They Grow Up So Quickly
Might not be around much this week cos the weeyuns are on Spring Break. I shall try and keep their boozing and wild-partying to a minimum by distracting them with bicycle lessons, nature-rambles and crack cocaine.
I don’t know though, I worry that they’re a bitty too young to have the training wheels off yet. God knows what they’ll be like on the highway without them. As it is I’ve just about had it with the police dragging them home for scooting-while-intoxicated down the car-pool lane – on weeknights too! I always wait up for them, you know, no matter what hour they come staggering in, drunkenly demanding to be read a story and tucked in with teddy. They don’t know how I worry.
Oh, I could put my foot down and tell them they’re not going out with grade-school boys after 7pm, but 5-year olds these days just don’t listen, they have their own lives. And, quite frankly, at that age, I was running drugs for Charlie “Masher” MacInnes – and making a pretty penny too (I was saving up for a “Watch-Her-Hair-Grow” Girl’s World). The sick thing was, I didn’t even want a Girl’s World, but all my friends had one, see. What I really wanted was a pony. You can’t admit that when you’re 5 though, you’d get called a baby and lose all your street cred immediately.
So you see, it would be hypocrisy for me to tell them what they can and can’t do. And they’re good kids really. I just wish they had more of a work ethic. I was a Division Head for Masher by the time I was six. Regularly muling to Ullapool and everything. Nobody would suspect a child in those days and, besides, they’d find so many Stornoway stowaways under the lifeboat-tarps – kids, crofters, the mayor – that an unaccompanied minor on a ferry didn’t arouse any alarm bell. Not even when the bags burst in our stomachs and we vomited everywhere, our eyeballs rolling back into our head. Even when a drug-foal out-and-out died from the sudden rush of Class A drugs to the major organs, people – although saddened, naturally – just said it was probably down to a bad-crossing, agreeing that it was a bit choppy that day,* right enough, and that they expected that the Looooooooord** was just up to some of His famously Mysteeeeeeeerious Ways again.
*True for 98% of Minch crossings, so the only surprise was that there weren’t more fatalities. Obviously, this meant that God was smiling on Lewis folk more than we even knew and this was just divine proof that we were right in Heaven’s eyes for insisting that Comhairle Nan Eilean tie up all public swings on Sundays, the day when God looked at His creation and saw that it was probably not going to be good for a lot of people (pestilence, war, famine etc), became depressed by that, especially after all His beautiful work on the snowflake – and that henceforth, on the 7th day of each week, merriment would be most holily forbidden; proof piety pays.
** Ullulated very slightly but not in that funny foreign way they do in the Middle East, – huh, just a bunch of show-offs drawing attention to themselves. More in the gravely domestic way we do in Lewis. In fact it probably wouldn’t be classed as an ullulation at all, but fall more under the rubric of a quivering querulous quaver, or whatever.
April 8th, 2008 at 3:17 am
It is your boundenest duty to get all Wee Free on your wee ones’ asses. A lifetime’s frugal repentance from diaper to high school will set them up properly for an angsty adulthood and weekly Jungian chakra massage therapy sessions. How else will they become good Californians?
April 8th, 2008 at 4:43 am
I never thought you were the drug runner type, dear. I fancied you smuggling guns into Ulster at age five, though. Anyway, have fun this week.
Cheers.
April 8th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Ah, you’d better teach them how to ululate the Lewis way, if only to stop ‘em doing it the Paris Hilton let-me-go-home way.
April 8th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Conan, that New Age world sucks you in. You start off buying a small crystal for your window “just because it’s pretty”, then you buy another, telling yourself you can stop whenever you want. By the sorry end of it you have refinanced your house to pay for a year in a faithfully reproduced Indian ashram, complete with Indian bugs and playful monkeys, located somewhere in the San Fernando Valley, just off the 101. You do this because after years of trying to find yourself, you find yourself furhter away than when you started.
Rand, never! I was a pacifist by the time I was 4, I’ll have you know, regularly picketing other people’s games of cowboys and indians. “Stop The Insanity!” my small banners read, until the other children’s mother called my mother to ask her to stop me making them.
