Parenting advice for dummies

I was at the grocery store this morning and this nice enough man was shopping for fresh vegetables with a young girl who I presumed to be his daughter when I stopped to watch the following interaction.

The young girl walked over the to banana section, found some blackened and rotting bananas and picked them up and threw them in her fathers basket. He looked at them disapprovingly and said, “honey, I think we might want to find fresher ones than those bananas, those ones don’t look so good.” She frowned at him with such a severe look of disgust I was just a little bit shocked and said, “I want those ones” and continued on to look at apples. He wimpishly kept the rotting bananas and followed on to the apples.

I thought to myself, I really should sit down and offer some parenting advice at some point because I have all these children and I have done such a bang up job at it. I mean, some of my children, the ones not in foster care, jail, Haitian detention camps, Disneyworld slave shop manufacturing operations, Damian Hirst exhibitions and sold into the white slave market (I did that as an act of desperation) the ones who made it with me, they all seem fairly well adjusted and if I were to write anything about parenting, I would focus on those, make that, the one that seems to have survived.

Instead my phone rang. My youngest brother Dirk was calling from Denver. He was married just 6 lovely years ago and he has an 8 year old son named Dirk number 4 who is now playing soccer. No one likes Dirk number four, I certainly don’t, it’s why I refuse to go to Denver, even though I am a big Tim Tebow fan. Dirk called to ask me how I got out of coaching youth soccer.

“Seriously,” I asked incredulously, “this is why you call me for the first time in two weeks?”

“Yeah, Margo is all over me about bonding with Dirk Number Four. She has volunteered me to coach a team. I hate it, these kids, all they do is run around in circles, it would drive me nuts. I can’t do it. I remember when you had the twins, Curly and Larry.”

“Moe and Larry.”

“Right, two of the Barkley brothers.”

“Marx brothers, are you high?”

“Little bit.”

“Continue.”

“How did you bag off the coaching of youth soccer.”

“OK, I will tell you my secret, but you must keep this to yourself, because this is some sort of suburban legend of some sort and you can’t ever tell anyone.”

“Got it.”

“OK, take notes. You will get a call from a bald headed serious man who will have a list, he is the organizer of all youth soccer teams. He is a very serious man and he asks a series of very serious questions. When he calls, find a private place where you can focus. He will ask you if you wish to coach youth soccer, you must answer that there is nothing more important in your life than coaching youth soccer. He will say he is impressed with your desire to help children grow. You should sound like you are dedicated. Then he will ask if you are available for some sort of coach training seminar on Saturday. You ask, this Saturday? He will answer, yes, this Saturday. You will ruffle some papers and say, I think so, yes, this Saturday will work just fine. Then he will say, the teams will be coached after school hours, three days a week, 3-5 PM, can you fit that into your schedule. Now you must pause. Here you must explain about your ankle monitoring device and how you will have to contact the judge to see if it is even all right at this point for you to be around kids anymore. They usually hang up at that point.”

“Perfect. That will do it, yes?”

“ To be honest with you, I have never coached a kids team in my life. Never even went to a game. Can’t imagine what sort of hell that would be like.”

“I’ve been, it’s hell.”

“I’d imagine. Why did you go?”

“Margo, she has that Jewish guilt thing that works on me.”

“I believe I was the brother who warned you about marrying a Jewish woman.”

“No, you told me I should marry a Jewish woman. You demanded it. You talked me out of marrying Asian Fong, remember her? My college hotness? Damn, I bet she is still hot too?”

“Imagine being married to someone named Fong? How stupid would that be? I hate that name. If she were named Patty or Cindy I would have said go for it.”

“It’s not really your call though, is it?”

“Apparently it was, you said you married Margo because I demanded it.”

“You suggested it would be wise.”

“I was right, Jewish women are the best.”

“She is driving me crazy.”

“You didn’t let me finish. Jewish women are the best at driving men crazy. Hello? Hello?”

When did hanging up the phone become the norm and acceptable? Seems to me like every phone call I have lately ends with people hanging up on me.