Perhaps you, like me, have a toddler who is so thirsty to go outside every day that he actually paws at the door and brings you your shoes. Hint, hint, motherfucker!
Perhaps you, like me, tend to acquiesce to your toddler’s demands because going outside is ultimately less nerve-fraying than staying inside and attempting to calmly ignore your toddler’s theatrics, such as collapsing to the ground fully prone and wailing with his face pressed into the rug. Can he breathe? How is he collecting enough oxygen to supply all those screams?
IF SO, then you, like me, tend to find yourself outside in all kinds of weather and circumstances, with a lot of time to consider your life choices. Why did you choose to have a toddler? And what if… your toddler chose you?
Heavy shit!
I recently rediscovered these two paragraphs in a post draft I started and then abandoned in the spring of ’16, maybe because I was too busy going outside all the time?? Anyway, I was struck by how strongly it read like a missive from my past self about my past toddler to my current self about my current toddler:
Every day I’m home with Vera, I take her down to the playground at the end of the street to give her an opportunity to put broken glass and cigarette butts in her mouth. I hate to brag but it is kind of a special thing we have; our mother-daughter bonding sesh. She invariably digs a vodka bottle shard or cancer stick out of the sand and I curse and lunge to fish the spit-covered item from her face hole. Tomorrow we’ll wake up and perform this same bit over again. We’re the stars of a highly predictable situational comedy airing in syndication every weekday from 9:00-10:00 am and again at 2:00 pm.
Sometimes I try to direct her to places that are not the playground for a little sanity-preserving change of scenery, but she is not having it. Once we leave the house we must immediately turn right and go up the street to a small driveway, at which point we must cross the street and make an immediate beeline for the park. It must be this way for it as always been this way. Occasionally, after she has finished tasting all of the available undesirables at the park, she’ll continue further down the street, but only westbound. Back in January she turned east once and I felt the fabric of the universe begin to rend. She hasn’t attempted it since; I frankly don’t think she can handle the truth.
Much like babies, at this point I’ve experienced a sample size of two whole toddlers, which clearly makes me an expert in toddler behavior. To that end I wish to present you my four truths regarding toddlers and the outdoors:
1. Your toddler knows only one direction in the world and roundly rejects the existence of all others.
Provided that the home you live in exists along the standard space-time continuum, once you step outside the door you have the option of turning left, right, or even — not that I am necessarily recommending this — striding confidently straight ahead, right into the street. Well, your toddler is not having any of this “choice” bullshit. Your toddler turned right once and as far as he is concerned, right is the only way he will ever go for the rest of his life. Sometimes, out of desperate boredom, you will try to coax your toddler to go left, and your toddler will react like you are trying to persuade him to leap off the edge of the world. LEFT is uncharted territory. LEFT is a tortured hellscape of demonry in which you can’t even get the rainbow type of Goldfish crackers! Probably!
2. The most direct route is the dumbest one.
Maybe it makes sense, to you, to turn around at some point on your walk so you can head back home. Well, your toddler is not in the business of making sense. Why go home when you can continue more or less in a straight line until you collapse? It’s not a true walk unless you’ve gone ten straight blocks before sitting down in the middle of the sidewalk and refusing to go again. How will you get home now? That is of no concern to your toddler. As far as your toddler is concerned, the walk is done and the window of discussion has closed. Incidentally, your upper body strength has dramatically improved since you got a toddler, isn’t that weird?
3. Every home is theirs for the sampling.
Toddlers! So young, so brazenly entitled to everything that doesn’t belong to them. “This looks like a nice place,” they seemingly say, bounding down a stranger’s front walk and right up to the door, jiggling the handle. How quickly the pleasantries turn sour when no one actually lets them in! Your toddler had expected to compare bedroom sizes; check out the kitchen layout; lick some random crumbs off the floor; manhandle a pet or two. Now everything has been ruined. And no sooner has your toddler lain in anguish on a stranger’s front porch then here you are, dragging them down the sidewalk again, away from their very favorite home in the entire world. The horror! The humanity! The — oh, say, this looks like a nice place, let’s see what their doorknob tastes like!
4. They stare at only the weirdest neighbors.
You know those friendly, kind neighbors? The ones who always wave and will gladly rescue your boxes and mail from your front porch when you’re out of town? Your toddler wants nothing to do with them. Your toddler won’t even swivel their heads to acknowledge their presence.
The only neighbors your toddler wants to socialize with are the creepy, antisocial ones. The guy who always pokes around his yard wearing a robe and scowling? Or the one who spends all his free time angrily working on cars in his front yard? Or the one who’s got seven “KEEP OUT” signs posted on her fence and is always peering suspiciously out her front window? These people are your toddler’s best friends. There’s nothing they want more than to just stride up to these folks and embrace them as long-lost friends. You can’t judge a book by its cover, after all — and maybe they’ll even invite you inside to sample their doorknobs!
Now if you’ll excuse me I need to go pick my toddler up off the rug so he can breathe.
