What If You DID Need a License to Have Kids?

 

How often have you heard, “You need a license to drive a car, but not to have children”? 

Well, here in Babyland we’ve finally decided to set some standards, to make sure our cherubs are placed in the very best hands! 

First the written test. If you pass this, you get your learner’s permit; you can then parent during daylight hours, accompanied by a licensed parent. 

1. Complete this sentence: When beginning to parent, first check your  a) rearview mirror b) seat belt c) superior attitude about the way you were raised. _________________
2. What is the speed limit (if any) for leaving a grocery store after your child has knocked over that huge “Souper Bowl” display of cans of Campbell’s chicken noodle and ripped open five family-size bags of cool ranch Doritos? ______________________________
3. How far away must you park your stroller from a fire hydrant?____________________
4. Too close! How did your baby figure out how to open a fire hydrant anyway?________________________
5. When four parents approach an intersection with the sixth grade teacher at the same time, which one gets to attack her first?__________________________ 
6. When approaching a slow-moving 15 year old 20 minutes after the alarm has gone off, is it legal to turn on the flashers (bedroom lights) and sound your horn (scream)?_________________

Congratulations, perfect score! Now on to the road test! 

Make sure you are getting into the driver’s seat, and staying there for the next 18 years.

Turn on the coffeepot (“ignition”) and pull carefully into the day.

Watch out! You nearly hit your toddler! Calm down! One more incident like that and we’ll just go right back to the DMV!

Parallel parenting time! Navigate placing yourself precisely between two parked moms at this crowded playground. Be careful of the one giving a play-by-play of her son’s recent victory on the T ball field. Oops, now watch that you’re not too close to the one drinking from a thermos of margaritas while her kids push your child off the slide. 

Doing fine!  Think you can handle the expressway? You have no other choice! On the entrance ramp, now…merge expectations with your teen’s (do they get an after-school job at Chipotle, or a ridiculously generous allowance from you, apparently for breathing? ) OK good, now keep watching every second as you rapidly speed up. Braces. Wait—braces off already? Why are her teeth still crooked? Acne? Your investment in clear skin just bought the dermatologist a beach house! SATs! Just 1550? Hmmm, he better take them again or kiss Harvard goodbye. Prom? She is NOT leaving the house dressed like that! Senior Week? He is NOT going to Cancun with his friends from detention! Hold on, going WAY too fast! Take the next exit!! 

Whew. Great! You passed. We think you’re ready to be a parent! Congratu---

Wait, where are you going? Come back! We thought you WANTED this job!

Maybe we better go back to no standards. We’ll never unload all the babies this way.

The Seyfried children had unlicensed parents!

The Secret of My Success

 

I won a Super Bowl pool! Find out how...

You’ve been dying to learn this, haven’t you?

In the loving and sharing spirit of Saint Valentine himself, then, here it is, the secret of my every success: I just stop thinking about attaining it. By which I mean, nearly all of my “wins” have come AFTER I’ve put whatever I was competing for completely out of my mind. Case in point: at our mentor meeting at church Sunday afternoon, one of the dads came up with a Super Bowl pool. The teams of mentors and Confirmation students filled out the form before kickoff, to determine who would later be victorious (the prize was ingenious--$100, which would then be donated to the charity of the winners’ choice). I let my teenage partner fill in our names, and that was the last thought I gave to the whole endeavor. Once home, I did my usual Super Bowl thing, which was not watch a second of it. This year, for good measure, I even eschewed the commercials and halftime show, knowing any mild curiosity I had could be easily satisfied by subsequent viewing online.

So, of course, my duo won the pool. Now, had I cared one whit, I promise you there would have been a different outcome. But, by playing mentally “hard to get,” I clearly attracted good fortune. 

In my writing life, I mostly achieve acceptances of my pieces to magazines and the like by submitting to them, then promptly forgetting I did so. This works best when I send out a flurry of essays and articles to a large number of publications. It is a delightful surprise to hear from, for example, a humor magazine I’d sent a little "something something" weeks prior. In contrast, I have been single-mindedly focused on cracking a very tough comedy nut, sending them way too many submissions, and then refreshing my inbox multiple times per day for a response. Needless to say, I have been rejected 100% of the time so far. Of course I have! I’ve been way too needy! I should be ignoring them altogether, so that eventually they will unearth one of my pieces and contact me frantically, begging me to allow them to feature it. 

Now, my formula (I call it, The Power of Not Thinking About It at All) may not work for you. You may, for all I know, swear by laser-focusing on your goals, bringing all of your brainpower to bear on envisioning your desired outcome. If that is your preferred method, great! But for those who have tried and failed to manifest success, I encourage you to give my technique a whirl. It has the advantage of freeing up your gray matter for what is truly important, such as wondering if you actually ate that crème filled donut for breakfast, or if you just dreamed you did (alas, I gain the same amount of weight ingesting pastry virtually and literally). 

