The Story About the Toddler, Volume 24. by Jeff Vogel

Our daughter Cordelia just turned three. I still call her a toddler,although she really isn't. She doesn't toddle. She runs.

A child turning three is a big change, in a way. She's not two anymore.Two year-olds have this horrible reputation for being difficult andobnoxious, a reputation that is entirely justified. Saying that mychild is two usually gets me a sympathetic look, at the very least.

But a child who is three is basically the same as a child who is two.There is no overnight miracle change. I mean, the morning after herthird birthday, she didn't come into our bedroom and say, "Hello,Father. I stayed quietly in my crib for several hours so as not todisturb your slumber. Here is the omelet I made you. It has chevre.That's goat cheese."

That is not what happens. A three year old is still the same pain inthe ass as a two year old. It's just that now the sympathy is gone. Theworld's attitude changes. It basically goes from, "Oh, they're sodifficult." to, "Ummm ... Isn't is about time you put the screws tothat little monster?"

And the answer to that question, of course, is yes. So now we begin ouryear of battle.

Cordelia is still young enough that she changes rapidly from month tomonth. She has just developed several new traits. She can talk a bluestreak and easily maintains a very crude conversation. She can alsorequest that books be read to her before she goes to sleep. And sherequests the same four books, in the same order, every night, or else.So, basically, I am the father of Rainman.

She is completely potty trained. She doesn't even need a diaper atnight. If it's four in the morning and she has to pee, she doesn'tpeacefully, quietly wet herself. She comes and wakes us from a soundsleep so we can help her use the toilet she knows how to use. Which isjust more confirmation for my Parental Law Of Unintended Consequences:every physical or mental advancement your child makes will create a newproblem for you.

Also, she can climb out of her crib now. She is free to roam the house.This newfound ability to wander around has given myobsessive-compulsive traits something excellent to latch onto. Before,when I felt compelled to check to see if the kid was still alive, Ijust had to look in her crib. Now I have to look in every fucking roomin the house. And the garage.

* Cordelia's Birthday In the Necropolis

Since it was Cordelia's third birthday, we decided to take a littlevacation. We flew her down to my parent's new place in Desert HotSprings, California. The town is called this because, displaying thepoetry at the heart of the California soul, it is in the desert. Andthere are many hot springs.

Though my parents live in an RV (a fact that, even after being givenyears to get used to it, still fills me with the shuddering horrors),they have bought a winter home. It is a high-quality mobile home in oneof many rental parks down there, where old people maintain one and twobedroom units for decades, until death seizes their withered forms withhis skeletal hands. I don't want to dwell too much on the demographicsof the place, but let's just say I kept seeing the Grim Reaper standingon streetcorners tapping his watch impatiently.

These elderly citizens go there year after year, sitting in natural hotsprings, absorbing the desert heat, and having conversations like this:

Codger A: "Hey, Bob."Codger B: "Hey, Frank."Codger A: "It's a hot one today."Codger B: "Sure is. Say, you hear Joe died?"Codger A: "Oh, really?"Codger B: "Yeah."Codger A: "Damn shame."Codger B: "I have taken his woman as my own."

Now my parents aren't really that old. But I'm afraid living there, inthe gravity well of so much advanced age, is going to start witheringthem almost immediately.

But it's a great place to take a kid. There are lots of hot springs tolet her float around in, and, since she is potty trained, I can let herdo so without guilt. If she urinates in the pool, it will be herrationally arrived at decision, for which I'm sure she'll have herreasons.

Also, since pretty much everyone there is so old that even theirgrandchildren have grandchildren, the presence of a young, fresh,person to spoil is a great relief. Though they can be sort ofaggressive. I didn't mean to have to pepper spray that nice Jewishoctogenerian to get Cordelia out of her claws, but I had a movie to getto.

* How Cordelia Spent Her Holiday

Beats me. She was with my parents. My wife and I were in nearby PalmSprings, seeing movies and watching rich, stupid people live theirlives.

Palm Springs has a lot of wealthy people and decomposing celebrities.Gerald Ford lives there. Can you believe it? He's still alive! There isone place on Earth that still thinks that Gerald Ford is relevant toANYTHING. I mean, seriously. Isn't there a length of time after whichyou stop being an ex-president?

When we weren't seeing movies, we were eating cake. We bought Cordeliaa big, delicious birthday cake from a really good bakery. But she'sthree, so she can't eat much. And my dad is watching his diet and mymom is diabetic. And my wife is a tiny person, and can't fit that muchcake into her tiny tummy. So the bulk of the job of eating this cakefell to me.

