Disquiet, Please!

by David Remnick

  Love,

  Mom(my) and Dad(dy)

  PRE-LAYOFF STEPS

  Many parents fail to prepare adequately for the termination meeting, only to be bombarded with questions, demands, and pleas that they are not ready to respond to. Following is a list of concerns that parents may be called upon to address when meeting with these small and often immature individuals.

  —“Why me, Mommy?” Parents must establish a documented, justifiable reason for the layoff of a child. Eliminating a position (i.e., middle child) as a pretext for replacing one child with another of a different name could result in litigation.

  —“What about my allowance?” The law does not require parents to pay severance to terminated children, but many parents consider it a sound practice. Two weeks’ allowance is the norm for a middle-class family of five.

  —“I’m going to throw up, Daddy!” Most states require parents to provide their laid-off children with some kind of health-insurance plan that will allow them to continue (at their own expense and for a finite period of time) the same medical plan they had while they were family members. Your insurance provider can give you information and forms.

  WHEN, WHERE, AND HOW

  Most experts recommend terminating children first thing in the morning, while they are still groggy. If you are laying off just one child, consider firing him or her off-site, to spare the child additional embarrassment within the family. The mall is an ideal place to lay off a child. If your child cries, stomps, or throws himself or herself on the floor, he or she will most likely blend into the crowd. Before concluding the meeting, arrange a time when the child can come home and clean out his or her room.

  When letting a child go, a face-to-face meeting is recommended so that the parent can celebrate the youngster as a unique individual and also provide firsthand, personalized information about the layoff process. This information may include notification about last-minute chores required of the child before he or she leaves the premises. Be gentle but firm. Should the child become petulant, settle the matter with a resolute “This is not a discussion.”

  Remember, terminated children aren’t the only ones who have a hard time with layoffs. Siblings whose positions in the family have been spared often feel jittery in the aftermath of a personnel reduction. Use the occasion as an opportunity to cement family loyalty and to encourage forward-looking attitudes. Taking the remaining child or children out for ice cream should do the trick.

  APPENDIX I: SAMPLE NOTIFICATION OF TERMINATION

  Parents can prepare a child for the big news by supplying him or her with a written notice of termination before scheduling a meeting to discuss procedures and complete the paperwork. The following sample letter may be placed by the child’s cereal early in the morning.

  DEAR: (CHILD’S NAME)

  FROM:Your loving parents

  We hereby inform you that we will no longer require your services. As a child who is being laid off, you are afforded certain options with regard to your benefits.

  Reinstatement: If a vacancy occurs within the competitive area in the sibling or pet division, you will be offered reinstatement for a period of one year, provided you behave. If such offer is refused, you will forfeit subsequent reinstatement offers.

  Personal items: If you have at least one year of service, you are entitled to retain your blankie, Teddy bear, and/or other personal items.

  Childhood pets: If you have ten (10) years of creditable family service, you are eligible to take Fluffy.

  2002

  BRUCE MCCALL

  CAMP CORRESPONDENCE

  AN Open Letter to All Camp Idlehands Parents:

  Your support is urged for the proposed merger of Camp Idlehands and Blustery Winds—particularly if you prefer to see your camper return home this Labor Day louse-free. To facilitate the merger, we urge you to withdraw your child from Idlehands now and register him or her at Blustery Winds. Disregard any new communications you may receive from the Camp Idlehands management, which is resisting this sound business offer with a smear campaign against Blustery Winds that is a smoke screen for its own failures. To wit:

  —Wallet production in the Idlehands leather-craft program has fallen by seventy-four percent since last summer.

  —Idlehands management throws Saturday-night Ben & Jerry’s icecream parties for itself, while campers must make do with generic fro-yo.

  —Due to supply inadequacies, Idlehands color wars sow mass confusion by pitting pink team against pink team.

  Summary: It’s high time to call a halt to fleecing and rot. For your young camper’s sake, vote “Yes” to the merger proposition by enrolling your child in Blustery Winds today.