Secret of my Success, my friends? As my Brooklyn buddies would say, “Fuggedaboudit!”

How many calories in a dream donut?

Need to Know Basis

Confession: I am an information junkie. If there’s something I want to know, I NEED to know it, and I need to know it now!! Now, mind you, this ravenous appetite for enlightenment doesn’t extend to astrophysics, say, or sports. Those fall into the “don’t know, and don’t care” category for me. 

I recently installed something called Mailtracker on one of my email accounts. Through the magic of technology, Mailtracker can tell when my “sent” emails are opened, and how many times they are read. I get a daily summary of these missives every evening. While I’d be very curious about any emails I send to YOU, don’t worry—I’m not interested in tracking my personal emails. I just wanted Mailtracker for my writing life, so I could tell when editors opened and read my queries, pitches and submissions. Before this, I would send an essay, say, to The New Yorker, and then wait. And wait. And wait for a reply. I’d agonize over when to send a follow-up email (too soon? Pushy! Too late? They’ll have forgotten all about it!) Whereas, with my dandy little tool, I can tell exactly when Mr. or Ms. Big Shot Editor opens my message! Yay! Now we’re in business, right?

But what do I do when I know they’ve they read it, but they still don’t respond? That’s a whole other issue. Some publications are very prompt and get right back to me (often with, “thanks, but we’re passing on this piece!” but still, it’s an answer!) Others take weeks, even months. Some assume that you know their silence IS their (negative) response. So Mailtracker has not, in fact, solved my problem. In fact, my “need to know” may have led me to know a little too much for my own good!

I wonder—if there was a Mailtracker for the prayers we send to God, would we feel better? Or worse? If we got a report that, indeed, the Almighty HAD received our prayers at 3:15 PM, but our inbox remained empty for days, even years? Would we conclude that God’s silence was always a negative answer, or would we give the Big Guy the benefit of the doubt, and realize that our prayers would have a response, in God’s time if not in ours? Do we really need to know precisely how prayer works, to believe that it does?

There’s an awful lot I wish I knew that I don’t know, may never know. But maybe some of that I DON’T need to know. There are things I can, and should, just take on faith, faith that we are all in the very capable hands of a loving God.

I probably won’t uninstall Mailtracker just yet (who knows, The New Yorker may finally read my fabulous essay this afternoon!) But I hope I can make my peace with the gaps in my comprehension of life, figure out what I can, and then, rest assured that all will be well in the end.

The Ben Franklin Effect

 

Hey, bud, can you spot me a Benjamin?

Ever since first grade at Epiphany Catholic School in New York City, I have been extremely interested in The Art of Making Friends. I’d observe the popular kids in the lunchroom and at recess, and try desperately to emulate them. Was it their enviable hair (long, blond, poker straight) and freckle-free skin, so unlike mine? The casually elegant way they wore their navy-blue uniforms (skirt always hiked up to be precisely short enough to look cool, yet not short enough to rate a reprimand from Sister Bernadette?) Apart from their looks, what did they say and do that attracted classmates like honeybees to clover?

For decades, the answers eluded me, and even now, at age 65, I still look at the people on EVERYONE’s dinner party invitation list and wonder what I’m missing. Now mind you, I now have a cherished circle of true friends that I value beyond measure (though I’m a bit puzzled by their interest in being MY buddies). But I still yearn for more, an “overflowing cathedral at my funeral” amount of amigos. In particular, I am determined to win over the people who dislike me (or are totally indifferent). But how?

Of course, I turned to the oracle of oracles, Benjamin Franklin himself, for a tutorial. That peripatetic author, inventor, statesman and sage was also immensely popular. What was Ben’s secret? Was it his jaunty powdered wig? The casually elegant way he wore his waistcoat and breeches? Lucky for me, Mr. Franklin spilled the beans, writing about a clever stratagem that has come to be known as The Ben Franklin Effect. 

The BFE (as I like to call it) involves turning an enemy into a friend by—get this—allowing THEM to do a favor for YOU. Counterintuitive, right? But apparently it works. Seems back in ye olden days, Franklin figured out how to ingratiate himself with a non-admirer: he asked the man if he could borrow a book from him. And when the loan took place, there was a shift in Ben’s adversary. Suddenly he became quite agreeable, and in the end they were great chums. It all has to do with something called cognitive dissonance. We mentally order our universe so that there is harmony—no things that don’t make sense. Therefore, when the man loaned the book to Ben, he justified the action to himself by saying “I wouldn’t do that nice thing for Franklin if I didn’t like him, therefore I must like him.” Voila! Ben had made a friend by letting him do a favor!

I am eager to try out the BFE myself, and see if I can increase the ranks of my friends. I plan to ask enemies, acquaintances and even total strangers if I can borrow stuff: a cup of sugar, $100 until payday, that sort of thing. And when I rake in my bounty, I’ll have the bonus of raking in new admirers too.

Does anyone have a copy of Poor Richard’s Almanac they could loan me?