Say it with me. Suprural.
I just made that word up. As far as I know, or at least as far as Google is able to tell me, it doesn’t exist in the English language. It’s not in the dictionary, which surprises me. Even after adding words like 'Muffin Top' and 'OMG' to the Oxford Dictionary, the word suprural is nowhere to be found. Spell Check is even yelling at me for this one. I’m sure someone else may have said the word suprural, before. They may have even used it the way I am. But no one has officially coined the term as far as I know.
But what does it mean?
Over the years, I’ve written about growing up in my hometown and I’ve struggled to classify it among the available words for residential communities. This is a city of less than 10,000 people, according to the 2000 census. It was around 13,000 in 1940. Estimated population in 1909 was 22,000. The peak came during the coal days. Even in the 1970s there was still a substantial amount of business being done in the city thanks to the glass plant on the outskirts of the Southern part of the city. But that ended years ago and the city has sort of stagnated.
But what is the exact type of classification of where I grew up? The downtown areas and the residential areas bleed into each other with no clear definition. I can’t call it suburban because we lived on the main street.
When we built the house that my parents live in now, we moved out of the actual city limits and into a township. The residential sprawl had a patch work of houses and housing plans dotting the landscape primarily filled with farms and pastures. Over time, newer developments overtook the farms and the once rural area became more like the suburbs but not quite.
It was nice to be able to stand out in my yard on a full moon night and not need a flashlight and to be able to hear total silence in the crisp winter air. I could climb out onto the roof right outside my window and see the lights of downtown and or the various moving tail lights heading up the hill a mile away. It was a huge contrast to my college years of in the urban setting of tall buildings, hospitals, hospital transport helicopters flying over my dorm.
So, it wasn’t exactly suburban because it was more rural in nature, yet it wasn’t rural because of all the houses in the area. That’s why I thought of suprural. If suburban is a smaller classification of an urban area, usually residential, then suprural is a larger classification of an area that is more developed than a rural area.
Get Oxford on the phone. Hopefully, they won’t refudiate my submission.
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Showing posts with label wordplay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wordplay. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Friday, February 20, 2009
Anatomy Of a Blog Post
You know, my readers always ask me, “Mongo, where do you get your ideas for your posts?” I tell them, “Who are you and what blog are you reading?” Ok, so no one ever asks me where my I get my ideas. Those four people lead busy lives and I’m sure this blog is just a distraction while they’re waiting for real web sites to load.
Oh, but in my mind… Yes, in Mongo’s world, my blog is visited more than Huffington Post or TMZ or Stephen King’s “King of Pop” column in Entertainment Weekly. Those other, fluff sites, use me for points of reference and…and…and…not buying it, huh? What? Even in my own fantasy world, I can’t get respect? Fine. Well, whether you want to know or not, I’m telling you anyway.
In all actuality, the title is the hardest part. I can bullshit about anything at length and have been told by my wife that I go to Erie to tell a story. But encapsulating the entire message in one phrase or choice of words is so daunting that I’ve pre scripted a bunch of titles to which I will eventually write posts on in the future. That’s why I sometimes have future post titles lingering out there for weeks. Well, that and I just don’t have the free time to write like I’d want. I mean if I did this as a full time venture, I certainly wouldn’t be all over the place with topics. No, I try to cover every single thought in the world under the sun and in the damp, dark, recesses of my mind. Believe me folks, there are some places you don’t want to visit.
As you can tell, I’m certainly no marketing genius. If I was, I’d focus on one theme and dedicate an entire blog just to that topic. Using articles that would help people in that vein I would keyword my titles and posts with specific words that world drive traffic here from search engines the world over. But I don’t. Nope, I just write what I’m thinking and sometimes a simple conversation with a friend over last night’s episode of LOST can generate a blog post. I write for me and my four readers and I never ask them what they want to read about. They’re still waiting to see if Izzy and George are leaving Grey’s or whether or not a scrapbooking room is worth redoing a hell of a lot of drywall. It’s not like I see a lot of traffic either. I think by my last count, I get maybe 17 visits a day…most of which are me fixing a mistake or posting or checking the hit count. After all, I haven’t generated a cent off this blog even with the obligatory Adsense ads all over the damn place, a search bar at the top screaming “GOOGLE ME G”DAMNIT!” and a various links to products I represent. So, it makes you wonder “Does he write posts to try and generate traffic, or does he try to generate traffic and have posts as filler?” I’ll never tell. Actually, I will.
