to him "Feed the Child"  as he drew. Both he, and his presumed girlfriend (they certainly seem to be although I don't see a lot of PDA's when they are around)--it may be platonic but I doubt it, both got a laugh by what I said. I was essentially saying, "Don't let that part of you die that finds joy and wonder in the simple things. Don't die, still dream. For to not dream is to die while living."

As we get older, we acclimate to the world. Those things, like riding a bike or an ice cream cone, are just hum-drum. We want bigger, better, faster, tastier. We also get jaded by the collision of what we want and what we get. Or even worse, getting what we want and then realizing that we still have that ache that life seems to be unable to fill. Our existential natures are infinite in a way, but our realities are limited be resources, time, energy, circumstance, and a trillion other things.

Both the young man and his presumed other commented that should be the title of my next book: Feed the Child. Ummmm....no thanks. One book is quite enough, a book that is perishing a quiet death buried deep in the ranking jungles of Amazon. I am no longer crestfallen by this consequence because I had to write the book for my own internal reasons...to sort things out about what I think and what I see. I would love others to embrace the book, to champion it, but that does not seem to be in the cards. I am cool with it...no regrets.

It gives me joy to write. In perhaps a self-centered way, I enjoy my own work. I am persuaded that I have to write just like a bird needs to fly or a fish needs to swim or a man needs to drink beer or  a woman needs to shop. It is in my DNA. Sorry about the stereotype about women and shopping. Ever notice how all of those television home shopping shows are populated by women hosts, hawkers, and callers, where the smarmy host tells Mildred in Milwaukee that she is going to love the baubles, the shoes, the exercise bands, the cooking device? It is almost salvation by sales, fulfilling that need to be always new. Something to distract us, Vanity Fair gone viral. Thanks Comcast for giving me all those channels as part of my Basic Cable package, so very generous. I hate Comcast, and you'd think that me being from Philly, I would root for the hometown hegemon. Go to Hell.

Hey, I wonder if QVC would be interested in my book?