soapboxdiner

Virtues and Vices

So did you know the kiddo is now attending the college at which I work? This is working out great for me, because not only is his high school paying for his tuition (thanks, Running Start Program!), but I also get to drive in the carpool lane for 30 bliss-filled miles every morning and every evening.

Imagine, you enter the freeway and cross the county line at a respectable 50 mph highway. Then you hit the Big City Number 1 that for thousands of yesterdays, your experience of traffic here was that it required you lurch to an immediate stop, wait 10 minutes idling at 0, then proceed the remainder of your commute at 15. 45 to 60 minutes later, you arrived at work already hating all of humanity. Every day. And then!!! Dream of all dreams, your child reaches that hallowed age at which he (or she) is old enough to attend college (yet remains too young to buy luggage and trick into boarding a one-way bus to San Jose). And YOU, happy parent, get to transport him. Suddenly, the sky opens and angels sing as you skillfully maneuver your way across the five sad lanes of normal highway at Big City Number 1 and jauntily merge into carpool. Suddenly, you're cruising at 50 again. And you're laughing! "Ha ha ha, suckers! Yesterday I was your people, and now you are eating my dust." Most of the time you say this in your most annoying sing-song voice, but sometimes you just say it with a funny accent.

So that's pretty cool. Free-ish college education for the kid, really fast commute.

Only . . . people. Like, do you know how frequently I am stopped at school to be regaled by tales of how well-behaved my child is? At least 3 times a week.

Don't get me wrong, I'm entirely happy that my son isn't out there in the world perpetrating random acts of assholishness. I really dig that about him, actually. Except on the inside I am saying, "Well, you know, part of the reason you like him as much as you do is because I have systematically socialized him to be good natured, well mannered, and unwaveringly polite. That will neither serve him in a professional capacity as an adult, nor gain him respect in tricky social settings in which assertiveness and awareness of general dickerliness of others will allow him to set firm boundaries. I have set him up to achieve nothing so much as reaching a jaded bitterness by 20, followed by many soon-to-be-forgotten years of alcoholic stupor." Parenting fail, in my book.

Anyways. I generally just suck it up and play along convivially with the compliments. I smile and nod, and thank our admirers for their kind words. But if they ask me for the secret of my success, trust that the little evil part of me that denounces the virtue of lemminghood whispers . . .

My secret? Oh, that's easy. You just beat 'em a lot when they're young.

9:16 pm - 08.05.13
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