Most of the time, as I said, I come up with titles well in advance. I feel like I’m being clever with a title and just hope I can figure a way to have the tail wag the dog into a post. I’m just waiting for the opportunity to throw up, Qatar Hero. However, sometimes titles just hit me at a moment’s notice, like Chris Webber, You Owe Me 80 Bucks. The topic of that one happened over 10 years ago but I recalled the events during 2008’s March Madness.
Perhaps, it’s seasonal one like a tire story in the winter or Election Night of the Living Dead.
Although, on occasion I do get all torqued up on caffeine or carbohydrates and just go completely nuts like iRenaissance or From the path of truth, John Hughes hath led me astray. Ok, that last one is a double dip as I just included it on my “clip show” post last entry. I just liked the sound of the title and it was fun to write. I am a child of the 80’s and tend to dip into that Terence Trent D’Arby wishing well often for inspiration.
Mostly, titles are puns or wordplay as I often fond of using. There was one post, which had to be removed for personal reasons, called Modis, Opera, and I was a play on the word modus operandi. Another one called LunchBox 360, was a childhood tale of video game nostalgia while waiting for the school lunch period to end. In either case, I took a familiar term and changed the meaning or spelling of the actual word or something close to a topic you would know, say XboX 360.
Now, there are times when I’m just in the mood to create a Top X list in the spirit of Nick Hornsby on the topic of movies, or television, or music. Still, no matter what the topic, I try to pepper in some pop culture references. Nothing too obvious or hammer over the head, in your face, kind of references, but the stuff of pure pop that only true observers would recognize. As much as I admire Diablo Cody for being a student in the art, and I can’t even really bash her for her style. She’s got an Oscar, ya know? Sometimes I feel like she’s reaching for a reference or trying to create a situation that doesn’t call for it. I consider these attempts The Family Guy approach. While, I love that show, it’s gimmick is that it tells a 15 minute story with an hour’s worth of plot broken up with a “just like the time I…” cut to a shot of something from a popular book/movie/show/etc. The same thing with Cody, she’ll go on about a particularly acerbic topic and point to a pop cult reference where it’s not needed. It’s like mixing up a metaphor and a simile.
I will say that one of my favorite topics to discuss is me. Yes, I am that egomaniacal. No, I mean I write from my experiences growing up these last 30 odd years, moving from school to a career, single to married, and man child to Father. Sometimes, the best stuff comes from experience and I’m exploiting the hell out of my daughter’s childhood for material. It fills the gaps while I try and remember what happened to me one time at band camp. They always say, “Write what you know.” Well, I don’t know everything about a little, but after 140 some posts I think I’ve managed to cover a hell of a lot of ground in a short time.
Ok, we’ve covered titles and topics. Let’s talk structure. I am ashamedly a poor student in grammar. Since the invention of the Internet, the written language has undoubtedly suffered at the hands of emoticons, spell check, and 1337 speak. "Teh", "Meh", and "OMG" have become commonplace and people are becoming more tolerant if not guilty of using it. At least half of my readers are real sticklers for grammar and I can only hope they look at substance over style. I wish I would have taken more writing classes in my quest for a degree. The main reason I started to blog was to try and keep what little grasp I had on the English language. Ultimately, I point the George Cukor finger at shame with one hand and type long run on sentences and paragraphs with little regard to punctuation or details. In essence, I’ve opened up a new post and my skull and just spilled everything out and hit published. Then, I go back, fix the spelling, images, and spacing. In Mongo land there is no measure twice cut once. It’s all on the fly, baby. It takes me back to my college days when I would get a writing assignment. I would throw a bunch of ideas all up in the air and hold onto them. Then, the night before the paper was due, I stop spinning the plates, letting everything crash onto the page. After a couple of hours, I’d print it and turn it in on my way to class. There was no outline, rough draft, final draft, finished paper. There was assignment, and turned in piece of work. Nine times out of ten, I’d ace the topic or class just on my own storytelling merit.
