They’re tough and they’re proud. They make mistakes and they have faults. But all the best things I know about being a man are things I’ve learned from them. And they became different men when you arrived.
Better men.
We all did.
We interrupt this broadcast to send a short message to your mother.
Yes, it’s possible that I should have paid more attention to the fact that we’ve started giving the baby real food now. And yes, I can agree that maybe I didn’t listen as closely as I should have when you explained the exact circumstances around that.
But I don’t care what you say. Because if I see ten small plastic Tupperware containers of homemade mashed potatoes in the fridge, I’m going to eat those mashed potatoes. Because it’s my duty. Because evolution demands it. And, most of all, because I love mashed potatoes.
How was I meant to know they were for the BABY? A few months ago, we counted takeaway pizza as “basically homemade supper,” and now you’re standing here, making your own baby food? Who are you? Mary Poppins?
Stop giving me the silent treatment and open the door! It’s really cold out here!
The art of not letting your pride get in the way of a good result
During the time your mother was pregnant and was not supposed to climb ladders
GOOD FRIEND: I see Fredrik fixed the light in the bathroom!
YOUR MOTHER: Yeah… actually, it wasn’t Fredrik. It was my dad.
GOOD FRIEND: Oh. Right.
ME: Stop looking like that. I… you know… I had a lot of other things to do!
GOOD FRIEND: (Clearing throat) Of course. Of course. I actually think it’s quite big of you to let your father-in-law come over and fix things.
(Awkward silence)
ME: What do you mean by that?
GOOD FRIEND: No, it’s just, you know… most men probably wouldn’t be able to admit that they can’t fix a light by themselves, you know? They probably wouldn’t be able to swallow their pride and call their father-in-law for help. Most men probably would’ve seen that as a threat to their masculinity…
ME: What’s THAT supposed to mean?
GOOD FRIEND: I’m just saying.
YOUR MOTHER: Actually, you’d be surprised by how few things threaten Fredrik’s masculinity after he’s been going to the toilet in the dark for three days.
It’ll be wrong no matter what you do. That’s how it feels.
You know when I’ve just wheeled the stroller into the elevator and realize I’ve forgotten something in the apartment? And then I quickly run back in to grab it. And while I’m in there, I think: “Crap, hang on a second, did I have time to press the button?” And right then, I hear the lift doors close in the stairwell. And I realize that, damn it, you and the stroller just went downstairs on your own.
So I run down the stairs, panicking slightly but also thinking that “Ah, it’ll be fine, I must be quicker than the elevator.” But just as I make it down, one of the neighbors presses the button on their floor. So the doors close right before my eyes, and the elevator goes upward again.
And I’m left standing there.
And I realize that I now have two choices: I can either run up the stairs. And risk being the father who manages not just to leave his child alone in the elevator, but who also doesn’t manage to make it upstairs before the neighbors step into the elevator and come down to the ground floor, realize there’s no one there, and call social services.
Or else I can stay here and wait. And be the father who not only leaves his child alone in the elevator, but also then stands around nonchalantly thinking, “Uff, he’ll probably be back…”
You know when that happens?
Could you try not to look quite so smug when the neighbors find you?
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT GOD AND AIRPORTS
So. This is an airport. This is where the planes live. And this is the conveyor belt for the luggage. Pretty cool, huh? I know. We use this so we don’t have to go and get our bags from the plane ourselves. We just chill right here, and the bags come to us. Like we’re Harry Potter.
And sure, I know you might be wondering why we’re here and why I’m telling you this.
(But seriously, the bags come to us! It’s like a bag treadmill. Back when I was a child, that sort of technology was considered so mind-blowing it was the highlight of the whole frikkin’ family vacation, but you just go ahead and roll your eyes at your father now, that’s just fine—we didn’t have iPads and crap like that back then, so sure, don’t let me bore you with any other REVOLUTIONARY ADVANCES for the whole of HUMANITY!)
But… here’s what I’m thinking: I am your father, after all. And I reckon the whole point of fatherhood is to explain to you how the world works. Right? Right. And I’m thinking that one of those typical questions all children wonder about sooner or later is: “Why are there wars?” Right? Right. All kids want peace on Earth. Most adults do too, I suppose. That’s where this gets complicated.
And I’m thinking that if you ask “Why are there wars?” of ten randomly chosen people, at least half of them will say something like “Well, y’know, all wars are basically about reliiigion. Like, everyone knows that!”
So I’m thinking, as we’re standing here talking about wars, that maybe I should tell you a little something about God too.
And yes, I realize you might think that the luggage conveyor belt in the airport is a strange place for a conversation about God. But I want you to pay attention to the yellow line in the floor. The one where it says PLEASE STAND BEHIND THE YELLOW LINE. I genuinely never feel more spiritual than when I see that line.
So: I will never tell you whether you should be religious or not. Or even if you should believe in God. That’s a thing between God and you, or not. As long as you are kind to your mother and don’t murder or steal or start supporting Manchester City or any other horrible thing like that, I genuinely don’t care whether your moral compass is shaped by an old book or a box of jam doughnuts. But if I’m going to try to explain to you how I feel the world works here, it would be more than a bit odd to leave out the topic of religion.
