It takes a village idiot

I took Emmeline to one of our old playgrounds, and we were playing contentedly in the sand with a shovel and bucket, making pretend tea cakes and preparing to host the rocking horse at a delightful afternoon soiree, when a mom arrived with a cell phone strapped to her ear.

“I know, right?!” she screamed, “I mean, I was all …”

Usually I can forgive the kind of obnoxiousness that drives 45 year olds to speak like middle schoolers, but she was talking about a Reese Witherspoon movie so I knew right away she was not to be trusted. She flopped her child — 4 maybe — into the sand and motioned with one hand toward Emme and me, as if we wanted to hear his thoughts on the movie. Then the mom sat on a bench and sank back into her conversation.

As a guy at a playground, I’m accustomed to kids wanting to play with me all the time. But I really chafe at unintentionally intentional babysitting.

I can’t stand dealing with those orphans of disengaged parents who think it’s fine and dandy to turn their brood upon the populace because they have more important things to attend to, like texting. A large part of me feels enormous pity for these children and I want to play with them, to give them the attention they crave if only for five minutes, but there are days when I just don’t have the energy to handle my own 2-year-old, let alone the bossy offspring of neglectful movie critics.

But this little guy saw that we were having a good time and decided he wanted to join in.

“What’s your name?” I asked, “Do you want to play, too?”

The kid grunted, “That’s mine!” and ripped the bucket from Emme’s hands. Sand flew out of the bucket and sunlight sparkled on some of the grains.

“The tea cakes!” Emme screamed. “Oh no!”

It took us all morning to make those cakes, and I knew that if we didn’t serve something at the soiree, the rocking horse would look down at us and we’d never be invited back to Netherfield. The tension in the air was palpable. So I told the boy we had to share, that my daughter was playing with the bucket, too.

“Here,” I told him, “We can all play with it. Do you like lavender scones?”

The kid actually got in my face, pushing his nose two inches from my own. I could smell the chicken nuggets and I could tell that no — no he did not like lavender scones.

“It’s. MINE!” he snarled, jabbing his fingers into my chest with each word.

I looked at the boy’s mother, who saw what was going on but was apparently busy playing MASH. We made eye contact, and she shrugged. It seemed like a good time to show my daughter a lesson in rising above — to let her know that even though there are some real monsters out there, you don’t have to be one.

“Fine,” I said to the boy, turning my voice to a whisper so Emme wouldn’t hear, “But guess what?”

“What?”

“There is no Santa Claus.”

***

A few weeks after installing a newborn in your house, you eventually learn to live with the mind-numbing lack of sleep. The blank stares. The misplaced keys. The coffee made with a filter full of peanuts. (Twice.) These things become a part of your new personality and somehow you deal with them.

Then at some point sleep comes again and a child who wouldn’t stay down for more than an hour at a time finds herself out for 12 straight hours. It’s like your newborn was replaced in the night by the neighborhood drunk — the friendly drunk who rambles incoherently about ponies and smells like Dreft. And so one day you wake up to find you’re rested again; you’ve finally paid off all your sleep debt. Which only makes it more difficult when those random bouts of sleeplessness come suddenly out of the blue black night.

Dana came home from work the other night and found me in a chair in Emme’s room, nodding off as our child flipped through the pages of Jumpy Jack and Googily. The previous couple of nights we had been up at all hours, as Emme fought through a fever. We took turns going into her room every 10 minutes, rubbing her back, stroking her head, offering kisses and eight balls — anything to get her to sleep. Finally we hauled her into our bed, where she proceeded to punish us for our good intentions. I awoke with two feet in my groin and Dana still has the impression of a baby head under her arm.

So when Dana came home, the last thing either of us wanted to do was cook dinner. We were beat, bleary-eyed and grumpy, silently dreading the sleepless night ahead of all of us. We headed to a favorite diner that serves breakfast all day long and we loaded up greasy spoon fare.

“Tell her to stop staring at me!”

The voice was small, kid-like. And I knew just who it belonged to.

Since the little boy came into the restaurant, Emme couldn’t stop staring at him. The boy opened the door, and Emme was right there with him. The boy climbed on top of a stool by the diner counter, and Emme watched the divine miracle of sitting. The kid ordered a grilled cheese sandwich, and Emme was absorbed. I wanted to tell her that this was what it’s like to watch All My Children — that it puts you in a kind of mindless stupor you somehow can’t turn away from. But she was too busy, and I knew enough about good soaps to not bother her.

“Tell her to stop!” the boy screamed again.

I wanted to say, “Well if you’d just turn around and stop staring at her, you’d never know!” But he had a point. It’s tacky to stare. I looked at the boy’s mother, who was engrossed in a Blackberry, and I determined the poor kid was on his own. So I blew through my straw and watched as the white paper wrapper sailed across the table and hit Emme smack in the middle of the forehead. She laughed, and instantly the boy was forgotten, and I made a note to remember this when she got into middle school.

“Do that again!” Emme chuckled. And we spent the next five minutes blowing through straws at each other.

Then the boy suddenly returned, reaching for my straw.

“Ok, now blow me,” he demanded.

Dana snorted into her Coke, while I told him the Catholic Church was around the block.

“What?” he sneered.

“Nothing.”

He was probably a little over 4, and by this time his hands were covered in grilled cheese sandwich. Ever since Emme had stopped staring at him, he had gone out of his way to regain her affection — spinning the stool, hopping off it, running around, banging his fork on the counter or tossing it at waitresses. His mother was oblivious, too busy checking her e-mails.

Her son, meanwhile, hopped off his counter stool, grabbed at my straw and smiled his crooked cheese-stained smile, tapping his hands on my knees and leaving Velveeta prints on my jeans.

“Why isn’t she eating a grill cheese sandwich?” the boy slurred, orange grease dripping down his little cheese chin.

“What?”

The little boy motioned to Emme, who was sitting in a high chair across from me.

“She! Why is she not eating one?” Then he reached onto my plate and took a french fry, leaving a little cheese trail behind him.

I sighed, looking across the room to where the little boy’s mother was pounding away at her Blackberry.

“She’s eating macaroni and cheese,” the boy continued, “She’s not really good at it — she should use a fork.”

Emme looked up at the boy, her own face coated in cheese and her fingers dripping in goo, and I could tell she was crushed. She reached for her fork and fumbled for a few stray bands of cooled macaroni.

“See? She’s not very good at it.”

I motioned to the boy’s food on the counter.

“I think your dinner’s getting cold,” I told him. He turned, looked at his mother — whose back was turned — and then rejoined our conversation.

“Why doesn’t she just eat a grill cheese?” he said.

I smiled at the boy and motioned with my finger for him to come closer.

“Because here they’re made with poison,” I whispered, “And you’ll die. Why? What are you eating?”

The boy silently returned to his counter, and I said a prayer that his mother would be too busy emailing when he told her what that strange man had said. I was watching their interactions closely, waiting, when Dana and I saw the woman peer over at the boy’s full plate.

“Honestly,” she huffed, “If you don’t eat all your dinner, your father is not going to pick you up for the weekend.”

Dana and I stared, open-mouthed, and I could tell we were thinking the same thing. What kind of monster would say such a thing to a child?