That’s where the fun lies, in storytelling. As all four readers echo as a Greek Chorus, “I love a good story.” So, I guess if you want a definitive reason for why do I write this blog, it’s that I love to tell a good story as much I love to hear one. The art of storytelling is severely underrated and under appreciated. Before the Internet, and before the written word, people used to communicate all of the history and drama orally. Someone was responsible for remembering a specific topic, much like the characters of Fahrenheit 451. If I had the time and technology at my disposal, I’d probably run a video blog reciting my posts with different inflections of voice and characterizations to add to the effect as if I were Patrick Stewart retelling A Christmas Carol while portraying all the parts. But if I can’t do that, I’ll do the next best thing. I’ll take a topic, spin it around a few times with its head on the handle of a baseball bat and then let it loose on the page. Far off in the distance is the point or the end and along the way the tale tends to lean one way, then the other, and eventually, after falling down on a tangent a few times, it makes its way to a conclusion. Much like this one.
Oh, but in my mind… Yes, in Mongo’s world, my blog is visited more than Huffington Post or TMZ or Stephen King’s “King of Pop” column in Entertainment Weekly. Those other, fluff sites, use me for points of reference and…and…and…not buying it, huh? What? Even in my own fantasy world, I can’t get respect? Fine. Well, whether you want to know or not, I’m telling you anyway.
In all actuality, the title is the hardest part. I can bullshit about anything at length and have been told by my wife that I go to Erie to tell a story. But encapsulating the entire message in one phrase or choice of words is so daunting that I’ve pre scripted a bunch of titles to which I will eventually write posts on in the future. That’s why I sometimes have future post titles lingering out there for weeks. Well, that and I just don’t have the free time to write like I’d want. I mean if I did this as a full time venture, I certainly wouldn’t be all over the place with topics. No, I try to cover every single thought in the world under the sun and in the damp, dark, recesses of my mind. Believe me folks, there are some places you don’t want to visit.
As you can tell, I’m certainly no marketing genius. If I was, I’d focus on one theme and dedicate an entire blog just to that topic. Using articles that would help people in that vein I would keyword my titles and posts with specific words that world drive traffic here from search engines the world over. But I don’t. Nope, I just write what I’m thinking and sometimes a simple conversation with a friend over last night’s episode of LOST can generate a blog post. I write for me and my four readers and I never ask them what they want to read about. They’re still waiting to see if Izzy and George are leaving Grey’s or whether or not a scrapbooking room is worth redoing a hell of a lot of drywall. It’s not like I see a lot of traffic either. I think by my last count, I get maybe 17 visits a day…most of which are me fixing a mistake or posting or checking the hit count. After all, I haven’t generated a cent off this blog even with the obligatory Adsense ads all over the damn place, a search bar at the top screaming “GOOGLE ME G”DAMNIT!” and a various links to products I represent. So, it makes you wonder “Does he write posts to try and generate traffic, or does he try to generate traffic and have posts as filler?” I’ll never tell. Actually, I will.
Most of the time, as I said, I come up with titles well in advance. I feel like I’m being clever with a title and just hope I can figure a way to have the tail wag the dog into a post. I’m just waiting for the opportunity to throw up, Qatar Hero. However, sometimes titles just hit me at a moment’s notice, like Chris Webber, You Owe Me 80 Bucks. The topic of that one happened over 10 years ago but I recalled the events during 2008’s March Madness.
Perhaps, it’s seasonal one like a tire story in the winter or Election Night of the Living Dead.