See, God is incredibly important to people. Particularly to the people who don’t actually believe in God. In my experience, no one wants to talk to you as much about God as the people who claim they absolutely DO NOT want to talk to you about God. And sooner or later, one of them will stare at you and ask, “But if God EXISTS, then why are there WARS?” If you study religion or philosophy at a university, this is called the “Theodicy Problem” or the “Problem of Evil,” but if you’re in a bar, it will probably be called the “got-you-there-am-I-right-or-am-I-right-huh?” argument.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Like… a lot. So much so that I spent four years and a small fortune in student loans at a pretty decent university studying religion and philosophy trying to find an answer to it. And here’s what I came back with:
God created people. All right? Even if you don’t believe in God, just assume that God created people. All right. And then the people created a bunch of stuff. Mostly the stuff was crap. And God was all like “Wait, what are you doing with all that crap?” and the people immediately got all defensive like “What? Nothing! It’s our stuff! Why do you care?” and God was trying to be diplomatic and pointed and said “All right, but… where are you going with that thing? It doesn’t look safe” and the people rolled their eyes and said “We’re going OUT! Who are you? The cops?” and God was all “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to… but are you really… that doesn’t look like such a good idea” and the people were all “Stop being so overprotective, we’re not CHILDREN! You created us, like, FIFTEEN minutes ago!” and God was all “Fine, fine, all right, all right.” And then the people took all their stuff, mostly crap, out into the world. And the world… well… a lot of bad stuff happened to it, to be honest. And then God mumbled “Told you” but did the people then stop and say “Ooops, our bad”? No. The people immediately turned to God a
nd looked incredibly upset and cried “Why didn’t you stop us! You could’ve stopped us? Now this is YOUR fault!”
Get it? Because that’s our nature, us humans.
God, if you believe in God, was still pretty cool, you know? Dug out irrigation ditches and created gardens and came up with a way of keeping steaks and pork chops fresh longer by giving them legs and calling them “animals.” (Best. Idea. Ever.) And then God turned on all the lights and said “Here’s light, here’s a world, just for you!” And the people yawned nonchalantly, wriggled into swimsuits and got themselves tribal tattoos, and toddled off to check things out. And at first, maybe things went pretty well. But after a while, the people discovered that God, like most contractors, hadn’t made everything EXACTLY the way the people wanted everything. Because people like everything a CERTAIN way and “God, like, never listens, ’cause, for example, like, I’ve never liked the color ‘sky blue’ and now the whole sky is, like, sky blue and how am I supposed to, like… live with that? Huh?” And then, of course, the people just assumed they could have done all this world-creating stuff much better themselves. And so they started to tinker with God’s creation.
And God looked at them, mumbling “Please don’t pull that… it’s not supposed to…” but the people just said “Talk to the hand!” and did a really annoying thing with their hands. And at that point, God just massaged God’s temples and took a really, really, really long walk.
While God was gone, people decided they wanted more stuff. Sure, they already had loads of stuff, but you know, by then all that stuff had turned to crap. So the people decided to get rid of all that. At first, it was a painfully slow process, but then a woman (or a man, it could have been a man) of the people discovered fire. And that worked awesomely, of course. Fire became the hottest thing around. It actually got so popular that the people, once they’d set fire to all of their own crap, decided to take fire out on tour to set fire to other people’s crap too. It got rave reviews. Several people called fire “the best thing to come out of banging two rocks together since gravel!” But since the fire was a bit tricky to move around, people had to come up with a better method of transport. So a woman (or a man! Let’s not just assume it was a woman, once in a while men find things out on their own too!) of the people invented the wheel.
Immediately, though, the rest of the people were of course really skeptical, and started asking “Sure, so you’ve invented the wheel, have you? But how are you going to structure a business model around it? Is it scalable? Could it be a franchise? What’s your plan here?” But then another person turned up, with a beard and a turtleneck (the shirt, not just that piece of the turtle, which would have been weird, because this is by all accounts an unweird story), painted the wheel white, and started to sell it for double the price to art directors in Stockholm. And everyone screamed “GENIUS!” to the turtleneck. And the guy who invented the wheel muttered “Never mind” and went back to his garage.
And so the years passed, and one day a couple of women (or men) were out in the desert, with their wheel and their fire, burying a dead body (because remember, a good friend helps you move, but a great friend helps you move a dead body), and they dug a little too deep, and suddenly the ground began to pee all over them. They had discovered oil.
And that was obviously great. They ran back to the rest of the people and they high-fived one another and someone came running with their fire and was all “Wait! What happens if we combine it with this?” And so they did. And then someone else said “But what happens if we combine it with the wheel?” And so they did that too. And then they looked at it and were all like “Well, what is it?” And then the turtleneck showed up, painted it white, and just started making up words like “combustion” and “engine” and everyone screamed “GENIUS!” And off they went.
This was obviously a phenomenal breakthrough for the whole of humanity. Now people could drive around setting fire to one another’s crap all day, plus they could do it in a line! They had invented rush-hour traffic. (And, completely by chance, they had also discovered the comical concept of “irony” by naming something standing completely frikkin’ still after something moving incredibly fast.)
