2007/06/27 15:07
Three
My earliest complete memory is of pounding on the door of the toddler room at my day care, screaming myself hoarse.
I'd turned three years old not much earlier, and was supposed to be moved up to a higher age play group. However, it was the day care's policy to keep those children who could not reliably reach the potty in the nursery, and I was too preoccupied with all the fun I could having to get to the toilet in time. So my pants stayed wet, and I got locked in with the babies.
Later I came to find out that this policy was born of general laziness on the part of the day-care owners. They could hire people more quickly and for less money if said employees could be assured of not having to deal with diapers. In fact, a lot of those yard teachers didn't deal with very much at all -- their oversight largely amounted to sitting in front of the TV and waiting for a kid to hurt someone before moving, which eventually led me to adopt scare quotes when referring to my day "care" center.
The lack of supervision wasn't a total loss, however. Thanks to this inaction, I learned a lot about bullies. Big surprise -- peeing your pants makes you a target for derision. It doesn't help when you have a temper shorter than your average Chinese acrobat, because then schoolyard sociopaths can goad you into launching an ill-aimed kick, allowing them to later employ the "he hit me first" defense and dodge culpability for leaving their Keds up your ass.
To this day, my mom feels bad about leaving us in that cesspool for as long as she did. Choices were slim, though -- my grandmother was very sick, and everybody else she knew either worked or would have charged her more than she could afford. And it's not as though she didn't check them out beforehand; the caliber of care just fell a long way during the eight years my brother and I attended.
At the start of middle school, my mom deemed me mature enough to carry a key and ride the bus. Mike lasted another seven or eight months, until whoever was driving the pick-up van (which had been arriving later and later) flat-out forgot to go to his school. At that point, we all knew that I would do a better job of looking after my brother after school.
And this is why I'm a stay-at-home dad.
I'd turned three years old not much earlier, and was supposed to be moved up to a higher age play group. However, it was the day care's policy to keep those children who could not reliably reach the potty in the nursery, and I was too preoccupied with all the fun I could having to get to the toilet in time. So my pants stayed wet, and I got locked in with the babies.
Later I came to find out that this policy was born of general laziness on the part of the day-care owners. They could hire people more quickly and for less money if said employees could be assured of not having to deal with diapers. In fact, a lot of those yard teachers didn't deal with very much at all -- their oversight largely amounted to sitting in front of the TV and waiting for a kid to hurt someone before moving, which eventually led me to adopt scare quotes when referring to my day "care" center.
The lack of supervision wasn't a total loss, however. Thanks to this inaction, I learned a lot about bullies. Big surprise -- peeing your pants makes you a target for derision. It doesn't help when you have a temper shorter than your average Chinese acrobat, because then schoolyard sociopaths can goad you into launching an ill-aimed kick, allowing them to later employ the "he hit me first" defense and dodge culpability for leaving their Keds up your ass.
To this day, my mom feels bad about leaving us in that cesspool for as long as she did. Choices were slim, though -- my grandmother was very sick, and everybody else she knew either worked or would have charged her more than she could afford. And it's not as though she didn't check them out beforehand; the caliber of care just fell a long way during the eight years my brother and I attended.
At the start of middle school, my mom deemed me mature enough to carry a key and ride the bus. Mike lasted another seven or eight months, until whoever was driving the pick-up van (which had been arriving later and later) flat-out forgot to go to his school. At that point, we all knew that I would do a better job of looking after my brother after school.
And this is why I'm a stay-at-home dad.
