Once, our big boss where I used to work came up to me to ask me a question. A small question I suspected, not exactly work-related, but an all-important question nonetheless. I could see that he was seething and infuriated beneath the surface, as his breath came in great gusts; his intake far greater than normal, and exhaling in billows, almost as if you could see the smoke. He reminded me of a cartoonish bull, ready to charge Bugs Bunny. He wanted to know where in the hell his daughter was, as if I had put her up to her disappearing act and her no-show at some meeting he had set with her. He ranted for about a minute about how sometimes, you just want to "shoot your own children".
Anger and children are for the most part, within close proximity, and I believe there are a lot of exterior factors that contribute to this. For myself, weather patterns and hormones are contributing factors to emotional output. Take for example yesterday. It was a bloody hot day, a humid 95?F, the hottest humid day I've had in a long time. Also, perhaps I had a bit of a hormonal imbalance going on within, so that was enough to bring on the boiling point - the seething and bubbling and boiling beneath the surface. Perhaps that very same humid heat had something to do with my son being how he was beneath his own exterior; peeing all over the floor and generally running amok beyond control or stern words of reprimand. Let me just explain the 'peeing all over the floor' bit in that we are toilet training and he is, at this point, at all times, either running around with Sponge Bob Square Pants underpants, or none at all after his little accidents.
We are on the fourth day today of the process, and there have been a few setbacks. The first day was like magic. He would tell me right on cue if he had to "pee on the toilet seat". I suppose the first day had all the novelty of the idea still intact and all there: the novelty of the toilet seat adaptor (for those of you devoid of little monstrous beasts that sometimes transform into court jesters to further enrich your lives, the toilet seat adaptor is a mini toilet seat that goes over the regular toilet seat so that the little beasts can sit on the toilet without falling in and being suctioned off into the void of the septic world. They are designed ingeniously for convenience and you can just put them on and take them off at a moments notice. Some models, like the one we own, have handles on the sides, which the little court jesters can grip while getting on, while sitting and while awkwardly sliding off.); the novelty of the flush function; the novelty of watching the water swirling around the bowl and being suctioned into the pipes below; and that all that with a wonderful "wooshing" sound. Let's just say my momentary second job interview on Tuesday, which involved leaving him for three hours with a cousin in-law, disrupted the smooth flow of training and thus brings us to the terrible Wednesday.
It was 95?F, a bloody hot, humid day, and I was hormonly challenged, trying my best not to throw fits every five minutes because there were marbles and mini cue balls rolling all over the floors which I would trip on every five minutes. I was boiling and seething by mid afternoon because I had to clean up four pee spills off the floor, but couldn't show myself as a malcontent to the beast, lest he be discouraged. We had no clean underwear left, so he ran around with his shirt, but literally butt naked. He would terrorize the dog by sitting on its back while it was trying to sleep, then punch it around the ears for no reason. Then he would sit all over the floor where I had just cleaned off the pee, then he would ask me for different things to eat, which I would bring out, then he wouldn't finish any of them. By the end of the day we had paper towels, yoghurt, spoons, Jamaican patty crusty bits, sticky bits of dried juice everywhere, pillows all over the floors and all the while I'm trying to both reprimand and enjoy my Lord of the Rings Appendices DVDs. Then he thought it would be funny to ask me if he could go outside dressed as he was, and broke down in a whining fit when I said he couldn't. I told him he needed some shorts at least, then he finally calmed down and said he was going fishing outside. I didn't really want to shoot him though, I just wanted to give him away. For about five minutes.
4:35 AM | |