Although, on occasion I do get all torqued up on caffeine or carbohydrates and just go completely nuts like iRenaissance or From the path of truth, John Hughes hath led me astray. Ok, that last one is a double dip as I just included it on my “clip show” post last entry. I just liked the sound of the title and it was fun to write. I am a child of the 80’s and tend to dip into that Terence Trent D’Arby wishing well often for inspiration.
Mostly, titles are puns or wordplay as I often fond of using. There was one post, which had to be removed for personal reasons, called Modis, Opera, and I was a play on the word modus operandi. Another one called LunchBox 360, was a childhood tale of video game nostalgia while waiting for the school lunch period to end. In either case, I took a familiar term and changed the meaning or spelling of the actual word or something close to a topic you would know, say XboX 360.
Now, there are times when I’m just in the mood to create a Top X list in the spirit of Nick Hornsby on the topic of movies, or television, or music. Still, no matter what the topic, I try to pepper in some pop culture references. Nothing too obvious or hammer over the head, in your face, kind of references, but the stuff of pure pop that only true observers would recognize. As much as I admire Diablo Cody for being a student in the art, and I can’t even really bash her for her style. She’s got an Oscar, ya know? Sometimes I feel like she’s reaching for a reference or trying to create a situation that doesn’t call for it. I consider these attempts The Family Guy approach. While, I love that show, it’s gimmick is that it tells a 15 minute story with an hour’s worth of plot broken up with a “just like the time I…” cut to a shot of something from a popular book/movie/show/etc. The same thing with Cody, she’ll go on about a particularly acerbic topic and point to a pop cult reference where it’s not needed. It’s like mixing up a metaphor and a simile.
I will say that one of my favorite topics to discuss is me. Yes, I am that egomaniacal. No, I mean I write from my experiences growing up these last 30 odd years, moving from school to a career, single to married, and man child to Father. Sometimes, the best stuff comes from experience and I’m exploiting the hell out of my daughter’s childhood for material. It fills the gaps while I try and remember what happened to me one time at band camp. They always say, “Write what you know.” Well, I don’t know everything about a little, but after 140 some posts I think I’ve managed to cover a hell of a lot of ground in a short time.
Ok, we’ve covered titles and topics. Let’s talk structure. I am ashamedly a poor student in grammar. Since the invention of the Internet, the written language has undoubtedly suffered at the hands of emoticons, spell check, and 1337 speak. "Teh", "Meh", and "OMG" have become commonplace and people are becoming more tolerant if not guilty of using it. At least half of my readers are real sticklers for grammar and I can only hope they look at substance over style. I wish I would have taken more writing classes in my quest for a degree. The main reason I started to blog was to try and keep what little grasp I had on the English language. Ultimately, I point the George Cukor finger at shame with one hand and type long run on sentences and paragraphs with little regard to punctuation or details. In essence, I’ve opened up a new post and my skull and just spilled everything out and hit published. Then, I go back, fix the spelling, images, and spacing. In Mongo land there is no measure twice cut once. It’s all on the fly, baby. It takes me back to my college days when I would get a writing assignment. I would throw a bunch of ideas all up in the air and hold onto them. Then, the night before the paper was due, I stop spinning the plates, letting everything crash onto the page. After a couple of hours, I’d print it and turn it in on my way to class. There was no outline, rough draft, final draft, finished paper. There was assignment, and turned in piece of work. Nine times out of ten, I’d ace the topic or class just on my own storytelling merit.
