Once upon a time there was a usually sweet boy who lived with a little old woman and her friends in a big yellow building in a small gray town. The boy was usually sweet, which means that sometimes he was not, but only rarely. The little old woman was neither particularly little nor particularly old but this is a story so bear with me until snip snap snout this tale's told out.

When the usually sweet boy was about to turn six years old, the little old woman and her friends decided to have a party for him. They wanted to give him all the things he wanted and celebrate him with all the things he loved. In the weeks before the special day, the little old woman and her friends cleverly asked questions, all feigned innocence and misdirection. What, one friend inquired, might be the usually sweet boy's favorite food? And this friend then began gathering the ingredients to make that special food for dinner. What sweets, another friend (who was at the time pregnant with a future usually sweet boy) inquired, might be the usually sweet boy's heart's desire? And this friend then waddled into the kitchen and commenced to bake enough chocolate chip cookies to feed a small army of preschoolers. The third friend bought a puzzle with characters that the usually sweet boy loved. And the little old woman doesn't even remember now what she was planning, because what happened next wiped her memory clear.

On the morning of the day that the usually sweet boy's birthday was to be celebrated, the little old woman tiptoed into his room to wake him, as she had done on every birthday morning before. She held the usually sweet boy in her arms and told him the story of how he was born, which I might write down some other day and then nest in here, nested stories are cool. But today just this story. So the little old woman told the usually sweet boy his story, and then held out her hand to take him into the kitchen to see the pile of cookies and hear all the best wishes from the people who loved him on his special day.

At the doorway, the usually sweet boy tugged at the little old woman's hand. "For my birthday," he said, with the voice of someone who has just realized some of his dreams could come true, and has decided to harness that power…. "I want a cake. A cake with trains and cars and Harry Potter on it."

"Oh!" exclaimed the little old woman. "It's a little late to arrange that. We will have a nice birthday party, but we can't get a cake that fancy at this point."

"Then I do not want a birthday at all," replied the usually sweet boy.

The little old woman paused. A tiny piece of her heart crumbled. "Hm." she said, and tried to keep a neutral tone. "Well, you think about that a little. I'm going to go start breakfast." She went to the kitchen, where the pregnant friend was probably trying to choke down an egg because she did that every morning for her baby, even though she didn't like eggs. A lot of parenting is doing things we don't enjoy so that our children grow into strong and reasonable people. That sentence is called foreshadowing and it is also the moral of the story. The little old woman told the pregnant friend the story about the cake request, and she was very sad when she told it, because she could see the future even before you can.

The pregnant friend went to the usually sweet boy's room to talk sense into him, since sometimes the little old woman got carried away with emotion and what was needed was a cool head. The usually sweet boy told the pregnant friend that he wanted a cake with trains and cars and Harry Potter or he did not want a birthday at all. 

Back in the kitchen, the pregnant friend and the little old woman were joined by the jolly friar friend, who actually was more like Mr Spock than a jolly friar but once a pseudonym always a pseudonym. The jolly friar friend thought that the pregnant friend and the little old woman were taking things a little too seriously, and he went into the usually sweet boy's room to speak in his magical calm voice, which was known on two continents for its ability to soothe savage beasts of two and four legs. Murmuring sounds through the door were promising, but after five minutes the jolly friar returned to the kitchen to proclaim the sad conclusion: cake with trains and cars and Harry Potter or no birthday.  

The little old woman and the pregnant friend and the jolly friar friend conferred. On the one hand, plans had been made. On the other hand, the changeling in the usually sweet boy's bedroom had to be stopped. What to do? When the third friend joined them, the friend of mighty naps, he listened to the story and went back to bed. Sadly, they all concluded that this was the way of things: a cake with trains and cars and Harry Potter was not going to happen, and the magical day of cookies and favorite foods and fun puzzles was finished before it even began. 

The little old woman will confess here that she cried a little.

The little old woman took the usually sweet boy to preschool that day as usual and worked that day as usual. The pregnant friend and the jolly friar friend and the friend of mighty naps also had their days as usual. There was nothing else to do. It was not really a day as usual, it was a day of heavy hearts and the cookies were eaten without celebration. I'd say they were bitter but they were actually probably perfectly delicious. That night the family had dinner as usual and went to bed as usual.

