After having experienced life with a toddler for going on two years now, it’s difficult to remember exactly what my life was like before Trey came toddling into it. It was more serene, I suppose – but only in the sense that it was more boring. It’s not as if during the BT days (Before Trey), I oft sat in solitary seclusion, reflecting upon life’s mysteries from the banks of a quiescent lake with water of such majestic tranquility as to inspire splendiferous poetry in the hearts and minds of even the most hardened and jaded of thick-thinking brutes. No, mostly things were just boring. As the hideous and lunatic days of my first marriage came to a bitter and prolonged close, I was left suddenly adrift in uncharted waters, rudderless and alone. Days slipped by with a droning predictability that numbed my senses to anything that might have been truly extraordinary, and I simply settled into the mundane routine of a daily life that was hardly worth living at all. Sure, it was a life occasionally punctuated by points of interest, usually by girl-shaped things in the dark who were gone by the next day’s light, but by and large there was nothing of permanence or purpose or meaning. There were just days. Days, days, and more days, all stretched out before me like an impassable ocean of boredom from which there was no hope of escape. My future did not look bright.
Then, I met Brittany. She was a difficult girl, full of obstinate pride and intolerable self-awareness that challenged me on every level and generally frustrated me in every way imaginable. She would say no when others girls would say yes, and yes when they would say no. She was at once both defiant and docile, a bubbling mixture of yin and yang constantly swirling behind her silent movie eyes, never hinting at her true intentions. It wasn’t until I was completely under her spell that I finally realized what it was about her that held me in such a neutered state of complete rapture: she was Interesting. In many ways a paradox as only the best of women are, she contradicted my expectations and showed me that there was still hope for finding wonder in a world long since over-explored and dutifully charted. My future suddenly had a sunrise.
Then, I met Trey. He was just turning two at the time and barely communicating beyond the hyper-accented sounds of babyspeak, but he didn’t need words to sneak into my heart like an adorable assassin to kill my inner ego and entwine his soul with my own. No, for that all he needed was his mother’s eyes and his own personality to draw me completely under his thrall. From the first time I met him through tucking him into bed last night, I have become completely his. And his mother’s. My life, it seems, has become tertiary to theirs – and I couldn’t be happier about the situation.
However, being at the mercurial whims of a toddler brings with it the omnipresent feeling that you are no longer in control of your own life, but that it is instead being ruled by the bizarre and questionable logic of a child’s still-forming mind. Take, for example, Trey’s general approach to structuring an argument. He pushes his points back onto themselves in a fit of circular reasoning intended, I suspect, to wear down his opposition through simple attrition. Eventually, to maintain sanity and escape the endlessly repeating loop, it’s often easier to just surrender and get things moving again. If Trey were to write out his argument style as a simple computer program, it would probably look a little something like this:
10 PRINT “Don’t do that, Trey.”
20 PRINT “But I want to do it.”
30 PRINT “We know, but you can’t.”
40 PRINT “But I have to do it.”
50 PRINT “No, you don’t.”
60 PRINT “Yes, I do.”
70 PRINT “No, you don’t.”
80 PRINT “Yes, I do.”
90 GOTO 50
Normally, this sort of persuasive tactic has little effect on either Brittany or myself, so Trey will eventually change tactics and employee a more subtle means of manipulation. And by that, I mean he will give up on trying to persuade Mama and instead set his gaze solely upon me. I’m an easier target. He can smell my vulnerability like a lion senses a wounded gazelle, so he pounces quickly and he comes down hard. Usually, it involves CrumpleFace, wherein the entire structure of his visage collapses in on itself before bursting back out again in a shower of fat, splashy tears. It’s not a whining sort of crying and it’s far from a temper tantrum. Instead, it’s more of a hopeless and crushed sort of devastated crying, as if not allowing him to play his Mario game has suddenly stripped his life of all meaning. It’s bitter and horrible and I can’t stand watching it…but I also can’t stand hearing his Nintendo DS blooping incessantly at all hours of the day and night. The line has to be drawn somewhere!
So, we draw it. And he crosses it. Then, we draw it again. And he crosses it again. Each time, we struggle to redraw the boundaries in our favor, even as he toils to push them further towards his own goals. I’d say it’s a give-and-take sort of affair, except that it mostly involves Trey winning and the parents losing. As tensions rise and neither Trey nor Brittany are willing to surrender any additional ground, I invariably step in to play the role of Neville Chamberlain and start the appeasement process. For instance, I may offer to surrender twenty minutes of Nintendo time in exchange for a simple thirty seconds of Trey’s life spent trying to use the blasted potty, since he has both an aversion to going tee-tee and an incomprehensible affinity for storing urine. Seriously, the boy is like a camel storing water for a long trek across a hostile desert, only nothing Trey produces comes anywhere close to being potable. Rather, he is capable of holding his water for such prolonged periods of time, that when his bladder finally demands release, what comes out has had time to, let’s say…ferment. It’s powerful stuff, kids.
We try all sorts of things to get him to spend a few seconds on the toilet, but very little works. For a time, we had brief success by convincing him that tee-tee is a strange and sneaky force that wants to hide away from the world by sequestering itself inside of Trey’s tummy. “The tee-tees was hiding!” he’d shriek as he giggled and the pee would erupt against the toilet’s white porcelain like an angry volcano’s lava onto a village of unsuspecting nonbelievers. But it didn’t last. He soon caught on to our little deception and saw through our clever ruse. Whenever we try the tactic now, he simply puts on his AstonishedFace and begins assaulting us with Toddler Logic. “There’s is no tee-tees hiding anymore, because I say there’s is no tee-tees in dere,” he says. When we try to persuade him that the tee-tee is just being extra sneaky, we’re likely to get a response somewhere along the lines of, “No, tee-tees isn’t sneaky. Tee-tees is just tee-tees. Dat’s crazy!” Winning, at this point, is impossible.