That’s where the fun lies, in storytelling. As all four readers echo as a Greek Chorus, “I love a good story.” So, I guess if you want a definitive reason for why do I write this blog, it’s that I love to tell a good story as much I love to hear one. The art of storytelling is severely underrated and under appreciated. Before the Internet, and before the written word, people used to communicate all of the history and drama orally. Someone was responsible for remembering a specific topic, much like the characters of Fahrenheit 451. If I had the time and technology at my disposal, I’d probably run a video blog reciting my posts with different inflections of voice and characterizations to add to the effect as if I were Patrick Stewart retelling A Christmas Carol while portraying all the parts. But if I can’t do that, I’ll do the next best thing. I’ll take a topic, spin it around a few times with its head on the handle of a baseball bat and then let it loose on the page. Far off in the distance is the point or the end and along the way the tale tends to lean one way, then the other, and eventually, after falling down on a tangent a few times, it makes its way to a conclusion. Much like this one.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Super Bowel XLIII
Yes, there is a reason why I’ve misspelled Super Bowl in such a manner. Perhaps, I am just a product of my environment. After all, my hometown decided to show the area’s pride by programming the message board outside the local fairgrounds to celebrate the recent playing of the Super Bowel. This is of course the 43rd consecutive contest of intestinal fortitude, in which we bit down hard, took hold of the handles and passed our opponents. I can recall the struggle. I took my seat, program in hand, and prepared myself for what was about to come. You can feel it in the pit of your stomach bubbling and churning. You wait for them to pass through that long dark tunnel. Sometimes, you wonder how such big beings can emerge from such a small opening. Once they funnel out though, you know there’s no turning back. You are in it for the long haul.
Our team made some tough movements up and down the playing field but, ultimately, we splashed down with success. There were times when we shook with anxiety, our brows furrowed with sweat. You shift in your seat, uncomfortably until something lets loose and tears the other team a new one. There is nothing so truly delicious and satisfying as dumping all that fear and worry and relishing in knowing that it’s all over. You sigh with relief. You laugh a little. You feel better that it’s all over. Unfortunately, from sitting so long, your but hurts.
Congratulations. Hopefully, we all waved our Irritable Bowels, the most recognizable sign of our explosive spirit. Super Bowel XLIII will definitely go down in history as hard to swallow for the losers.
Our team made some tough movements up and down the playing field but, ultimately, we splashed down with success. There were times when we shook with anxiety, our brows furrowed with sweat. You shift in your seat, uncomfortably until something lets loose and tears the other team a new one. There is nothing so truly delicious and satisfying as dumping all that fear and worry and relishing in knowing that it’s all over. You sigh with relief. You laugh a little. You feel better that it’s all over. Unfortunately, from sitting so long, your but hurts.
Congratulations. Hopefully, we all waved our Irritable Bowels, the most recognizable sign of our explosive spirit. Super Bowel XLIII will definitely go down in history as hard to swallow for the losers.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Intuitive Counter
I am in for so much trouble, I can just tell. I think my wife and I have given our 18 month old daughter way too much freedom. We used to have physical boundaries in the form of plastic storage bins for decorations that kept her from wandering around to the various drawers and cabinets that contain all the fun stuff like knives and pans. It saves me from admitting that we need cabinet door locks and outlet covers. She’s getting to be the right height to open doors. Every week another danger rears its ugly head. I can’t rely on what worked yesterday as a rule of thumb. Usually, unless she knows something opens or has moving parts, she just assumes that it’s part of the background. It’s not until she notices you open something then she realizes she can open it as well.
Since the holidays came around we have taken down the barriers and the child roams free when we watch her. It would have been hard to explain to guests why we had these huge plastic totes barricading our daughter into the living room as if it was the wall between Mexico and the United States. At one point, before Christmas, as we were putting them away, I swore I saw a tiny David Hasselhoff singing on top of the remaining tote. He then picked up tiny fake cheeseburger toy off the floor and proceeded to it eat. But, now she goes into the kitchen begins to open drawers and doors and sees shiny objects inside. We had tried to be very discreet about not letting her see us do that. Somehow, she evolved, adapted, and overcome. Now, we’ve had to up our game. We’ve had to really become parents. We just went from defense to offense.
You see, as a parent I’ve had to learn a lot of things. Two very important traits are discipline and consistency. In other words, you have to be consistent in your disciplining of the child. Actually, I’m being facetious, in a way. In high school I took Sociology and found it to be the hardest yet most rewarding class. We did a whole segment on child development which nearly caused me to fail the class. Each student was given a different developmental period to master for a project and then a cumulative test touched on all stages of childhood development. I couldn’t make heads or tails on any of it. I didn’t understand that a lot happens in those first few years. While it may seem brief, the psychological development of a child surpasses the physical development of a human being over its entire life. There is so much to learn in that short amount of time. The only physical attributes that get honed are balance and dexterity. That’s just practice.