Bless Cordelia and her youngness. This is the last birthday at which Ican eat huge slabs of her cake in front of her and buy her off withonly one or two bites. And then I go to bed and am kept awake by thefeeling of my own heart beating.

Occasionally, so she could still remember me, I took her for a walkabout the rental park. At one point, I took her to the recreationcenter, where the senior citizens were provided with stacks of jigsawpuzzles. Is there anything more depressing than someone with so littletime left spending it doing a jigsaw puzzle?

Cordelia kept trying to switch the pieces between different puzzles. Itis interesting to think that, by thus rendering a puzzle unsolvable,one could consume with frustration the entirety of someone's remaininglife.

* And Then Back To the Grind

Then we flew home. Cordelia was well-behaved on the plane, in bothdirections. And she was charming while we were there. I just want youto know that it happens occasionally.

* Ever More the Terrible Parent

As Cordelia gets older and more capable, my wife and I find ourselvesslipping farther and farther into the realm of bad parents who can'tcontrol their children.

When we go out to dinner (which we do sometimes, when faced with theever tricky choice between spending some time out of the house orsuicide), Cordelia will sometimes jump up and run a lap around therestaurant. By occasionally wrestling our whirling dervish of elbowsand knees into submission, I can keep the frequency of these laps downto one every few minutes. And then, while she is away, I endure aproper penance of self-loathing.

So I'm coming clean here. We can't control our child.

Sure, we have the means to take the edge off of her behavior andprevent the most excessive or violent abuses, and we do so. She doesn'tscream or punch or bite. Much. But we also entirely can't control her.And that's kind of a good thing. To truly control a small child wouldrequire a regimen of punishment and spirit-breaking that would horrifyeven the most confirmed hater of children.

But it's getting harder.

Small children are really annoying, what with their limitless energyand total lack of social graces. And, like all human beings, they hatebeing controlled. They will constantly push back at their parents andconstantly try to get away with things. Each time you control thechild, it drains the supply of parental energy. And sometimes, you justrun out.

So you pick your battles, prevent injuries, and come up with elaboratejustifications for the walking, talking proof of your inadequacy thatis currently running full speed to the other end of the restaurant andback.

* A Ghoulish Example Of This Phenomenon

My wife Mariann looks after Cordelia much more than I do, and is thusworn down to a nub.

One afternoon, she and Cordelia came in from playing on the driveway,and I notice that Cordelia is chewing on a piece of plastic. I askMariann what it is. She says, "Oh, that's just something she found onthe ground." This response makes perfect sense to me, so I go back towork.

That evening, Mariann is off at Tae Kwon Do (for it has been declaredthat no further offspring will be had until the black belt isobtained). I'm sitting by Cordelia, and I notice that she's chewing onthe plastic again. And I see what it is. It's a broken cigarettelighter she found in the street.

And the sad thing is, I almost went, "Oh. She's chewing on a brokencigarette lighter. As long as it keeps her quiet. Oooh ... TV!"Fortunately, at that very moment, I had a small repository of energybuilt up. Enough to go, "Oh! God! No! Give! Me! That!" and wrestle itaway and deal with the angry screaming.

There is a real point to having two parents to raise a child. It helpsto have a backup person around for sanity checks when you are in theprocess of doing the dumbest fucking thing in the world.

* On the Bright Side

Cordelia is showing all signs of growing up to be the technicallyinclined, nerdy, non-girly girl we almost never admit we really wanted.

We try to offer her choices. But despite our half-hearted attempts toprovide balance in her life by getting her to play with dolls, she ismuch more content running around the house with a screwdriver lookingfor things to dismantle.

* Television Makes Parenting Possible

Our feisty girl still demands, and receives, a fair quantity oftelevision. All of the shows she sees are recorded off of PBS because,supposedly, public television kids shows are based on education andteaching good values, not on cynically creating half-hour commercialsfor toys to feast on the gullible minds of the young.

This is such a pile of horseshit. Oh, where to begin?

First, sure, most childrens' TV shows, public television or not, existin large part to sell toys. But, Christ, in this age of computers andNintendo, thank goodness someone is actually trying to get kids to playwith toys! I would let Cordelia watch a show called Mass MerchandisobotXL-10 Kicks the Bad Guys In the Balls if it had a chance of making hersay, "Father, please drop ten bucks to buy me a copy of MerchandisobotXL-10, so that I can play outside with it for a while instead ofwatching my eighteenth hour today of Thomas the Tank Engine."

I know, I know, people love to find things to get their panties twistedup over, but if you can't see at least a little upside to trying tosell actual toys to kids, you're out of your goddamn mind.