  Attention All Camp Idlehands Parents:

  Don’t be gulled by the sweet talk of a takeover gang that wants to crush the vibrant Camp Idlehands spirit and replace our beloved campfire song with “I’m a Toys R Us Kid.” Keep your camper at Idlehands!

  Fact: Blustery Winds’ ballyhooed “Homeward Bound Self-Reliance Program” is a transparent cover for the fact that the camp bus has been sold.

  Fact: Numerous Blustery Winds campers report seeing desserts in the mess hall move.

  Bulletin: As a special inducement to ward off this unsolicited takeover grab, Camp Idlehands is offering a ten-percent refund of camper fees to all parents whose children stay the full session.

  Emergency Notice to All Camp Idlehands Parents:

  Don’t be bribed. Blustery Winds is more determined than ever to rescue Camp Idlehands from the neglect and ineptitude that led to:

  —Widespread camper rioting after the fifth consecutive screening of The Parent Trap on Movie Nite.

  —A “don’t ask, don’t tell” bed-wetting policy.

  —Recruitment of local tots as stand-ins on Parents’ Day to mask Idlehands’ slumping enrollment.

  Blustery Winds is countering Camp Idlehands’ desperate fee-refund offer with its own goodwill gesture: a FREE sixty-second long-distance call home to every Idlehands camper who transfers to Blustery Winds in the next twenty-four hours.

  Say “Yes” to the Blustery Winds merger proposal. The camper you save may be your own!

  Camp Idlehands Parents:

  Don’t be hornswoggled! Did you know that the Blustery Winds spoilers, if they succeed in grabbing Camp Idlehands, will license the tuck shop to 7-Eleven, Inc.? That Blustery Winds’ glassblowing instructor suffers from chronic hiccups?

  If you value a quality camping experience for your child, keep Idlehands free and independent. Vote “No” to the cynical takeover scheme. Keep him or her at Idlehands—where, in addition to your ten-percent fee refund, you will receive a complimentary live guinea pig as a take-home pet for your child.

  Urgent Notice to Camp Idlehands Parents:

  You should know that Blustery Winds—while contesting Idlehands management’s outrageous “Golden Bedroll” provision—has lowered its fees by fifteen percent for all Idlehands campers who transfer to Blustery Winds by midnight today. Vote “Yes” to the fair and reasonable Blustery Winds merger offer, and give your camper the extra gift of drinking privileges for the rest of his or her stay. Transfer your camper to Blustery Winds today!

  Camp Idlehands and Blustery Winds—Partners in Progress:

  Camp Idlehands and Blustery Winds managements join in strongly recommending that you vote “Yes” to the proposal just accepted from PineTar Woods, a leisure subsidiary of FloPezCo, and transfer your camper immediately to PineTar Woods. Buses are waiting. We believe that the vision and energy of PineTar Woods management, combined with its parent company’s solid record of strict financial controls with an almost “human touch” in industries as varied as waste management and ore mining, heralds a new dawn in the fast-growing preadolescent and adolescent rural seasonal-recreation segment.

  Watch for exciting news of PineTar Woods’ future plans for the former Camp Idlehands and Blustery Winds facilities.

  Meanwhile, all campers must be evacuated from these
sites by twelve noon tomorrow. Stragglers will be prosecuted.

  2005

  CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY

  COLLEGE ESSAY

  … your entrance essay must not only demonstrate your grasp of grammar and ability to write lucid, structured prose, but also paint a vivid picture of your personality and character, one that compels a busy admissions officer to accept you. —Online college-application editing service

  IT was a seventeenth-century Englishperson John Donne who wrote, “No man is an island.” An excellent statement, but it is also true that “No woman is also an island.”