Now, I will say that, regardless of how little I know about child development, this kid is smart. Too smart for her own good. All the books in the world will never nail down a specific time frame for when a child should perform a certain action but I know we are either on target or ahead of schedule. So, it came as no surprise when the little one began to question authority. I think that developed while still in the womb. So, when I say that you need discipline. I mean that you have to be willing to make the child upset when it’s time for bed or bath time. You have to be ready to be the bad guy at a moment’s notice. You cannot make idle threats and not back them up or you’ve given the child carte blanche to ignore your authority. I credit my wife for having a well honed bullshit detector. She gets a lot of practice on me alone. Children are especially good at sniffing out BS like a prized pig can sniff out the best truffles. With my kid, she gets the added benefit of my wife’s DNA. If you tell the child you will send them to bed for acting up, you better have them packing if they do it again.
With consistency, that’s more of a team effort. If my wife forbids an action, I have to forbid it, too. Otherwise, the kid will pit your sympathy against their authority. For example, we give my daughter these little cereal puffs that come in a container. My wife doesn’t allow her to carry around the whole container because she tends to spill them all onto the floor. I like to get out a handful and put them in a little dish for the child to work from as an exercise in fine manipulation. The child sees this as a process improvement in efficiency. Sure, these little fingers can grasp one puff at a time, but if I lick my hand and stick it into the container, I can retrieve several. Less work yields more results. Now, when I refuse to let her do this, she gets completely irate and goes into operation shutdown. She flails about, whines, and does her best performance.
What really amazes me about this miniature human is that she is a very quick study. She knows exactly how to push buttons and when she’s being bad, she turns on the cutesy voice and says, “HI!” Somewhere along the line she said it for the first time and we thought it was adorable. Now, she uses it like it makes us forget she’s being bad. Remember, this child is not even two years old yet. That’s my contribution to the gene pool, I guess. I was very agile, not physically, but mentally.
So, here we are at my In-Laws and my daughter starts heading to the steps. Until this past November, she’s never shown any interest in them. However, now she is quite an accomplished climber and can ascend very well. Coming down is more like repelling and relying on gravity to do most of the work. This particular day was her first attempt and we had been trying to give the kid a chance to correct herself when she’s in the wrong by counting to three. Again, I have no idea when a child understands that counting is bad when coming from a parent and why they stop at three when schools expect you to go beyond your allotted digits before advancing to a higher grade. But, we figured we’d give it a try. If anything else, this kid will have fractions between two and three down pat. It never fails though, we get to three and she just stands there continuing the bad behavior. As she neared the steps, she knew she was in the wrong because she looked at us as she got closer. Two attempts to call her over had failed, so my wife went to the counting. No sooner than she muttered the sustained call of one that lasted more than three seconds, my daughter called back, “Twwwwoooo.”
Everything came to a screeching halt. We both looked at each other in amazement. Our daughter just helped count to two. I didn’t know whether to be extremely proud or smack her for begin insolent. Once again, I don’t know at what age that kids develop a sense of sarcasm. In either case, both my wife and I showed off how disciplined we really were. Neither one of us cracked a smile. Oh, but we laughed later when our daughter wasn’t around. We laughed hard.
Since the holidays came around we have taken down the barriers and the child roams free when we watch her. It would have been hard to explain to guests why we had these huge plastic totes barricading our daughter into the living room as if it was the wall between Mexico and the United States. At one point, before Christmas, as we were putting them away, I swore I saw a tiny David Hasselhoff singing on top of the remaining tote. He then picked up tiny fake cheeseburger toy off the floor and proceeded to it eat. But, now she goes into the kitchen begins to open drawers and doors and sees shiny objects inside. We had tried to be very discreet about not letting her see us do that. Somehow, she evolved, adapted, and overcome. Now, we’ve had to up our game. We’ve had to really become parents. We just went from defense to offense.
