You never call your kid nuts. Never. No way. That’s out of bounds and off limits. Parents don’t go there talking about their own children. Other people’s children, sure, why not? But your own, nope!
That isn’t to say they’re not nuts. More than likely, they are, especially if you have a toddler. Every parent knows their kid is bonko. But you don’t say it out loud. You don’t mention it among civilized company. You kind of pretend they’re normal, sane, and didn’t just crash into that wall at high speed, only to turn to you and say, “I fell on my butt.”
This is what I’m coming to understand as the parent of a 2 1/2-year-old. You invent nice, delicate, PC ways to explain your child’s behavior, and her … um … quirks. Yeah, quirks. That’s it. She has quirks. That’s why she tried to brush her eyeballs with a toothbrush, or nearly flushed herself down the toilet. That’s why she says things like “poopie music” and wants me to smell her dirty shoes.
You invent little phrases and sayings to explain all this stuff: She’s having a moment. A circuit must have fried. She’s unique. She’s special. There’s not as much oxygen going around as there used to be. Must be too much sugar in her diet. Must be all those double espresso lattes.
Our new one is not so subtle, but speaks more to a time of day than a frame of mind: the 5 o’clock crazies. If you’re a parent, you know about this. That’s the time of day when you wonder if your child has been taken over by drunk aliens in search of spring break.
And it’s easy to explain things off that way. “She’s up on the roof again? Oh, just the 5 o’clock crazies. No worries. By six she’ll be down and fine.”
But what goes on in those little brains? What possesses them to strip down naked and run around the house screaming, “See my heinie?”
The other day, she ran back and forth on the porch screaming “little Jackie Paper! Little Jackie Paper!” I stood there watching with my hand over my mouth as I mumbled, “she’s gone completely quirky.”
Once I got her back inside, she turned to me and said, “Come on, dad, let’s go run around.” Then she commenced jogging lap after lap around the dining room table. I had to chase her must have been 1,600 times while she desperately tried to hike up her shorts and flailed about as she grew dizzy.
And the things she says!
“Dad, can I watch TV with a monkey?” came the little voice from the other room.
“Uh, sure,” I said. Whenever I hear something like this I do have to force myself to peek into the living room just to make sure there isn’t a monkey sitting there with her on the sofa. Sometimes, you have to question your own sanity.
And strangely, as her language skills and vocabulary grow, it seems to be getting more difficult to understand what she’s saying. The stories, the questions, the comments, grow more complex, more elaborate and more fantastic.
Chickens have come by for lunch and want to know if they can go to the store for milk. A snake is in the fridge and was having problems typing on the computer.
Sometimes it just seems to be long strings of random words that somehow form an undecipherable question, usually involving a lion or a Cheez-It.
I scratch my head and say, “OK, sounds good to me. Even though I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
More often than not this commits me to a game of chase around the table, which I do until she becomes dizzy and trips over the dog.
I stand there not knowing what to make of it all and sure not wanting to admit that my kid has taken flight with the cuckoos.
“Just the 5 o’clock crazies,” I say to myself, even though it is only 10 in the morning.