I usually give any event announced in an all-caps, company-wide email as “FAMILIES WELCOME!!!!” a wide berth. Events like that just mean that every employee without the foresight pull out and aim it at the Kleenex will ram his entire brood into the suffocating Tuffskins equivilent of business casual attire, compensate them for their discomfort by allowing them to jack up on fully-fructosed Coke and stampede around like hookers at a convention center, offering to trade a little of the ol’ Shutee-Upee in exchange for ten minutes with a Nintendo DS.
On one level, I can’t blame the childrened for gleefully hauling their kids out to a company-sponsored event like this. If I had kids, I would gratefully take advantage of an opportunity to spend a weekend afternoon able to talk with people who didn’t have a strong and vocal opinion about Bratz (And it seems strange to have reached a point in history where children have a stronger, more vocal opinion about brats than I do), and who, were I to suggest we watch the Happy Feet DVD, would cheerfully shank me.
As the Green Arrow of hitting the Kleenex, I normally see no need to involve myself in such a situation. However, this particular fully catered, open bar event was held at the New England Aquarium, so I decided to sign on, since my girl loves her some fish, and I loves me some drinking like one.
This was a mistake.
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They say kids say the damnedest things, and they’re right… unfortunately, I learned the hard way a long time ago that it’s considered socially inappropriate to damn them right back. So now that it’s over, I’d like to take this opportunity to retroactively make the following responses to the three adorable little tykes who looked at my ponytail and asked me, “Are you trying to be a girl?”
– Yes I am, but the patriarchy that will inevitibly doom you to learning pole-gravity-friction dynamics to put yourself through college is just too damn sweet to give up.
– No I’m not; it’s just that a diet of fatty child steak gives me a long, lusterous coat. Want another brownie?
– Your father is fucking our receptionist.
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After my fifth trip to the bar, my girl and I wandered over to hang out with our buddy Lance, who had brought his toddler along. Lance’s wife had begged off sick, so the kid was inconsolable, whimpering and flinging Cheerios around like a partially lobotomized Rip Taylor.
I suck with kids, but I did my best to help out. When Lance finally decided that the best course of action would be to go to the bar, get a beer and pretend it all wasn’t happening (There’s a reason he and I get along), I kneeled down to eye level with the tyke and said, “Your behavior is Goddamned reprehensible. All this screeching and urinating on yourself is gonna get us 86’ed from the bar! And if that happens, I can guarantee you that Lance will draw inappropriate things on your face with a Sharpie! I know, I’ve seen him do it!” I took a drool-spattered Cheerio to my face for my troubles. My girl stopped me before I could return fire in kind with a booger.
Lance returned with a Sam Adams, a plate of sushi (And this is not in any way a joke or an exaggeration: we were served California roll… at the aquarium. The New England Aquarium caterers are hacks), and a stuffed turtle that he scored at the gift counter. He handed the turtle to the kid… and she brightened right up. She gave it a giant hug, and then put it in her stroller. She mimed strapping it in nice and safe… and then patted it on the head every few minutes, cooing at it.
“Oh my God, that’s adorable!” my girl exclaimed. Then she turned to me and said, “Do you think that if we had a kid, she would be that gentle with – ”
“No. That’s kid’s obviously acting that way because she’s apeing the way that Lance and his wife treat her. Because they’re good parents. Our child would throw the turtle on the floor and ignore it while she pretended to drink seven beers. Then she would look annoyed and mime putting a cigarette out on the turtle’s neck.”
My girl gaped at me for a second. “Come on. You would never treat a child that way.”
“Of course not. But I can’t vouch for the parenting skills of whoever winds up adopting our purely theoretical, accidental ‘whoops’ baby, no can I?”
“So you’re saying that if I accidentally got pregnant, you’d want to give the kid up to strangers?” she said indignantly.
“Only if you don’t want it to mime scraping a stuffed turtle out of a uterus at a company party.”
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After the open bar shut down, we took a wobble around the aquarium proper. When we got to the penguin exhibit, I noticed another co-worker’s gaggle of kids looking glumly down at the birds on the fake rocks. “What’s the matter?”
“We can’t get the penguins to dance like they do in Happy Feet.” It was heartbreaking. I told the children that there isn’t a force on Earth that can make penguins act like dancers.
Then I taught them that with a simple laser pointer, you can make penguins act like throat-punched Vegas lounge singers screeching and brawling over a hundred dollar chip in a Jello wrestling pit.
Because the aquarium is, after all, a place of education. I know I learned something. Which is a good thing, because I don’t think I’m allowed back there.
[tags]New England Aquarium, Happy Feet, penguins, children, bad parenting, only a damn fool lets me talk to their kids, dark humor[/tags]
hm. you deleted my last comment. let me try again.
Hey Rob, funny stuff you’ve got here. Not quite as funny as watching Keith drive you around in his shitty Mustang all through 1988. More funny than your psychotic little brother though.
ahhhh, you didn’t delete it, you just never approved it, now i see. you don\’t update this blog anymore. pity.
I do update it, I’m just bafflingly, bafflingly lazy. I’ve got six posts half-finished, but I tend to lose interest once I find myself writing my fifth animal pornography joke.
The spam filter, however, never rests, and I’m guessing that’s where your first comment went.
And let’s be fair, Casey: I drove Keith around in my shitty Mazda GLC as often as he drove me in the Mustang. The *funny* part is, the Mazda got me laid more.
Knowing what we were like in high school, I seriously doubt your sample size was large enough to make that conclusion with any statistical relevance. Although if anything was going to be responsible for getting us laid at all, having a car would have probably ranked well above “looks” and “personality” but probably somewhere near, “low self esteem of date” and “alternative to boredom”.
On a totally unrelated note, you may have been wondering what prompted my sudden googling of your name. Well, you see, I’m a Neil Gaiman fan, and lately I’ve been hearing about him in random news bits (like how Guillermo del Torro wants him to write the script for a putative Dr. Strange movie). Anyway, everytime I read an article about Neil Gaiman, I think about how this guy kinda looks like this kid I knew from high school (you), and then my very next thought usually is, “I wonder what ever happened to him?” followed by, ooooh ya, he’s been telling children that their dad’s are fucking the office secretary.