But back to PBS. Cordelia is constantly watching a show now calledThomas the Tank Engine. She is fascinated by trains. I'm sure she'lllove dinosaurs, too. Both, of course, have in common their utterirrelevance to daily life.

Thomas the Tank Engine was invented by the Reverend W. Audry, a Britishminister, to amuse his son. The series shows every sign of having beeninvented by someone who believes in a vengeful God. It details theadventures of a bunch of intelligent (sort of) trains, who drag shitaround under the harsh direction of Sir Topham Hatt, their master andoverlord.

My favorite thing about the series, when I can stand to watch it, isthe way the trains are cruelly punished for their transgressions. Atthe beginning of one episode, three trains are being released from thesheds, where Sir Topham Hatt has locked them for several days formisbehaving. The depiction of a world where the naughty can be punishedwith several days in the closet makes this series pure porn forparents.

Also, the series has an amusing, retro attitude towards the ladies.Female trains are generally crabby, annoying, and dragged around by theboy trains, who are the active ones who have all the adventures. It'ssort of like Harry Potter, but with trains.

At the heart of it, though, despite all of its supposed goodintentions, PBS or not, Thomas the Tank Engine is a marketing vehicle.It's Pokemon for two year-olds. It has dozens of characters: trains,helicopters, busses, other trains, and you can buy all of them. And youwill. Thomas got my innocent little girl to start asking for stuff allthe time. "Daddy, buy me Thomas a little, please?" Thanks, PBS!

Also, your child will take that marvelous empty brain Nature gave itand fill it up with the names of all million of those trains. They willall look identical to you. But this enables the masters of the show totake a plastic Thomas, peel off the 6 sticker, put on some stripes,call it "Edward", and charge you twelve more bucks for it. Thanks, PBS!

Cordelia has observed my inability to name the trains in this fantasyworld with any reliability, so she thinks I'm retarded. So, whenevershe shows me one and asks me who it is, I tell her it's "Skunky Joe."

I can use my imagination, too. Someday, when she's going to bed, I willtell her train stories too, about the adventures of Skunky Joe and hisrail-bound collection of inbred misfits. The rhythmic sound of thesnapping spines of his passengers is music to the dark ears of SkunkyJoe.

Plastic models of Skunky Joe will be a very reasonable eight buckseach. PBS, call me.

* But It Gets Worse

At least, if you squint, Thomas the Tank Engine teaches valuablelessons. For example, the best reason to behave properly. (Answer: Thefear of horrible punishment.) But Cordelia watches another show, too.It is called Dragon Tales. Truly, this show was vomited from the mouthof Satan himself.

Dragon Tales is about the adventures of Emmy and Max, a young humanbrother and sister, who have gained the ability to magically travel toan enchanted land where brightly colored dragons befriend them, teachthem the valuable lessons they clearly are not being taught at home,and pretend to love them. Because we are now deep in politicallycorrect world, there is a pink girl dragon who is smart and learned andperfect in every way, and a male dragon who is, as far as I can tell,functionally retarded.

There is also a third human child, a boy named Enrique from Columbia.As a part of the unnervingly increasing Spanish education in PBS shows,most of the time, when Enrique talks, he says something in Spanish andthen the same thing in English. ("Hi, Enrique!" "Hola! Hello!") This isthe sort of affectation that, in real life, would result in a limitlessand well-earned supply of playground beatings.

Enrique does Hispanic things all the time and, whenever he does, so wedon't miss the point, a bit of flamenco guitar plays. And there areHispanic dragons, too, who speak with accents that are equal partsCheech Marin and Speedy Gonzales. It really is the sort of sensitivitythat, well, isn't. They should just have a dragon named Chalupa andhave tacos constantly fall out of Enrique's pants and be done with it.

Combine this with a warm cloud of PC tolerance, a bland friendlinessthat would make Barney look like a hardcore gangsta, a dragon in awheelchair, and (I shit you not) a unicorn that wears glasses, and youhave a TV show so unspeakable that I will only let Cordelia watch itthree hours a day.

But the thing that bothers me most about the show is the way it is partof demystifying and filing the rough edges off of everything inchildren's lives. Dragons used to be big and badass and frighteningand, you know, interesting. But now we have Dragon Tales to say tokids, "It's OK! Dragons aren't scary or cool! They are just as dull andundirected and useless as you are!"

* But At Least It Is Not As Bad As It Could Be

As least Cordelia doesn't watch those cartoon vegetables that try toteach her about Jesus. That would truly be the end.

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(Want to read more of this crap? Or buy it in book form? If you do, Godhelp you. Go to http://www.ironycentral.com. Copyright 2005, JeffVogel.)

- Jeff VogelSpiderweb Softwarehttp://www.spiderwebsoftware.com