4 - Sunday, June 2

. 1985 - North Shore News

Where would we be without children?

Y WIFE got a compliment at work the

other day. Somebody remarked how nice

it was that she didn’t blither-blather about
her bloody kids all the time.

There's apparently
another woman in the office
who entered the sacred state
of motherhood a year or so
ago who bores everyone
around her to death, yapp-
ing her face off about her
miraculous toddler.

Now, at home, of course,
my wife spends most of her
time either talking to or

sitting there with some
adults around a table after
dinner, enjoying a free-
flowing exchange of views
about the world debt, when,
suddenly, completely out of
nowhere, somebody will
start’ burbling about how
that reminds them of the
time Junior learned to uso a
spoon.

When Beloved Buns
herself slips up and starts
pulling such a sturt, | give
her 30 seconds before kick-
ing her ankle. It’s just not as
easy to kick some other
guy's wife, especially if
you're all trying to have a
happy social time.

One of the things that
gives motherhood such a bad
name in some quarters is the
ostentatious madonna figure
with the bottomless bag of
baby anecdotes, When I see
her coming, ! flee.

strictly personal

_f Bote,
about her kids. That's okay
at home. After all, raising
kids is a full-time hobby.
Very labor-intensive. And
you've got to read a lot of
books on the subject.
Whether you want to or not,
you inevitably become an
expert of sorts on kids.
Might as well bounce your
theories off somebody.
What else is a husband good
for anyway?

So I don’t mind. I yap
about kids a fair amount
myself. I’ve had four of
them and sometimes, late at
night when we're getting
maudlin, the idea lingers of
maybe having one more
somewhere down the road.
It’s my peasant background,
I guess.

A couple sitting around
doing an in-depth analysis of
the latest subtle change in
their offspring’s behaviour
pattern is One Of The
Things To Do In Life.

But it’s like a lot of other
things. It should be done
privately.

Being a father, by the
way, is also a_ mystical
undertaking. But you don't
run into quite as many fa-
thers who will wear your ear
to the bone telling you all
about Junior, do you? My
male friends and | talk about
our kids, sure, but only if

it’s a fair exchange of pithy,

observations about the
shortcomings of their par-
ticular generation. We don’t
go on and on and on.

If there’s any topic that
will wreck a good group
discussion it is ‘the kids.’' I
don’t know how many times
I've seen it happen. I'll be

by Bob Hunter

In my experience, to teil
the truth, it is very, very
often a mother who will
make this daring intellectual
leap. And for the next 20
minutes, if we're not careful,
the rest of us will have to sit
there, glassy-eyed, while an
utterly banal tale of toilet
training takes up the
available conversational
space.

This is not to say that kids
aren’t absolutely the most
fascinating phenomenon in
the universe. | mean, I’ve
raised .dogs, cats, budgies,
goldfish, hampsters,
canaries, chickens, geese,
turkeys and sheep, and,
believe me, kids are more in-
teresting. Sometimes.

Sometimes they're also
just plain disgusting, ridicu-

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lous, petty, egomaniacal and
filthy. And the smaller they
are, the less they have to say
that matters in any way.

I made a joke the other
day to some friends whose
teenage children are driving
them wild to the effect that
maybe what we should do
with our kids is raise them
until ihey’re 21, then eat
them. They laughed heartily,
but you see the wheels turn-
ing. Could they get away
with it?) They really were
about ready to kill.

Let’s face it, babies are
best when they’re clean,
quict and cuie. Teenagers
are at their finest when
they're standing politely in
the wings, waiting for the
right moment to inquire,
without disturbing your flow
of thought or conversation,
how they might best serve
you next. Kids in between,
well, all you can hope for is
some kind of a large,
heavy-duty pen where they
can't break anything expen-
sive, including themselves.

Nah. I'm just kidding.
Love ‘em every minute.
Can't help it. Instinct, you
know.

It’s the Prima (amas that
get to me. They get so suck-
ed into their roles as mothers
they forget there’s a whole
planet outside the playroom.

Hey, dear! Over here! What
do you think about the
Irag-lran situation? It re-

minds you that littke George
needs new shoes? Thanks. 1
needed to hear that.

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