Parents aren’t normal people. Normal people can enjoy simple things. Parents worry and ruin EVERYTHING. Don’t believe me? Let’s go for a walk with Number Two, a calm three year-old boy. Well…calm for three. Oh look, a fountain in a public plaza! There’s nobody around!
“Let’s go put our toes in the water, Babbo!” So it begins.
Normal person: “Sounds like fun!”
Parent: “Umm…do you really need to take your socks and shoes off? Let’s just keep walking.”
Doesn’t matter, he’s putting his feet in. Fine, that’s probably permissible.
Then he wants to play with the water jets. He sprays his hand, legs, then shorts. Now we’re into a Wet Clothes Situation. Fine, it’s a warm sunny day, it’ll dry. Why can’t you just be one of those free-spirited parents with long hair and a heavy funk of pot smoke and patchouli–“Hey Jaden Moonbeam, go right ahead and play in that fountain, the Man can’t keep us out!”
Now he wants to walk. A normal person thinks this is great–let kids be kids. I’m thinking, “Someone will see us, either a security guard or an exasperated worked from one of the adjacent offices who has to COME OUT EVERY TEN MINUTES AND GET KIDS OUTTA THE GODDAMN FOUNTAIN. I look for a sign with a short novel of exclusions and rules about fountain use. But he’s off anyway, caution to the wind. He wants to get something in the water. Is it a flower petal that he’ll delicately lift out and hold aloft, a child’s prize to the world? No, it’s someone’s used Bic lighter they chucked in there. No, don’t get that. Just leave it. LEAVE IT. (Please, wind, blow it away from the edge.)
Just relax, I tell myself. It’s a marvelous day, the kind you could while away looking at the sky and thinking about the gentle caress of …hold on, now he wants to walk up on the seat wall. Normal person: it’s fine. Parent: envisioning him looking sideways at a pigeon or piece of gum on the pavement, then walking forward, his foot stepping into open air, arms pinwheeling, body ricocheting off the concrete, then he’s face-down in the water, his face a crater of blood and broken teeth. But he doesn’t miss a step.
So now I’m calming myself and doing the selfish parent pocket checklist: if I need to suddenly jump in the water to save my child, what electronic things will be ruined? Key fob, phone, wallet. Then you think, God, what a horrible person I am, worrying about material goods when my child might POTENTIALLY BE DROWNING. So maybe I just wade in and in my mind I can hear the squelching noise as I walk home with socks and shoes filled up like sponges. And maybe he’s bleeding because he slipped anyway and so what can I use to staunch the blood–“Babbo. Babbo. Bahhh-bo? Let’s go over and see the trains!”
“But you don’t have your shoes on.” What will he step on first? Broken glass from a hobo hooch? Scorpion? Used syringe?
Writer, architect, father, husband.