Survival of the Freshest

My kids were bad today.

The kind of bad that makes you start scanning want ads for job openings and considering an illustrious new career as a sanitation specialist—knowing you have all the experience it unfortunately requires. The kind of bad that makes you consider running out for cigarettes and never coming back even though you don’t smoke. The kind of bad that makes crazy people look like good parents making necessary decisions.

And when kids are this bad, there is little that you can really do about it. If you try to talk rationally, they counter with high-pitched irrationality. If you whisper, they scream. If scream, they implode. If you ignore them, they stalk you. If you turn on the tv, they fight over where to sit and how to adjust the volume—and let’s not even mention the heated debate on the choice of program. If you feed them, they spit their food. With every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction—just as the universe planned it, well before these tiny demons were a devil’s tail on my behind.

When I am faced with a day like today, I don’t want to answer the phone, the door, the email, all I want to do is build a fire in the yard and send a smoke signals to the ghost of the parents who have come before me. And ask them “Why?”

Why didn’t you warn me? Why would you let me walk down a path that leads to such misery? Why put up with this insanity and allow someone else to do the same? Why let the cycle continue and the mayhem prevail?

Is the survival of the species really worth it?

I have recently come to understand that the champion version of early man who outlived all the others is the Homo Sapien. He accomplished this incredible feat through the gift of communication. He prevailed where the others failed because he learned to talk and to work together and to share information and build a culture.

It is a curious victory from my perspective.

Because today, I would say that the entire success of the species, in particular my two very naughty offspring, lies squarely on a complete and utter ignorance. A total lack of communication, or perhaps a brilliant omission—but anyway these little ankle-biters exist in no thanks to our ancestor’s verbal prowess. It is not an abundance of information, which made me do it. It is safe to say, that nobody told me there’d be days like these.

No, they exist because I had no bloody idea what I was getting into. And they continue to survive because as rotten as they are, I can’t imagine a world without them.