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EVEN IF WE ARE GOING TO BE OUT LATE, even if I promise circuses and ice cream,
even if is Shabbes afternoon, I can’t get my kids to take naps anymore.
The exception to this problem is my 15-year-old daughter, who doesn’t need to
take an afternoon nap because she hasn’t gotten out of bed yet.
Although I do remember fighting the entire concept of napping when I was a
child, now I welcome any opportunity to catch a little cat nap.
This is only one of the many differences, some obvious and some more
difficult to detect, between adults and children. Yes, we are taller and
better educated; yes, we have money and insurance, and they don’t, but there
is more to it than that.
Most kids are happy to live with a profusion of animals. They are delighted
with dogs, cats, fish, rabbits, snakes, turtles, frogs or lizards. Adults are
usually content to have a single animal, preferably a totally docile goldfish
or maybe a small to medium-sized mammal with some modicum of common sense and
training, and an affectionate disposition. Something no one but my eight-
year-old has ever detected in a turtle.
Kids are happy if all their clothes are piled in a mountain in the corner of
the bedroom. The basic child only wants to wear denim and a favorite T-shirt,
anyway. Generally, when a little boy puts on a suit, coercion is at work.
Adults, on the other hand, prefer a variety of reasonably well-laundered
clothing, neatly arrayed in the closet, please.
Adults do get attached to their possessions, particularly things like diamond
rings, silver Shabbat candlesticks, and good cameras, so they are like
children in that regard. However, the adult’s choice of items is likely to be
understandable (collectors of Barbie or Elvis memorabilia to the contrary not
withstanding).
Children give their whole-hearted affection to objects that do not deserve it
at all. My son, for instance, spent most of yesterday afternoon loving
scrubbing a chunk of old driveway concrete that is etched with the shapes of
blades of grass. He believed this was a fossil find that would be of interest
to the world’s most prestigious museums. In the effort to make the grass lines
show to their best advantage, he used his toothbrush to wash the concrete
chunk with his sister’s nine-dollar-a-bottle organic shampoo, his father’s
blue styling gel, and an entire container of Windex.
Then there is the whole area of food.
Adults like many foods. Children fix on one at a time (this same son has eaten
little except macaroni and cheese since 1995). Adults like dessert after
meals. Children want ice cream for breakfast. Kids care if their potatoes
touch their peas. Adults do not care (and even those who do wouldn’t admit
it). Adults care if food is Kosher, tasty, healthful, pretty, and economical.
Children care if food is fun to play with and comes in bright colors (think
Fruit Loops), often colors adults could not bring themselves to consume (name
a bright blue food you’d actually eat).
There are ways in which I’d like to be more childlike. I’d like to be more
trusting, more imaginative, more spontaneous. But, even so, I would still like
to reserve the use of my toothbrush exclusively for my teeth.
Actually, there are many reasons that being big and having some understanding
of the world is better than being small and bewildered. Toothbrushes and all,
I’ll take adulthood.
This is also a good choice for me, life cycle-wise, since I like balanced
meals, not just mounds of macaroni. So please pass that plateful (and just
leave a little space between the potatoes and the
Jewish World Review Oct. 22 1998 / 3 Mar-Cheshvan, 5759
I’ll take adulthood
By Erica Meyer Rauzin
JWR contributor Erica Meyer Rauzin comments on the
contemporary Jewish condition.