The next morning the little old woman went into the usually sweet boy's room to wake him up. Sitting in bed, still blinking away sleep, the usually sweet boy said, "So… yesterday? When I cancelled my birthday? That was really dumb, huh?" And the little old woman agreed that it had been. "So can I have my birthday now?" asked the usually sweet boy. And the little old woman replied sadly that no, he could not. The usually sweet boy hung his head sadly and dragged his feet into the kitchen. 

In the years after that, the usually sweet boy had many adventures and many wonderful days and some sad days, too, but he never again acted like an entitled ass, and he never got a cake with trains and cars and Harry Potter. He grew into an aspiring artist, a beautiful boy, a creative cook, a dynamic dancer, and so on all the way through the alphabet. And the little old woman could not be happier or prouder. 

Happy Eighteenth Birthday, Squire. You are my heart.

If you want to know how I got to have a perfect seventeen year old, I will whisper in your ear that television has been an important part of my child-rearing technique. Among other things, watching television with English subtitles taught him to be a great speller. But maybe more importantly: talking to Squire about difficult stuff was never easy when we tried to do it head on, and so I had to think of ways to approach things sideways. If we lived in the States, we'd have gone for long car rides where we talked about teen angst and teen pregnancy while staring intently at the road, but we're stuck with excellent public transportation and he walks to school so we have to stare intently at the screen instead. 

Partly we watch stuff because it's super entertaining. Battlestar Gallactica, Deadwood, every episode of Star Trek ever, the West Wing, Firefly. We seem particularly interested in the epic formation-of-society types of shows, we like a good battle in outer space, and we are partial to snappy dialogue. 

Some of the best shows we watched were American high school dramas — specifically I would say Friday Night Lights, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Veronica Mars were helpful. If you don't know how to talk to your kids about bullying, social stratification, economic issues, vampires, sexism, racism,,, well, this triptych has you covered. We learned about people who love sports, witty repartee and trust, romance and heartbreak, the varieties of parent/child relationships. It was easy to talk about heavy issues after we'd seen it happen to other people — wow, so that was a hard time for Matt… what do you think he could have done differently? Would you have trusted Spike after what he did? Should Veronica tell her father the truth or should she try to protect him? And through talking about these things we were able to practice talking to each other about most serious issues before they even became issues.

On Friday the Veronica Mars movie came out, and we sat on the couch in our old standard formation, popcorn bowl propped between us, and watched every character we loved light the screen. It has been ten years since the show was on, five years since we watched it, and it felt like it had only been days. Weevil! Mac! We got to talk about how some people change, but not a whole lot, just enough to give you hope that we are capable of change. How nice the respect and love that Veronica and her dad have for each other is. And of course some conversation (because we are way meta) about how entertainment gets funded and the future of media etc. It was great. 

That's all. Possibly the best parenting tip I've got, though: television. True story.  

When Squire was born I thought he was the most amazing thing on the planet, and then when he got to be about a year old I couldn't BELIEVE I had thought that, because obviously one was so much more interesting and fun. It's been like that pretty much every year since.

This afternoon I was telling him the marvelous story of how I memorized the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and recited the first bit to show how awesome I continue to be at storing all kinds of things in the brain pan. He said it sounded to him a lot like Tom Waits and went on to demonstrate how Waits would sing about sawdust restaurants with oyster shells.

In short: still the most amazing thing on the planet to me. So lucky to live with him. Let's all remember this at the end of the month when grades come out: somebody who can sing Tom Waits parodies is almost certainly more fun to live with than someone with a good grade in physics.

For my birthday, Squire said he would destroy my enemies. Apparently my
enemies are people who litter, people who stand in the tram doorways,
and people who are stupid on the internet. That sounds about right.

www.flickr.com/photos/53678649@N00/4672018463/

Someday
I will figure out the scanner and then I will
be unstoppable.

