The Up Side
Things 8 year olds can teach us :: by Michael Grady
W
hen my first grandson was born, I was beyond joyful. My own wonderful stepkids were already teens when I met them, so Ethan was my first start-up child, fresh from the kit. I remember his early days as something out of a Johnson & Johnson commercial: he was kind of a cheery, wriggling throw pillow. You could put him on a blanket and wave colored plastic keys in front of him, and he would squeal with toothless delight. A few high squeaky voices and Dick Van Dyke faces, and he’d think you hung the moon. That was eight years ago. Last week, we pulled up in his parents’ driveway and out he comes—backpacked like a Sherpa—and buckles himself into his booster seat. “Hey partner,” I asked, “Ready for our spring break together?” “Grandpa, why does your car smell like llama poop?” These, and other compelling questions, are the sort of things one examines in the company of an 8-yearold. Apparently, children go through some kind of developmental process beyond the getting taller thing. Their tastes change, they get curious, they develop needs and ideas that go beyond a plastic baggie full of Cheerios. And one day you find yourself chauffeuring a gnome in a Pokemon T-shirt who says stuff like, “You forgot to use your turn signal.” I blame his parents, who taught him to walk. “Don’t do it,” I warned them. “It’ll turn babysitting into a full-court basketball game.” And it did. Walking is a gateway skill for kids. It leads them to other gnomes, who put crazy ideas in their heads, like speaking and thinking. (They’ll probably unionize soon.) I still have those colored keys. I wave them at Ethan, sometimes. He just looks at me like I need help. All that said, renting an 8-yearold for a week can be an instructive experience for those of us who haven’t spawned our own. It takes you out of your comfort zone. (Sometimes way out of your comfort zone. Sometimes,
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you need Google Maps to even find your comfort zone again.) It makes you draw on mental, physical and creative muscles you seldom use; it pushes you to the far precipice of your own patience, and teaches you many lessons, including: • The truth can be cruel: If you’re ever interested in truly unvarnished feedback, nothing beats a kid for calling it like it is: “Wow!” He said, after hearing a fascinating yarn from my youth, “You sure have been alive a long time!” • They. Know. Everything. I want to be as sure of one thing in my life as my 8-year-old grandson is of everything he encounters. I was telling him a story in the car one day, and it went like this: ME: … so, the civil defense sirens were blaring, and my grandmother walked outside onto the street. And what do you think she found? ETHAN: The bones of a dead man, walking around! ME: … uh, no… ETHAN: With burning holes for eyes! ME: Ethan, this is my story— ETHAN: And wolves! Giant wolves were everywhere! ME: This is a family story, Ethan. ETHAN: Yeah, I’m making it better! • Like God, children laugh at your plans. Whatever you expect? It will not go that way. The awesome nature hike will be a colossal, boring dud. But the trip to Safeway, to get water for the nature hike? That will be an odyssey of discovery. (“So ‘head cheese’ isn’t cheese? It’s just the gross parts of a cow?”) • Time is precious. If you are going to engage, inspire or motivate a modern 8-year-old, you must do so in the time it takes an iPad to recharge. After that, you’re competing with Minecraft. And Minecraft, as I am constantly reminded, have axes and swords. • Receptive skills vary. You’ll have to say, “brush your teeth and get ready for bed” multiple times—at the top of your lungs, with chaser lights
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and semaphore flags—to get your message across. But you only have to think “maybe we’ll get ice cream” in the back of your mind, from across a crowded stadium, to get: “When? Now? Is now good for ice cream?” Improvisational skills are essential. Over the course of our week together, we broke out of prison twice; back into prison once (because our tiny “guard dogs” kept falling asleep and forgetting to pursue us over the wire). We protected a castle fort from Vikings; then from Indians. Then we protected Indians in the fort from Vikings. We would switch back-and-forth on those plots at a moment’s notice. And the only thing they had in common was that every storyline was resolved with a rocket launcher. Farting voids everything. If you have the bad fortune to break wind within earshot of an 8-year-old, you’ll forfeit coherent conversation for at least an hour. If you fart while trying to discipline an 8-year-old? Just say goodbye to credibility during your lifetime. Their technical skills will make you feel Amish. Ethan could download the International Space Station’s mainframe and telemetry systems onto his iPad, if he could only get over the parental consent paywall. We succeeded in preventing this. But now, for whatever reason, our microwave oven has Windows 10. They will drive you to your wit’s end, and surprise you there. They will listen occasionally, obey
grudgingly, look glazed when they’re supposed to be amazed...and at the end of the day, they’re on the phone to their parents, sharing the good time they had. • They grade you on effort. Your best-laid plans will crash and burn spectacularly. Everything you prepare or expect will go horribly awry. And yet, if you’re taking the time with an 8-year-old, paying them attention and trying, what you’re actually doing together seems almost beside the point to them. • They leave an awful, silent hole when they’re gone. There are times, with an 8-year-old, when you feel like you’re hosting a tiny drunk at closing time. But once they pack their far-flung toys, their device chargers and their 400 little socks, you find yourself wishing for a little of that chaos back. • It is the toughest job you’ll ever love. I think this was the motto of the Peace Corps or the Army—and I have never been in either. But I have pitched a few innings of relief as a parent. It is one of those jobs that reveals itself as more exhausting and more essential the deeper you get into it. Every responsible, attentive parent out there has my respect and admiration. And the payment you receive—in wide eyes, impulsive hugs and sudden spasms of joy—is both woefully insufficient and mysteriously fulfilling. Michael Grady is a local playwright, reporter and the author of “Death Calls a Meeting.”
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