  The truth of this was brought home dramatically on September 11, 2001. Despite the fact that I was only twelve at the time, the images of that day will not soon ever be forgotten. Not by me, certainly. Though technically not a New Yorker (since I inhabit northwestern Wisconsin), I felt, as Donne would put it, “Part of the main,” as I watched those buildings come down. Coincidentally, this was also the day my young sibling came down with a skin ailment that the doctors have not yet been able to determine what it is. It’s not like his skin condition was a direct result of the terrorist attack, but it probably didn’t help.

  I have a personal connection to the events of that day, for some years ago my uncle by marriage’s brother worked in one of the towers. He wasn’t working there on 9/11, but the fact that he had been in the building only years before brought the tragedy home to Muskelunge Township.

  It is for this reason that I have resolved to devote my life to bringing about harmony among the nations of the world, especially in those nations who appear to dislike us enough to fly planes into our skyscrapers. With better understanding comes, I believe, the desire not to fly planes into each other’s skyscrapers.

  Also, I would like to work toward finding a cure for mysterious skin ailments. Candidly, I do not know at this point if I would be a pre-med, which indeed would be a good way to begin finding the cure. But I also feel that I could contribute vitally to society even if I were a liberal-arts major, for instance majoring in writing for television.

  Many people in the world community, indeed probably most, watch television. Therefore I feel that by writing for TV I could reach them through that powerful medium, and bring to them a higher awareness of such problems as Global Warming, Avian Flu, earthquakes in places like Pakistan, and the tsumani. Also the situation in the White House with respect to Mr. Scooter Liddy. To be precise, I believe that television could play a key role in warning people living on shorelines that they are about to be hit by one humongous wave. While it is true that in northwest Wisconsin we don’t have this particular problem, it is also true that I think about it on behalf of people who do. No man is an island. To be sure.

  Another element in my desire to devote my life to service to humanity was my parents’ divorce. Because I believe that this is valuable preparation for college and, beyond, life. At college, for instance, one is liable to find yourself living in a situation in which people don’t get along, especially in bathrooms. Bathrooms are in that sense a microcosm of the macrocosm. Bathrooms also can be a truly dramatic crucible, as the playright Arthur Miller has demonstrated in his dramaturgical magnum opus by that title.

  I am not one to say, “Omigod, like poor me,” despite the fact that my dad would on numerable occasions drink an entire bottle of raspberry cordial and try to run Mamma over with the combine harvester. That is “Stinkin’ Thinkin’.” As the Danish composer Frederick Nietzche declared, “That which does not kill me makes me longer.” This was certainly true of Mamma, especially after being run over.

  Finally, what do I bring to the college experience? As President Kennedy observed in his second inaugural, “Ask not what your country can do to you. Ask, what can you do to your country.”

  I would bring two things, primarily. First, a positive attitude, despite all this crap I have had to deal with. Secondly, full tuition payment.

  While Dad pretty much wiped out the money in the process of running over Mamma—she was in the house at the time—my grandparents say they can pay for my education, and even throw in a little “walking-around money” for the hardworking folks in the admissions department. Grandma says she will give up her heart and arthritis medications, and Grandpa says he will go back to work at the uranium mine in Utah despite the facts that he is eighty-two and legally blind.

  In this way, the college won’t have to give me scholarship money that could go to some even more disadvantaged applicant, assuming there is one.

  2005

  PAUL RUDNICK

  INAPPROPRIATE

  ACHILDREN’S book that included the word “scrotum” was recently the subject of great controversy in school libraries nationwide. A Google search has discovered several more questionable titles and excerpts from other works intended for readers twelve and under.

  THE PRETTY LITTLE BUNNY

  Melissa, the pretty little bunny, woke up one morning in May and said, “I think I’ll hop-hop-hop over to the carrot patch. I’m so pretty that all of the carrots will jump right out of the ground to see me.”

  “You are very pretty,” said Melissa’s Bunny Mommy. “But your sister is pretty, too, and she doesn’t spend all of her time looking at herself in the mirror.”

  “But is she as pretty as me?” asked Melissa. “Just look at my vagina.”