Nanas, we live about one valley over – approximately 40 miles – from the San Fernando valley, the, like, acme of California talk or whatever. I don’t really care what my kids sound like – regular Californian’s fine – as long as they don’t sound like that. I’ll send then to New Joisey if I have to to rid them of it. Yes, I’d go that far.
April 8th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
how nice that kiddies get bicycle lessons now. in my day i was just pointed toward the downward side of a hill and off i went. i still have scars…but it was a beautiful Strawberry Shortcake red bike. almost tarty for a 5 year old…but it’s never to early, you know.
April 9th, 2008 at 12:27 am
Is the PCBHubbie working up the 8 simple rules, for I know that if I had girls those pictures of Baja et al would be the thing of nightmares. Mind you I’d more than likely be in De Nile, hovering on a 7th heaven.
The rest of your story is too near the bone as a few days ago there was a child found in Limerick sporting a flack jacket with stab-vest insert.
April 9th, 2008 at 12:32 am
Kara, the school of hard knocks and scraped knees was how I learnt too. Didn’t get no helmet neever. I don’t know how we lived through it. My pair have sweaty wee heads after a morning cycling around in their helmets with Californian sun beating down on them. There ought to be some type of steam-pipe outlet on them. The little puffs rising into the air would help me locate them from a distance in the park.
April 9th, 2008 at 12:38 am
Vincent, missed ya there, buddy. We have about 27 rules and because it’s us, none of them are simple. They can all be summed up in two general rules though: Don’t do stupid shit; and Don’t go anywhere with anyone who isn’t us, unless we’ve told you – not them – you can go.
A flack jacket on a child? Blimey! I wouldn’t have thought we were there yet, but hell, I’m not about to mock the parents. At least it shows they care. They’re paranoid, but they care. I guess a lot of kids don’t even get that.
April 9th, 2008 at 2:46 am
As my mother use to say’ You children are a great disappointment to you.’
I still haven’t forgiven her.
April 9th, 2008 at 8:37 am
Enjoy the time and good luck with the bike training. Pretty soon they will be looking for the key to the car and then you can forget about sleeping ever again. ( Unless they come home and are tucked up in bed, you know what I mean).
April 9th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
I keep telling my sister that I can’t wait to teach my neices (three and six) how to dress like slappers, so if you ever want any guidance there, I am only too happy to help.
April 9th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Howdy,
enjoyed your post! Funny about the ‘Valley’ accent, so true!
…Welcome to California, where the majority of the people resemble a bowl of healthy cereal…fruits, nuts, and flakes…
April 10th, 2008 at 9:22 am
My mother’s words to me were “Do what thou wilt, but don’t get caught”
Wise words that have ensured at the age of 41 I still don’t have a criminal record.
But see kids today? No one teaches ‘em that. This is why reported crime rates are rising and the prisons are overflowing. If only they started teaching kids basic stealth techniques in school.
April 10th, 2008 at 11:13 am
Have fun with Tots Gone Wild week, Sam.
I’m sure your girls are brilliant.
April 10th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
I use to try to play games with my girls when they were little and on holiday breaks. “Let’s play clean out the basement, it’ll be fun!” was met with stoney eyed stares of disgust so I just let them be. (I learned to ignore their whispered mocking of my cheerful tone)
They’re pretty cool with me these days.
April 10th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
spring break…2 of the most dreadrd words when kids are in college..enjoy yourself NOW, sugar!
April 12th, 2008 at 6:03 am
My kids don’t do stealth well either. It’s so infuriating. I can’t get over how they never bury their pilfered candy wrappers and leave their illicit reading materials right where I can find them. When I was a kid, at least I knew how to hide stuff.
And how weird to think that your kids are picking up Valley talk! One of mine responded that she ‘dinny ken’ the other day. My very own flesh and blood.
I own no crystals, and I only started yoga after the age of 30 and still can’t find my chakra. Can’t surf either, and I’ve given up on getting tans. I’m not sure if they’d even let me back into California.