You see, as a parent I’ve had to learn a lot of things. Two very important traits are discipline and consistency. In other words, you have to be consistent in your disciplining of the child. Actually, I’m being facetious, in a way. In high school I took Sociology and found it to be the hardest yet most rewarding class. We did a whole segment on child development which nearly caused me to fail the class. Each student was given a different developmental period to master for a project and then a cumulative test touched on all stages of childhood development. I couldn’t make heads or tails on any of it. I didn’t understand that a lot happens in those first few years. While it may seem brief, the psychological development of a child surpasses the physical development of a human being over its entire life. There is so much to learn in that short amount of time. The only physical attributes that get honed are balance and dexterity. That’s just practice.
Now, I will say that, regardless of how little I know about child development, this kid is smart. Too smart for her own good. All the books in the world will never nail down a specific time frame for when a child should perform a certain action but I know we are either on target or ahead of schedule. So, it came as no surprise when the little one began to question authority. I think that developed while still in the womb. So, when I say that you need discipline. I mean that you have to be willing to make the child upset when it’s time for bed or bath time. You have to be ready to be the bad guy at a moment’s notice. You cannot make idle threats and not back them up or you’ve given the child carte blanche to ignore your authority. I credit my wife for having a well honed bullshit detector. She gets a lot of practice on me alone. Children are especially good at sniffing out BS like a prized pig can sniff out the best truffles. With my kid, she gets the added benefit of my wife’s DNA. If you tell the child you will send them to bed for acting up, you better have them packing if they do it again.
With consistency, that’s more of a team effort. If my wife forbids an action, I have to forbid it, too. Otherwise, the kid will pit your sympathy against their authority. For example, we give my daughter these little cereal puffs that come in a container. My wife doesn’t allow her to carry around the whole container because she tends to spill them all onto the floor. I like to get out a handful and put them in a little dish for the child to work from as an exercise in fine manipulation. The child sees this as a process improvement in efficiency. Sure, these little fingers can grasp one puff at a time, but if I lick my hand and stick it into the container, I can retrieve several. Less work yields more results. Now, when I refuse to let her do this, she gets completely irate and goes into operation shutdown. She flails about, whines, and does her best performance.
What really amazes me about this miniature human is that she is a very quick study. She knows exactly how to push buttons and when she’s being bad, she turns on the cutesy voice and says, “HI!” Somewhere along the line she said it for the first time and we thought it was adorable. Now, she uses it like it makes us forget she’s being bad. Remember, this child is not even two years old yet. That’s my contribution to the gene pool, I guess. I was very agile, not physically, but mentally.
So, here we are at my In-Laws and my daughter starts heading to the steps. Until this past November, she’s never shown any interest in them. However, now she is quite an accomplished climber and can ascend very well. Coming down is more like repelling and relying on gravity to do most of the work. This particular day was her first attempt and we had been trying to give the kid a chance to correct herself when she’s in the wrong by counting to three. Again, I have no idea when a child understands that counting is bad when coming from a parent and why they stop at three when schools expect you to go beyond your allotted digits before advancing to a higher grade. But, we figured we’d give it a try. If anything else, this kid will have fractions between two and three down pat. It never fails though, we get to three and she just stands there continuing the bad behavior. As she neared the steps, she knew she was in the wrong because she looked at us as she got closer. Two attempts to call her over had failed, so my wife went to the counting. No sooner than she muttered the sustained call of one that lasted more than three seconds, my daughter called back, “Twwwwoooo.”
Everything came to a screeching halt. We both looked at each other in amazement. Our daughter just helped count to two. I didn’t know whether to be extremely proud or smack her for begin insolent. Once again, I don’t know at what age that kids develop a sense of sarcasm. In either case, both my wife and I showed off how disciplined we really were. Neither one of us cracked a smile. Oh, but we laughed later when our daughter wasn’t around. We laughed hard.
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