And the people loved their rush-hour traffic. Oh, how they loved it. They loved it so much that they built small metal boxes to place on top of their wheels and their engines so that they could stay in there all winter. They cut small round holes inside the metal boxes and invented small paper containers that fit perfectly in the holes, and into these containers they poured a black liquid they’d also invented, which had the sole function of making you not need to sleep once you drank it. And that meant they could stay up in the rush-hour traffic all night. Hurrah!
For a few years, of course, this was paradise. People carpe’d the diem like they had never carpe’d it before, let me tell you. Until one of them became a little bit too ambitious and discovered that you could pour foamed milk into the black liquid and call it a “latte,” which obviously made everyone incredibly stressed and agitated, because it was completely impossible to get the cows to sit still inside the metal boxes in rush-hour traffic. And then a few of the people thought “There MUST be a better way to travel than this!”
And so they invented the airplane.
And just then, God came back from his walk. And God looked down at the people and, in all his goodness and Godliness, descended to Earth, where he kneeled down and painted a yellow line a few feet from the luggage conveyor belt. And God said “If everyone stands behind this yellow line, then EVERYONE will be able to see their bags coming.”
But then one of the people (I’m not saying it was a man, it could have been a woman, but let’s be honest, it was Robert from down the street) looked at the yellow line and was all “Nooo! I want to stand cloooooser!” And so Robert crossed the line. And then the rest of the people also crossed the line. And now no one can see their bags coming.
And that’s why we have wars.
Because people are really bloody stupid.
* * *
So I don’t care whether you’re religious or not. I just want you and me to at least agree over the fact that if you can’t put ten people in a room and tell them, “If you cross the yellow line, it will benefit you just a little but ruin things completely for everyone else, but if you stay behind the yellow li— DAMN IT, ROBERT!” well, we’ve probably passed the point where all this stopped being God’s responsibility. Agreed?
I know that in a year or two, you’ll learn how to talk, and after that you’ll pretty quickly enter that phase where, regardless of what I say, you’ll always ask “Why?” Well, I can help you out right now by telling you that in 95 percent of the cases, the answer to “Why?” will be “Because people are really bloody stupid.”
All right? All right.
* * *
So when your mother gets here in a couple of minutes and wonders why we missed our bags twice while they were passing, that’s what we’ll say. We won’t tell her it was because we were playing Minecraft on my phone and lost focus. Agreed? Agreed.
This is not going well. I’m aware.
I’m sure the other dads probably have some kind of neat, pedagogical explanation for this.
Something about the birds and the bees and the stork making a delivery and all that.
But, well, you know. I got tangled up in my own explanation here. I became overly ambitious. I wanted to build a realistic story.
I should have kept it simple.
I know.
But I started the story with “so your dad” and continued it with “or wait, let’s start here instead, you see the storks will…” and… here we are. If you go racing off to preschool now and tell the other kids that your dad did those things to a stork, there’s a real risk that Dad will get arrested. All right?
We need to start over. And just to avoid misunderstandings, I’ll just say it like it is. Okay?
Okay.
I had sex with your mother.
Y
ou’re gonna need a few years to process this.
I’m sorry. I really should have just told you about storks.
I think of you a bit like I think of the T. rex in Jurassic Park.
At five thirty in the morning, when you’re staring at me, I know only one thing.
The tiniest. Little. Movement.
And it’s all over.
This parenthood thing didn’t come with instructions, that’s all I’m saying.
You spit on the napkin.
Then you wipe the child’s face with the napkin. You don’t spit straight onto the child.
My bad.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SINGING PLASTIC GIRAFFE
Well, it means nothing to you now, of course.
But I want you to know that the stuff people remember from their childhood, they really are the strangest of things.
Like 3:45 a.m. on a Tuesday morning in the year of our Lord 2012. Here you are. And me. Again. So why can’t you just act like a normal not-insane person and go back to sleep? Huh? Dad’s a bit tired, you see. Dad hasn’t slept in two years. And now this is starting to feel a bit like going round, round, round in a car with your grandpa, do you understand that?
No, of course you don’t. You don’t get anything at all. But your dad has a headache now, so it would be super nice of you if you could at least use your inside voice if you have to get up and wreak havoc at a time of night not even strippers and drug dealers would consider as reasonable hours.
And yes. Dad can see that you’re looking for the plastic giraffe. Dad knows you love that plastic giraffe. The one that dances all funny when you press a button on its back. And sings and plays “Oh My Darling” at the same time. Incredibly loudly. Every time you accidentally nudge it with your foot. Like fifteen minutes ago, for example, just after Dad got you back to sleep in your bed after a seven-hour miniature Mixed Martial Arts exhibition through the whole damn apartment, and Dad was just about to turn off the light and go back through the living room to Dad’s bedroom. And that bastard was on the floor. And Dad tripped over it. And the music woke you up and you flew out of bed and roared, “RAFFE!!!”
Things My Son Needs to Know about the World Page 5