Our only options once we’ve reached the impasse of his unassailable logic include either forcing the issue and ending the whole thing in tears, or letting him have his way and hold it until his bladder bursts and urine comes shooting out of his ears. Needless to say, we usually go for option one and endure the crying until it’s over – which is actually fairly quickly. Once Trey is on the potty and actually urinating, he realizes that he did, in fact, “have tee-tees in dere” and suddenly changes his tune. He admits no fault, naturally, but he stops crying. If anything, he gets embarrassed that he was wrong and will suddenly interrupt all conversation by holding up his hands and shouting, “Don’t tell me!” I don’t know why he says this, but it’s his general catch-all phrase when he’s chagrined. What can I say? He’s three.
Yesterday was Brittany’s twenty-seventh birthday, although upon seeing her new haircut for the first time the other day, my attorney proclaimed that she looks ten years younger. I guess this makes her barely seventeen to the outside world, which put me in an awkward position of feeling like I should register myself in some sort of governmental database overseen by Chris Hansen and the staff of Dateline. I don’t believe she looks like a teenager, but I sometimes wonder what other people think when we’re out and about and wandering amongst the people of the world. Am I seen as the dirty old man who’s leading an impressionable young girl down the garden path towards my own nefarious ends, or do I look young enough myself to balance things out? I’m not sure, but I do know that once we throw Trey into the mix, the sight of the three of us walking hand-in-hand is likely to confuse a lot of people. The good news is that I don’t care.
We didn’t do much for her birthday, what with it falling on a weekday and all. I presented her with breakfast in bed and we went to dinner later in the evening, although we were limited by a toddler’s palate for our choice of cuisine, which ultimately turned out to be pizza and ice cream. It was a fun little evening, but nothing special. Nothing any more special, of course, than any one of the other hundreds of days that have gone by since Brittany and Trey came into my life, or any of the thousands of days left to come – which is to say that they have all been special. I guess that’s just what happens when you let a little magic come creeping into your life, whether it looks like a beautiful woman or jumps around like a hyper toddler on a sugar binge – everything just shimmers. Glows, even. Everything is shiny!
Want some books? 'Course ya do!
NOTE:I know times are hard and yeah, I need to make a living too, but if you want to read any of my books but can't afford to buy them right now, hit me up.
I'll take care of it.
Humor | Nonfiction Available now from the following retailers
Have you ever lived through an experience that was so humiliating that you wanted to die, but when you tell it to all your friends, they can't stop laughing?
Have you ever made a decision that seemed like a good idea at the time, but you're still living with the hilarious consequences years later?
If so, then grab a snack, get comfortable, and prepare to have all of your own poor life choices seem just a little bit more bearable.
You're welcome.
Short Stories Available now from the following retailers
The nine stories of rage and sadness collected here range from the most intimate of human experiences to the wildest realms of magic and fantasy. The first story is a violent gut-punch to the soul, and the rest of them just hit harder from there.
Those who tough it out will find a book filled with as much hope as despair, a constant contradiction pulling you from one extreme to another.
Life might knock us down, over and over, and will the beat the ever-loving snot out of us from the time we're old enough to give it attitude until the day we finally let it win and stop getting up.
Always get back up.
Gaming | Nonfiction Available now from the following retailers
This isn't just a book. It's a portal to other worlds where there be magic and dragons and hilarious pirates. Okay, not really. But this book is about those portals, except they're called video games.
The Life Bytes series of books take a deep dive into one man's personal journey through childhood into kinda/sorta being a responsible, competent adult as told through the magical lens of whatever video games he was playing at the time.
Part One starts way back in 1975 and meanders down various digital pathways until, oh, around about 1993 or so.
If you're feeling nostalgic for the early days of gaming or if you just want to understand why the gamer in your life loves this hobby so much, take a seat in your favorite comfy chair and crack this bad boy open.
I'll try to not be boring.
Horror Available now from the following retailers
What you are about to read is not a story. There is no beginning, middle, or end.
What follows is nothing more than a series of journal entries involving shadow people, sleep paralysis, and crippling fear. It’s not pretty, it doesn’t follow story logic, and nothing works out well in the end.
The views and opinions expressed on this website, COQUETTING TARRADIDDLES, constitute a work of creative nonfiction, should not be interpreted as factual, and are solely of the individual author of this website, KRISTIAN BLAND, and are not the views of any other individual or organization, or of any individual or organization otherwise affiliated with the author unless explicitly stated within the content of the website.
Publishing Schedule
Coquetting Tarradiddles publishes new essays Whenever I Damn Well Feel Like It, except where prohibited by law.*
*Prices and participation may vary. Always consult a physician before beginning a new reading regimen. Individual results are not guaranteed. If you are pregnant or may become pregnant, do not handle past participles or wayward adverbs. Side effects may include an increase in intelligence followed by overwhelming waves of anger, frustration and rage, irritable bowels and/or various effronteries to good taste and decent folk everywhere. Ask your doctor if Coquetting Tarradiddles is right for you!
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