We had some Drama and Hurt Feelings this weekend. Apparently his
friends' visit on Friday was not all that and a bag of chips. They were
to come over and play cards and look at his photos from vacation, of
which there were maybe a hundred, plus video footage. And the friends
were not very interested. They were talking about other stuff while they
were looking and sometimes they weren't looking at all.  I mean, I have
to say: more than 20 photographs and you have to really love the
photographer. On the other hand, your two best friends? On the first
hand, the photos aren't all that good, since for example he views the
whole "Don't photograph against a window using flash" as nothing more
than superstition. But back to the other hand: who are they, art
critics? It takes like 20 minutes to look at the pictures and be
interested in them, or pretend to be interested because you care about
the person who took them.

So
we had this talk, with his long legs draped across my lap because he is
too old to sit in my lap unless it's really, really bad. This talk that
involved prolonged staring at the ceiling because he is too old to cry
about just hurt feelings. This talk where I explained that being an only
child means that you're used to having people who care about you pay
full focused attention to you, and you're even used to paying full
focused attention to the people you care about, but that other kids may
not see this kind of attention as a kind of caring. Even some adults
don't see it that way. That because you were brought up by adults who
were pretty interested in your stories, that may give you the idea that
the stories are interesting, and some of them are, but some of them are
only interesting to the people who can make time for them. Which two
adults who only have one child can make time for a whole host of
stories, particularly when they think that the one child is going to be
paying attention to their stories, but some adults don't act that way,
and a 13-year-old peer might not feel that way. That it can happen
through the course of your life that no matter how interesting your
stories are, no matter how interesting you are, some people will never
be able to pay full attention to you. And I think one of the important
things about you is that because you know how important it feels to be
heard, you are a very good listener. And this is a blessing and a curse,
to be able to fully listen to people and hear their stories and
the stories behind them, and to remember them, but there is nothing but sadness if you expect
other people to have this gift, or even think of it as a good thing,
because many people don't.

I said it may for example happen that you are in the middle of what
you perceive as a pretty awful time, and you will be asked to pay
attention to someone else's story about how one time somebody was maybe
looking at them funny in line. And you will feel both like you need to
hear this story because you are vitally interested in other people and
obliged to listen to them besides, and you will feel hurt because they
haven't asked about you. I said it may happen that somebody gives you
eighty percent of their attention, ninety percent, and you won't feel
happy because you wanted a hundred. A hundred and ten. You could live
like this until you're forty. Purely hypothetically I'm saying.

But what you need to know is that most people don't think of things
this way. Most people are thinking of themselves, and they seem to live
in the doors of trams, in the grocery store lines. But many people,
people who are worth knowing, devote the amount of attention that they
can. So you can choose to be angry because people don't pay what you consider to be enough attention,
and go through life lonely; or you can hold out this measuring cup and
be hurt when you find it empty or only half full; or you can focus on
finding people who are worth your attention, and hope that they will pay
attention to you in their own way, even if it's different. In any case:
I'm not kidding about photographing against the glass. Seriously, that
has to stop.

A bunch of kids in Squire's class have facebook accounts. They're
posting things that I, as a parent, would not want my child posting.
Even if the account is locked, one can still see all the things of
which they are "fans" and so on. So for example, I know that this 12
year old classmate of his, real first and last name, is interested in
meeting men, long passionate kisses, and looking at men's asses in
tight pants. What to think?

a. The parents know, and they don't care.
b. The parents don't know, and don't care.
c. The parents don't know, but would care.
d. other.

An
American friend of mine suggested bringing this up at the school; that
the school should have some kind of program to address it. To my
knowledge, nothing along the lines of internet-savvy behavior is part
of the curriculum. I don't know if kids are taught about it at all.
Certainly Czech television doesn't have James Lipton telling them to give it a ponder.
Is this a situation where one sticks one's head in, or not? I worry
about these kids just putting more of themselves out there than they
would if they were thinking straight; I worry about somebody getting
hurt. Some pretty shitty things happened to me when I was a teenager that would not have happened if I had been prepared for them; there's stuff I would
have avoided if I'd known how to. It is also true that I was warned
very sternly not to do things that I went ahead and did. So maybe this
risking of yourself is part of growing up?

What would you do?