Back to the Future

Do you ever wonder what life would be like if you went back to being, say a year old?  And just lived it all over again?  There’s no question about the fact that if I was ever granted that wish, I would sleep more!  Voluntarily too!  At a year old, I had no inkling that as an adult?  Sleep would be the one thing that life constantly deprives you of.  Hell!  I didn’t even know I would grow up to be an adult.  All I cared about was my mum’s never-ending supply of milk.  ‘Til I was cFoIuVgEh.   They told me that as I grew up, I would curse at my mum…”I want my %^&$en titty!”  Not for one minute, do I believe that!  There’s just no way I could’ve said words like, titty!  I want proof.  I’ve seen my baby pictures.  All twelve.  I wasn’t saying that word in any of them!

We all know and have experienced it.  Kids?  Their eyeballs are bloodshot!  Little bodies feel ragged and drained and possibly injured from literally running wild all day, yet, come time to sleep?  The war is on!  It's taking every ounce of energy they have left to not close their eyes!  And when it’s not working?  When their eyelids are no longer co-operating?  Then they get all mad with us.  Like we are sohhhh evil for “doodoo baba-ing” them.  Lemme tell you?  If I could go back, I'd be theeee most rested child that there ever was!  Sealy would use me as their mascot.  I’d sleep evvvvvery chance I got.  They’d have to have smelling salts on hand for me! 

Like now?  I'm yawwwwwwwwwwning. Ahhhhhhhh, ‘scuse me!  I needed to go to bed last night, like I should have done thirty eight and a half years ago.  Except for this time?  I wasn’t fighting sleep.  I am an adult.  And with adulthood comes responsibility.  So because of responsibility, I couldn’t sleep.  It’s responsibility’s fault!  Annnnnd the ex.  Don’t forget!  So, in actual fact?  It’s the ex’s responsibility that I didn’t sleep!  Nnnnnnnnnnnnnn!  Maybe not.  Don’t mind me.  I’m just tired.  But?!

A-HEM!

Seriously though, do you ever wish that you could just….go back to when your child was born, so that you could right the mistakes you made while raising them?  Is it ever too late to do that?  Okayyyyyyy-okay-A, don’t all scream at once.  Even I know that by 56 years old, it’s too late!  By then you forgot that they’re even your child.  “Mildred?  Is that you, dear?”  “No, Ma, it’s me, Andrew!”  “Okay, Patricia!” 

What about if you could go back to say…?  A year before your child was born?  If it were the case, would you be able to be honest with yourself, and admit, “I shouldn’t have had kids, because I can’t properly deal with the aspects of being a parent.”  Geese and I have had many discussions over parenting.  One thing he always says…”being a parent is not as easy as it appears to be.”  And it’s not.  Sure?  It looks cute and cuddly when you watch a mother and her baby interact.  But like boerboels?  They grow.  Very big.  Sometimes you have to even put them down.  L  I feel relatively emotional today because like many others, I could have done a better job.  And I should have done a better job.  I was certain that I knew all I needed to know about adequately raising children.  From a very young age.  My dolls?  Can tell you just how wonderful a parent I was. 

And that’s in fact where the trouble starts.  Marvel and Company need to discontinue the manufacturing of dolls because they give females the utterly wrong idea of what parenting is truly all about.  Firstly?  Where’s the father at?  Right there!  Right.  There!  Wrong message!  What do we see when we look around today?  We see young girls, with children.  The father?  Is now with someone else.  Expecting his second child.  Or?  The young girl is with someone else, expecting her second child.  The concept of family has faded into past generations.  And why?  Because of dolls.  And I know that for a fact because my granny always said that she had eleven kids because they were so poor and had no TV.  I already told you that remember!  So?  Further deduction would be that they wouldn’t have had money for dolls, either.  My parents are still together.  Their entire generation, is still together and have had kids with each other.  Not each other, each other like in the broad sense of the word, but with each, other! 

The similarities are so remote, when you’re taking care of a pretty plastic child, who has no voice, no ideas, no hormones, no emotions and nails that don’t grow?  It’s like flesh and…plastic!  It pollutes your mind with falsified expectations.  They will sit when you make them.  Sleep when they’re not at all tired!  Never complain about how you dress them?  But most of all, you never ever have to be concerned with whether they’re making the right decisions.  You never have to question your worth as a parent when you can’t help them deal with the difficulties that life so generously offers.  It’s a farce.  A charade.  I mean, I’ve never gone to my childhood friend and sobbed about, “I don’t know what to do…my doll is going through so much right now!  How do I help her get through it!”

It’s sometimes blinding to see the difference between reality and fairytale.