  THE CLATTERY CABOOSE

  Carl the Caboose had worked for the railroad for a long time. He loved it when little children ran alongside the tracks and waved to him. But Carl was getting older. His bright-red paint was peeling, his wheels were getting squeaky, and don’t even ask about his prostate.

  WHERE’S WALDO’S HAND?

  THE LONELY LITTLE MOONBEAM

  The lonely little moonbeam would sleep all day, and then wake up and shine all night long, to guide people on their way. But he was lonely, because people never looked up and smiled at him. They were too busy performing fellatio.

  ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET,

  AND I NEED IT BAD

  CORNELIUS THIMBLETUCK AND THE WIZARD OF TREWE

  Every night, Cornelius would pray that his parents would rescue him from the Smudgebury Orphanatorium, and every morning he’d awaken on his hard, wooden cot. And so before eating his meager ration of watery gruel he would masturbate until his palm bled.

  OH, THE PEOPLE YOU’LL DO

  THE LION PRINCESS

  Tarandiria, the beautiful lion princess, was strolling through the tall grass one day with her mother, Queen Malafala. Tarandiria said, “Mother lioness, whenever I see that handsome leopard over there I get a strange, tingling feeling.”

  “Where do you get this feeling, my child?” asked the Queen.

  Tarandiria told her, “In my hyena.”

  BETSY BARSTOW, COLONIAL GIRL

  One fine morning, as Betsy went to the village well in the Olde Massachusetts Baye colony, she ran into her best friend, feisty Katey Karmody.

  “Oh, Katey,” said Betsy, “I have such news! My father and my brothers are joining up with the militia to fight the British, so that we may all be free!”

  “Oh, Betsy, that is news!” cried Katey. “My nipples are like muskets!”

  THE BIG FLOPPY PENIS

  THE LITTLE MERMAID AT SEA

  As Ariel cavorted through the waves and foam, she thought to herself, How I love the sea and all its friendly creatures. How I love capering and leaping from cove to lagoon. How I love to be at one with the grand undersea kingdom, but I think I have crabs.

  A MODERN CHILD’S GARDEN OF VERSES

  Smart Susie O’Malley just loved her computer,

  She didn’t need pencils or books or a tutor.

  Chad had a laptop, a Mac, and a modem,

  He Web-cammed smart Susie a shot of his scrodem.

  2007

  SIMON RICH

  THE WISDOM OF CHILDREN

  I. A CONVERSATION AT THE GROWNUP TABLE, AS IMAGINED AT THE KIDS’ TABLE

  MOM: Pass the wine, please. I want t
o become crazy.

  DAD: Okay.

  GRANDMOTHER: Did you see the politics? It made me angry.

  DAD: Me, too. When it was over, I had sex.

  UNCLE: I’m having sex right now.

  DAD: We all are.

  MOM: Let’s talk about which kid I like the best.

  DAD: (laughing) You know, but you won’t tell.

  MOM: If they ask me again, I might tell.

  FRIEND FROM WORK: Hey, guess what! My voice is pretty loud!

  DAD: (laughing) There are actual monsters in the world, but when my kids ask I pretend like there aren’t.

  MOM: I’m angry! I’m angry all of a sudden!

  DAD: I’m angry, too! We’re angry at each other!

  MOM: Now everything is fine.

  DAD: We just saw the PG-13 movie. It was so good.

  MOM: There was a big sex.

  FRIEND FROM WORK: I am the loudest! I am the loudest! (Everybody laughs.)

  MOM: I had a lot of wine, and now I’m crazy!

  GRANDFATHER: Hey, do you guys know what God looks like?

  ALL: Yes.

  GRANDFATHER: Don’t tell the kids.

  II. A DAY AT UNICEF HEADQUARTERS, AS I IMAGINED IT IN THIRD GRADE

  (UNICEF sits on a throne. He is wearing a cape and holding a scepter. A servant enters, on his knees.)