4- Sunday, June 16, 1985 - Nurth Shore News

Here’s to bourgeois nonsense

ATHER’S DAY and Mother’s Day have always struck me i is

nonsense, part of the capitalist plot to trick us into buying more junk.

Be this as it may, { will nevertheless permit my fami- ly to pay full homage to me today.

Yes, me — The Ali- Father, as I[ prefer to be known. Actually, when the kids address me ! like it best if they begin their salutation with the phrase, ‘Oh, All- Father, Fountain of Truth and Knowledge...”’

That always gets my at- tention in a positive way.

Because, you sce, at heart I really dig being a father. Given that you can only do so many things in one lifetime, getting to act out the role of the father figure is one of the fun capers.

That is, most of the time. There are rainy days of course when fatherhood seems like karmic punish- ment for some wowzer of a forgotten crime.

I've been blessed with twe sons and two daughters. it goes without saying that each relationship is unique, but certain generalities prevail. Your kids challenge you more than anybody else, including your spouse. They are the ones who bear witness to the worst and best of your behaviour, the private stuff, in the end, they are the ones who will report on you to the neat

generation.

Your kids can be cruel to you in ways that nobody else dares. They can alsa make you weak with love by a single peck on the cheek or a smile. Probably you will cry over your children more than anything else in life. Hopefully they will also cause you more laughter,

This may be breathtaking- ly naive, but my fantasy about fatherhood is that it is the one role where, if 1 do it right, | could combine all my

talents and patience, over- come all my flews, and help to create a perfect human

as bits of bourgeois

strictly personal

by Bob Hunter P|

being.

. In theory, parenthood should be treated as maybe the highest art. Each child should be a masterpiece of social enginecring.

Who else do you get to lay your personal trip on so heavily as your kids? For a few years, you have their helpless Hitthe minds in your hands, it seems. Quick, im- print a belief system before the schools get to them!

I used to keep wondering why my kids, a fraction of my age and size, kept managing to whap me on the mat in the daily emotional judo match that family life sometimes inevitably is.

Then it sunk in. 1 was so busy fretting about the out- side world, getting on with my career, ete.. | failed to notice that the small being | happened to live in the sume house with was every bit as good a psychotogical manipulator as +f was. Moreover, the brat was con- centrating on ihe game 100 per cent, while I was only

playing with one hand, as it were. Whap! Whap! Whap! Nowadays, 1 try to bring an element of Zen into my fife-game with my kids. Like shaving a beard that they've been used to all their lives. Fatherhood ought to be apprenticed, by the way. There are tricks to it, like any trade. You have to fig- ure oul where you want the lines to be drawn, then mark them clearly and chap the kid's hands off if he or she tries to cross them. The single biggest task is to re- main consistent long enough for the kid to figure out

what the rules are. Better a totally wrong

parent than a vacillating one. Kids are easily confus- ed, and once they get that way it's nearly impossible to fix them. I see a lot of bot- ched parenting by quite in- telligent people who should know better simply because they balk at giving direction.

[ pretty much blew my first shot at being a father by being far too melodramatic.

Anyway, as a_ Father's Day gift to all you fellow procreators, here’s some-

thing 1 always say to my bass: ff you mess with your mother, it's incest. Ho you mess with your father, it's curtains.

Right?

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