Have you ever noticed, when people are preparing to have a baby, or, in my case, adopt a couple of ready-mades, they spend a lot of time thinking about the future?
Seriously, people who have never thought past making it to the store before it stops selling beer are suddenly fantasizing about watching their son play in the major leagues, or worrying about him getting electrocuted because they didn’t cover the outlets while he was still in the womb.
I can still remember one of my friends, who got rid of all her houseplants while she was pregnant, because she read that some plants have poisonous leaves.
Well, after eight years of parenthood, I’m here to tell you to relax.
Because nothing you plan for your kid, or worry about, will ever come true.
Oh, you’ll have plenty of good times, troubles, accidents and struggles with your kid.
But none of them will involve anything you even vaguely imagined.
You might be worried about a stranger snatching your child off the street. but, seriously, that happens so rarely that when it does, it makes the national news.
This is what will happen instead: your kid will stick a bean up his nose and have to go to the emergency room to have it extracted. This trip will occur while your car is in the shop, your other kid is home with the flu and there’s a mandatory annual meeting at work.
As a sports fan, you will fantasize about watching your quarterback son play football under the Friday night lights, before being drafted into the NFL.
But this is what will actually occur: your son will hate sports but will like playing the piano. He’ll get a scholarship to a music academy in Italy, and come home addicted to silk shirts, gelato and classical opera. Once a year, he’ll watch a football game with you on TV, just to make you feel better.
I took my kids to Baja, at considerable trouble and expense, to have the life-altering experience of petting wild baby whales in a natural lagoon.
What is their favorite memory of that trip? Playing with a litter of puppies at the hotel.
I recently took my kids to the stunning Pfeiffer Beach in big Sur, where I was looking forward to showing them the windows in the rocks, the cypress forest and the other natural wonders of this world-famous beach.
Instead, as soon as we got to the beach, my kids plunked down on the warm sand and refused to move.
I walked off, telling them to come and assuming they would follow. Eventually, when I was way down the beach, I looked back and realized they were nowhere to be found.
I hiked back a considerable distance to the start of the trail, and found them lying around like dead lizards, in the exact position in which I had left them.
I was so incensed that the kids were refusing to live out my fantasy that I decided Cheetah Boy, 13, needed to give me back the $5 I’d just given him.
So I leaned over and stuck my hand in his sweatshirt pocket to take back the money.
However, he then turned over, throwing me off-balance and onto the sand myself.
Lying in the sand didn’t halt my determination, though, and I kept trying to get the money out of his pocket, even though he had no idea from my strange grunts what was going on.
We rolled over and over like actors in a bad movie, until he understood what I was doing, pulled out the money in disgust, and shoved it into my hand. then we both stood up and glared at each other, covered with fine sand.
Somehow, this wasn’t my finest parenting hour. later, I realized I’d become caught up in my imaginary world, where kids ooh and ahh over everything I want to show them.
A world where kids actually like looking at the scenery more than the backseat DVD player.
A world where kids don’t ignore the expensive toy you just bought them and play with the box instead.
Ah, well. If somehow, you can just learn to be Zen about it, parenting can be a wonderful thing.
Contact the writer: Contact Frumpy Mom at mfisher@ocregister.com