April 12th, 2008 at 7:59 am
There?s a programme on BBC2 currently, couple of intellectual types taking a trip round the shores up north and last night they?d reached the Hebrides and bounced around the Islands. Showed a fella picking cockles on a beach and a British Airways plane landing behind him, on the same beach. His granddad was the best cockle picker though; none could keep up with him. And they spoke about Stornoway and other places and things which you talk about here. It?s a beautiful place Sam. Have your cocaine addicted, biker chick daughters spread chaos and havoc there yet? I think I?ll organise an expedition myself, once the boys get out jail and Darla has her baby.
April 12th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
My kids could use more of a work ethic too. I’ve tried giving them some of mine, but they’re not having it. And they are awful at stealth! Why can’t they understand that you’re supposed to hide the candy wrappers and questionable reading material where your mother can’t see? What’s so hard about that? Things were different when I was a kid. I knew how to pilfer properly, and no one had to tell ME that candy wrappers were a dead give away.
How weird that your kids are learning Valley speak! It must make you feel as strange as I do when I hear my kids using words like ’skive’ and ‘blather.’
April 13th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Okay, there are some days that you just totally lose me. It’s like watching the Young Ones in junior high and laughing because it seemed cool even though I didn’t get the Cliff Richards jokes.
But I am getting that your kids are on drugs. So I guess it’s good you’re home with them this week.
(miss you!)
April 14th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
ha! I have a four and a three year old, always good to know whats coming round the corner.
My daughter’s addiction to makeup is OBVIOUSLY leading somewhere bad.
have an adventure soaked holiday!
April 14th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
.
April 15th, 2008 at 2:36 am
Pat, within the next ten years I’m going to become an unbearable disappointment to my children as they hit their teens. I intend to wear their disappointment lightly though and drive them to school in my nightie and slippers, gaily casting pamphlets on alpaca-farming out of the window and screeching “The nettles! Who will boil the nettles?” in full view of their friends.
fmc, bike-training was sporadic as it turned out. They were much more into learning to roller-skate this week.
LaughyKate, have you seen the Bratz doll merchandise? There’s already a whole line is risque, sexualised clothing for little girls out there. It’s unbelievable.
Kim, It’s my fond hope that they know how to fiddle their taxes by age 8. Bless!
Medbh, it was a lovely week. I found myself with boundless energy for some reason which was a bit of good luck. We biked, we roller-skated, we jumped rope for years at a time, we went on long walks, we went on shorter walks, we made lurid pink cupcakes, we planted sunflowers, we did holiday feed-the-chicks duty at kindergarten and, among other things, we read The BFG twice. And I exercised like a demonade-slurping demon, chalking up miles on the road, the treadmill and the elliptical. It was all fab. Tonight I can’t be arsed moving my carcass down to the washing-machine to press ON.
Jali, these games sound like they went the same way as my Lets Play Cinderella! game. “You be twin Cinders,” I coaxed them, “Just wash the floors and make mummy a lovely gin fizz, eh? There’s my good girls.” It didn’t fly.
Savannah, it’s coming all too soon, darlin’. I figure if I don’t tell them about Mexico existing, they won’t find out about Cancun.
Mary, my spam filter caught you for some reason! Sorry, ’bout that. Thanks for letting me know though – it happens every now and again for no reason I can discern.
Sniffly, this June they return to the Homeland to spread their wild American ways among the good children of Lewis. Still they could never hope to surpass the rap-sheets on some of the five-year-olds from Harris.
Mom101, it’s not really cool, I’m afraid. Noone can best a good Cliff Richard joke. Not for the Perrier award at the edinburgh festival . Sir Cliff set the bar way too high in his unintentional natural comedicness.
Honey, I worried like hell one time Prob Child 2 and I were in the emergency room after she’d banged her head sometime. She ate the lipstick from the tube she found in my bag when I looked away to talk to the nurse for a second. When I turned around she looked like a slavering bone-cruncher child in “Desert Rose” colours.