Partying is such sweet sorrow

Regular visitors will know that the fruit of my loins (a.k.a. Kyknoord Jr) lives in Port Elizabeth with her mother and that I, being the doting sire that I am, visit her regularly.

An enormous advantage of living in a different city to your progeny is that you aren’t expected to attend the scores of kiddie birthday parties that seem to crop up more or less continually throughout the year. My previous trips to the windy friendly city have been rather well timed, because up until now I’ve managed to avoid them all. Sadly, my run of good luck came to an abrupt end on my most recent visit.

If I had to summarise the experience in three words, they would be “Oh, the horror”. Picture an extended version of Timmy permanently about to fall down the well (with Lassie nowhere in sight) and you’ll have some idea. Of course, when the adults weren’t chasing after their screaming offspring, they were busy discussing mucous and bowel movements in full Technicolor detail. Fun is not the word+.

When the indoor activities++ were done, the outdoor festivities began. Naturally, when you have a dozen toddlers and only one item of recreational apparatus, you have a recipe for conflict:

“I wanna swing!”
“I wanna swing!”
“I wanna swing!”
[Cue: wailing and gnashing of teeth. Repeat]

It was like being in a sugar-powered echo chamber. It did, however, illustrate that the laws of supply and demand are established at a very young age. This is probably why Communism never really caught on. It also explains why there are rallies and sell-offs on the stock market. Brokers are clearly all three-year olds at heart.

+ Indeed not. “Bleuaargh!” is the word.

++ i.e. cake orgy.

Eve’s dropping

I took a week off work to spend some quality time with Kyknoord Junior, while my ex-wife used this temporary respite to try and round up the scattered remnants of her sanity. A rather pointless exercise, in my opinion. I don’t think sanity is particularly useful when it comes to child-rearing.

Overheard at the Muizenberg municipal swimming pool – uttered by a mother who was concerned that her young son was straying too close to the deep end (obviously she wasn’t sufficiently concerned to actually get up and drag him to safety, but still…): “There are sharks there. They’re going to eat your pipi off!” Judging by the speed at which he moved into the shallows, I would guess that the seed that will ultimately grow into a tangled hedge of hang-ups has been successfully planted and watered. A mother’s love is beautiful thing, is it not? Actually, I understand the woman’s lackadaisical attitude entirely. Protecting toddlers from their own relentless self-destructive tendencies can be exhausting.

Of course, when kiddies aren’t engaged in the serious business of engineering their own demise, their favourite game in the whole world is Insert Daddy’s Last Nerve Into The Nuclear-Powered Fraying Machine. Had you been in the vicinity of Casa Kyknoord during the past week, you would have been witness to this little scene, which played out between me and Junior (with minor variations) around lunch time every day:

“Are you hungry?’
“No”
“Do you want a sandwich?”
”No!!”
“Well, okay then. I’ll eat it myself, shall I?”
“WAAAHAAA!!! I wanna sangwidge!”

I shit you not. Every. Single. Day. I think it’s the female ability to multitask that makes them better parents than men. The rational part of their brain is better equipped to override the instinctive strangulation commands issued to the hands by the emotional centres of the cortex.

Parenthood, it would seem, is somewhat reminiscent of looking for a gas-leak with a lit match. The consequences are often not fully understood until it is too late. This is probably a good thing, because if people had the vaguest clue about what they were letting themselves in for, the very survival of the species would be in jeopardy.

Mythconceptions

Back in the days when my wife and I were still living together (and actually talking to one another) the subject of birth control came up – so to speak. Mrs Kyknoord declared that she was done with the pill forever and that contraception would henceforth be my – um – baby. This seemed fair enough, so I shopped around a bit and after rejecting the obvious non-starters like the rhythm method (which is a rather amusing alternative description for ‘unplanned pregnancy’), the option we eventually decided on was the infamous VASECTOMY [cue lightning flash & rumble of thunder].

Now there is a lot of myth and misinformation* surrounding the procedure, but in truth, it’s about as complicated as going for a haircut (just a little off the top, Doc). All I had to do was plonk my ‘nads on the slab and let the surgeon trim a few tubes while he discussed his unpaid traffic fines with the nurse. If it was any more routine, there would be late-night infomercials for a DIY kit. In total, it took just over an hour from the time I checked in to the time I strolled out the door (doing my very best John Wayne impression). I’ve spent more time in the queue at the Post Office.

The worst part of the whole experience was having to strategically arrange my dangly bits for a week or two. Despite what Doctor Evil may have led you to believe, a shorn scrotum is no fun at all.

* Mainly silly castration jokes

Power struggle

My wife woke me at 6 a.m. yesterday morning to announce, “There’s been a power-cut”. Six a.m. on a public holiday! She may enjoy rising early to observe the sparrows let rip, but I certainly do not. She obviously hates me. Through bleary, sleep-grimed eyes I enquired, “And what, dear heart, do you expect me do do about it? Initiate a letter-writing campaign to Eskom denouncing their shoddy service? Connect the hamster wheel up to a mobile generator? Join you in cursing the darkness?”

“I want you to check the fuse box”, replied she. Aha! So this was probably not so much a ‘power cut’ as your usual ‘seventeen-appliances-plugged-into-the-same-socket’ scenario. I briefly debated with myself whether to tell her to fuck off and let me sleep, but I came to the inescapable conclusion that the short-term reward would just not be worth the hassle in the end. I wearily dragged my semi-conscious body out of bed and stumbled into the kitchen to discover that the power actually hadn’t tripped. The LCD on the energy dispenser was happily displaying 0.00, as if to say, “Gotcha suckers!”

When I explained that we were out of juice, my wife informed me that she had bought electricity the day before (but had clearly failed to mention this to me). Sure enough, I found the till slip containing the cryptic numbers sitting quietly on the pile of accounts on my desk. I should mention that I have shown my wife how to recharge the energy box at least a million times, but like most things related to electronic devices, she has steadfastly refused to learn how to do it. As I keyed in the magic code, I had to keep my teeth firmly gritted to avoid saying something I knew I would regret later.

After the lights came back on, I began to make breakfast. “Aren’t you going to go back to sleep?”, asked my spouse. Innocent as a lamb. Let me assure you that the steam rising in the kitchen did not originate from the kettle.

Climbing the walls

We have a gecko living in our bedroom. I’m rather fond of geckos. They don’t bite or stink and they generally earn their keep by controlling some of the smaller household flying pests. They remind me a bit of tadpoles that refuse to grow up (assuming, of course, that tadpoles could climb walls).

Our diminutive house guest moved in several days ago and this has caused my wife no end of distress, because she can’t fall asleep when the gecko is overhead. You see, despite all evidence to the contrary, she is convinced that the tiny thing is going to drop onto her head in the dark. Not bothered, concerned or vaguely worried, but convinced. It seems to be a variation on the ‘bats flying into your hair’ theme to me.

She admits that no gecko has actually ever dropped on her head. She also acknowledges that the little reptile is rather adept at navigating the cornices with what appears to be sure-footed competence. Nevertheless, for the past few evenings I’ve had the tedious task of herding the uncomprehending gecko into a more acceptable location before lights-out. I wonder if anyone will be impressed if I add ‘geckherd’ to my CV?