Lots of people advocate various books on parenting. That’s fine. Do what you do. I learned everything I needed to know about raising a child from reading Calvin and Hobbes.
One
that sticks in my mind is a strip where Calvin asks his dad (my spirit animal)
why old family pictures are black-and-white. My Spirit Animal goes on to
explain how those photographs are in color. It’s the world that was
black-and-white. MSA explains how color evolved in the 1930s, though it was
spotty and grainy at first. When Calvin asks how paintings from hundreds of
years ago can be in color, MSA tells him they were always in color. We just
couldn’t see it until the 30s.
As
a divorced father, I lacked many of the opportunities MSA had for influencing
Calvin, so I had to cluster them when possible. One weekend, The Sole Heir was
messing with her malfunctioning iPad ear buds. She did a little online research
and learned the issue was probably with the magnets and that any local Apple
Store would swap them out.
She
turned to me as we left for the excursion to ask, “Why do ear buds have
magnets?”
“To
keep them in your ears.”
That
brought her up short. Old enough to know I wasn’t always trustworthy on such
matters, not sufficiently mature to reliably recognize when. “I thought magnets
only held metal together.”
“You
never heard of bone magnets? They keep the earbud close enough to the little
bones in your ear so you can hear, but no so close it clogs up your ear canal.
That’s probably what’s wrong. These are either too strong or too weak.”
That
prompted a look I came to know and love: she knew I was full of crap, but lacked
the ammunition on hand to call me on it and win the argument.
We
were watching baseball that same evening when the standard disclaimer came on:
“Any rebroadcast, reproduction, or other use of the pictures and accounts of
this game without the express written consent of the office of the Commissioner
of Baseball is prohibited.”
She
should have known better after the morning’s earbud episode, but the idealism
of youth was strong in this one. “Hey, Dad. What does the Commissioner of
Baseball do?”
“He
signs all the baseballs.”
A
moment’s thought. “That’s all?”
“Watch
the game. See how many balls they go through. Multiply that by fifteen games a
day. Signing balls is a full-time job.”
I
got That Look twice in one day. Maybe the proudest I ever felt as a parent,
including at her wedding.
1 comment:
I have literally saved a single C&H comic panel, cut from the newspaper and laminated, and that was it. Because the logic is as flawed even though it sounds correct.
Bravo on your parenting.
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