I SWEAR I’M GONNA STAPLE THAT TO YOUR FOREHEAD
I try to keep it together. I really do. I have great kids and I love them very much. There are a few things, however, that make me absolutely insane. They tend to be the things I rail upon, often for years, with seemingly no effect whatsoever. This week’s sterling example would be the constant stream of shit that is lost, misplaced, abused and forgotten. Often in burial ground piles around the house. While not the only perpetrator, Lilah is decidedly public enemy number one, and there seems to be no remedy.
“O.K. Lilah we’re going to the library. Where are your two books?” I ask, with Sophie at the door, completely ready with her receipt in her book to return, her library card in a fuzzy coin purse, and look of exasperated contempt as Lilah’s response filters down the stairs.
“Uhhhhh…” she says. Having forgotten that we were going to the library as well as where her library books were.
“You better find em! You already lost The Mouse and The Motorcycle, and I’ll be damned if we’re gonna pay for three books now!”
Thump thump thump thump. Scurry scurry scurry. Things falling to the floor up in her room. I run upstairs.
“It will not be in your laundry basket or with your stuffed animals. Look somewhere else,” I say and she stares at me for a good long time. As if I hold some secret to discover her lost things if she can just decipher the meaning of my image. “And no, they are not attached to me. Look somewhere else that’s not at me.”
Needless to say, now we owe the library 3 books and I will be damned. No idea where they are. And not like they would blend in. A giant pink encyclopedia of fairies and the weirdest comic art book you’ve ever seen. But walking through the house as I help her look, it becomes crystal clear how she lost it.
“Lilah come pick up your socks. And this banana peel. And your Fancy Nancy purse. And this sock. And your bug cage. And this sock.”
Her socks litter the world like she was leaving breadcrumbs to find her way back from the netherworld. Constantly in the car, every room in the house, the sofa, all beds, the yard, the refrigerator. Wherever she was the moment she no longer wanted them, the stinky donuts were immediately flung.
“And your LEGO’S! DAMMIT LILAH!”
Her three brand new boxes of hyper-expensive, you can only build this one damned thing as shown on the box, Legos, all open, side by side, and mixed together. Laser melter scene, Camelot, and old west Lego scenes, all from the Lego movie. Living in one diffuse pile strewn about the living room. All the heads pulled off each Lego person and clicked together to make one disturbing, smiling totem. Under the couch. Inventive, I give you that! You tiny, maniacal, master of entropy.
Three 20-dollar sets mashed together. And she had even spent her own 20 on the first! Sets she wanted to build and begged to put together just like on the box, and I had helped her with. Following instructions is a good skill. We’re having fun and learning. What a great time!
“I’m a master builder. I like to imaaaaginnne and make my own creations,” She had replied when we first started making the stupid ugly flying machine from the old west.
“Well, Lilah, that’s great. But guess what you have to know before you can break all the rules?”
“The rules,” Sophie chimed in. Good God the lectures this poor child has been subjected to. At least she remembers some of them. If only to leer and further torment her younger sister, but it’s a start.
So we made it 7/8 through the first one together. Step by step, using the map view of the diagram, finding the right pieces, doing everything precisely right. Great! Here we are, ironically obsessed with following directions, recreating a scene from the very movie that mocked the instruction-following hordes while extolling the virtues of the goddamned “master builders” that could build anything out of anything. So what do they use the movie to market? Ornate sets of mismatched pieces the master builders put together in the movie magically, haphazardly, only now you have to follow the instructions exactly using the plethora of tiny little pieces designed to work only in that set. What a load of crap! Oh, the days when Legos came in big cheap boxes and you could build whatever you wanted, or nothing at all.
I explained all this to Lilah. Many times. How she couldn’t lose a piece, or mix the sets together, if she wanted to build what was on the box. That I would get her a big set of general Legos that she could do whatever she wanted with. She nodded, she said ‘alright,’ she understood. Then I see her with the set we were almost done with, sprayed all over the front driveway in the middle of our I-really-hate-my-life garage sale. She’s just fucking with me now, right? Lying down, pieces everywhere, people stepping over her to peruse our own mismatched piles of crap.
“Lilah. Lilah!” I yell-whisper.
She probably did it out here so there would be witnesses. I probably won’t lose my mind in front of the neighbors. She looks at me with the blank look of an innocent prisoner. What could you possibly want, kind father? I wide-eyed my silent reply back. Pick up those stupid-ass Legos and put them back in the box and back in the house or I’m gonna beat you in front of all these losers!
She got it immediately, and ran it all back in. Minus one piece, of course. Maybe someone bought it. First set ruined.
And right now all of the rest of them cover the carpet like detritus, bordered by her socks, 2 stuffed animals, and a blanket. My 7-year old nesting squirrel. Who I am now yelling at about damn Legos! I ask her to repeat all the things I told her about Legos. She repeats them all completely accurately. So she has been listening.
“This leaving everything everywhere ends now. You can’t just drop your crap wherever in the world you happened to be when you decided you were done with it. Your socks, your food, your toys, your stuffed animals. This is it! You understand?” Imperceptible nod.
“Are you three, or are you almost eight?
“Almost eight.”
I send her to her room. About Legos, you asshole? Yes, about Legos, I realize as I sit down in my chair and hate myself. Not just about Legos, but a lot about stupid Legos, and that makes me horrible. Curse you stupid Legos and your stupid instructions and stupid tiny parts that are immediately lost and stupid me that has turned into the evil dad from the movie, yelling at his kid about fucking Legos. And her socks.
Thank God mother-in-law Cindy already has a big tub of regular ‘ole Legos waiting in the wings, with rectangular pieces and wheels and eyeballs. Thank God I realize what an evil Lego dad I was being before it was too late. Make a 60 dollar Lego head totem to frighten your fairy villagers, what the hell do I care.
She comes down from my ill-begotten time out and sits on my lap and I tell her its not a big deal but she’s gotta keep her shit separate. And she has to pick it all up.
She comes down later that night, wearing her pink towel with the bunny head draped over the top. Stands in front of me and looks like she’s gonna cry.
“Daddy I don’t wanna grow up.” Oh, stab me right on the heart.
“Honey you got a long time before you have to worry about that.”
“Yeah but I don’t even want to get older. I don’t even wanna be Sophie’s age. Sophie says I have to stop wearing the bunny towel when I get to be her age.” She climbs on my lap.
“No, you don’t. You can wear it as long as you want.”
“Even when I’m all growed up? Even when I’m old?”
“Yes, baby girl. Even when you’re all growed up. But you’ll still have to pick up your crap.”
Yeah, right. I’ll be lucky if she even brings back her backpack to school tomorrow. And I see a new blanket and chairs fort already spawning in the dining room. I may just have to give up. Sorry about the Tinkerbell sock in your salad.
It’s always a tug of war, isn’t it? Toys, growing up, emotions…both for us and for them. And all of us together. You’re okay, Daddy-O!!