#childhood: a series of neutral observations about the ridiculousness of tiny humans.

Adults don’t know what to do about children. Throughout history we adults have either painted wings on them or put a shovel in their hands at the first opportunity. Babies of all species have been used to serve the weird projections of adults. Thus sad babies are continually appearing alongside even sadder looking puppies in advertisements designed to get us adults to contribute money to something.

Probably children aren’t horrible, and probably they aren’t “the hope for the better future of tomorrow” either. After all, children become adults, and adults become politicians, and politicians ruin everything.

So I’m starting a series that I’m calling #childhood. These are observations about childhood that are absolutely, %100 true. I’ve hashtagged it because I have a foggy idea of “trending,” but I understand it to be a positive thing and it has something to do with what I grew up calling “the pound sign.”

Anyway, here it goes. Let’s hope we can set the record straight for these tiny weakling humans once and for all. I’ll start with some observations about preschoolers, because I have 2 and they’re both ridiculous.

1. Preschoolers are only a little bigger than the average house cat, and far smaller than the average dog. They can feasibly accomplish what I’ve only dreamed about: to ride the back of a chocolate lab as if it were a horse. To a preschooler, a dog walking around the house must make as much sense as a horse walking around the house does to us. #childhood
2. Preschoolers feel things way before they have names for those feelings. This means that they continually have feelings that are “beyond words.” #childhood
3. This also means that you would never ever be friends with a child if you met them in a cafe. “Stop acting like a child” is an impossible request when your friend is actually a child. #childhood
4. This also means that many of us are friendly with other people’s children solely for the sake of supporting some adult’s delusion that they’re children “are just the cutest thing in the world.” #childhood
5. Preschoolers are so dumb that even Jeff Foxworthy couldn’t get a show called “Are You Smarter Than a Preschooler?” green-lit. The answer is yes, absolutely, and in all cases. No producer or audience would give a single shit about that show. #childhood
6. Foxworthy would never have a “You Might Be a Preschooler If” bit because children are just so much dumber than rednecks that the premise is lost. #childhood
7. The advantage that children have in their dumbness is that they don’t yet know what things in the world are. Think about that. You know what a tree is, so you no longer ask. Nor do you care. Children do nothing but ask, all the time, because they are dumb (and happy). #childhood
8. The disadvantage of childhood dumbness is about what you’d expect. Sometimes you accidentally light the couch on fire, or try to give your sister a haircut. #childhood
9. Another advantage of preschool stupidity is that your imagination works overtime to fill up all the empty space in your head. Case in point: my three-year-old daughter asked last night if we could go to the “girl pet store,” as if animal commerce were sex-segregated. It’s dumb, but still: imagine a store full of colorful dogs with incredible hair, and cats that sat upright and drank tea? #childhood
10. When you’re a preschooler your experience of commerce is divided up entirely into “sharing” vs. “stealing.” There’s no money exchanged, no contracts. This is like the blissful ideals of socialism realized in miniature. Also, tyranny. #childhood
11. When you’re a preschooler, possession is ten-tenths of the law. #childhood

 

There it is: #childhood in all its trending glory! Let the likes roll in like salmon in the rivers of Capostrano!

Give me your best #childhood in the comments section of wherever you linked from (or in WordPress itself).

Happy weekend.