Amateur Hour

by Kimberly Harrington

  In my own experience, learning what I suck at has been just as important as identifying my strengths. It tells me what I should no longer put energy toward or beat myself up over. And it allows me to channel my focus, talent, and attention on the things that matter. It’s insane to imagine an adult being equally good at acting, singing, football, playing the piano, drawing, baseball, horseback riding, coding, writing jokes, and archery. Yet this is what we’re telling kids every day. You are good—no, great—at everything. Your work here is done.

  There is nothing quite like that edgy and exciting feeling of trying out for something, competing, waiting to see if your name is on the list. The callback, the team, the cast. I have stood on tippy-toes on the outskirts of a huddle of teenagers scanning for my name. I have been elated. I have been crushed. Each experience taught me that the things you want don’t always come easy, and sometimes they don’t come at all. Sometimes it showed me that the things I thought I wanted, I actually didn’t. I wanted them because my friends wanted them or someone else wanted them for me, but I just didn’t have it in me. Or maybe I wanted to be good at this one particular thing but I wasn’t, plain and simple. Instead of beating my head against the twin brick walls of fate and genetics, better to plow my drive and smarts into something I could actually improve in.

  When we deny our kids that sort of process, to figure out their natural gifts, their potential gifts, to let go of the stuff they’re just not good at so they can invest more in the areas where they show true passion and promise, we are denying them the process of growing up. Of being prepared for the world they will be living in, a world where they will get their asses handed to them on a regular basis.

  Nowhere is this clash across generations and the mismatching of expectations more glaringly apparent than in the workplace. And sure, this whole “you damn kids don’t know the meaning of hard work” and “you also don’t know how to deal with criticism, like, at all” complaint isn’t new, but watch me launch into it anyway.

  I’ve stood speechless as interns scoffed at the tasks they’d been given as I simultaneously recalled all the months I spent standing in front of a copier with my pumps off when I was an intern. All of us of a certain age, collectively willing the cycle of professional hazing to continue, can barely contain ourselves from screaming, “You’re an INTERN, JACKASS.” Or junior designers who would expect to be made senior designers after surviving in their jobs for twelve whole months! All by themselves! They weren’t born with those expectations; those expectations were nurtured. They went through elementary school, middle school, high school, and college being told they were excellent, talented, and without a single flaw. That they deserved things—promotions, raises, accolades—simply for showing up.

  “What’s wrong with kids these days?” looks a lot like how we’re raising kids right now. With the golden light of perfection, always shining down upon them. We don’t want them to be sad or frustrated, because that makes us feel bad. It makes us feel like terrible parents. But if that’s how we’re going to do things, then we should at least own the fact that when we hand out trophies and ribbons and certificates merely for existing, what we are actually saying is this—“You have won now. But you will lose so much more later.”

  September 17, 2010: The Day I Turned the Car Around

  There are only a handful of things I’ll never forget. Most I’ll never remember.

  Of course I didn’t know that at the time.

  In those first few years of growing and feeding and burping and bouncing and cursing and loving my kids, I was saturated with experiences, bowled over by firsts, and laid low by exhaustion and frustration. Call it what you will, “The happiest time of your life” (really?), “the early days,” “new motherhood,” but no matter what you call it there’s no denying it’s vivid.

  I trusted my brain to file away every favorite food and word, all the mannerisms and comedy routines, funny walks and mind-bending questions. Even though I was submerged in serious stress and suffering from a profound lack of sleep, I still felt confident the sheer novelty of these moments were enough to leave indelible marks, like bronzed fingerprints, all over my brain. I figured there was no way I could forget even a single second of it.

  I remember almost none of it.

  I probably forgot most of it almost as quickly as it happened. Details were swapped out for newer details, mannerisms swapped out for the latest models, foods and jokes and questions all updated with the latest version. It was as if a dialogue box kept popping up in my head that read, “An item that’s similar already exists in this location. Do you want to replace it with the one that’s happening right now?” and I clicked “yes” over and over again.

  But there is one day that stands out. Oh, ho boy, does it.

  We were setting off for a day trip to a children’s science museum a solid one-hour-and-forty-five-minute drive from our house. I remember the exact drive time because it became a regular destination once my kids were old enough (and I was capable enough) to make it worthwhile. It had everything going for it. Exhibits awaited kid fingers and eyes and ears—there were gears to be cranked and buttons to be pushed, sounds to hear and sights to see. No need to have excuses at the ready for strangers! No four-and-a-half-minute preparatory speech in the car before they were released! This was a place for them and their people. There is a certain sort of disgusting relief in that. Those are the days you know you’re an American mom. Those are the days you feel unnatural gratitude for whoever invented stickers and then came up with systems to use them. Those are the days you have nothing to lose.

  In the summer, the museum expanded to include an outdoor science park with water exhibits. I can still picture my two little sidekicks on one of our earliest trips, in swim diapers and swimsuits, chubby thighs and exploding delight as the fountains popped up and disappeared. Back inside, they made giant bubbles and totally touched the stuffed moose surrounded by do not touch signs and reasonable explanations of why not (oils from your hands, old fur, something something, I really don’t remember). There were penny games, miniature tornadoes, and contained fog, and an indoor play area with tunnels and a tower for the youngest kids. That place was perfect. No matter what, by the time we left they’d be tuckered out and happy. And I’d have the satisfaction of feeling like we had done something educational even if all they got out of it was the incontrovertible fact that leaf-cutting ants are a one-way ticket to Heebie-Jeebie-ville.

  After one last trip to the bathroom they’d be in clean, dry clothes, with full bellies from a late lunch, imaginations tweaked, and tired legs from exploring. I’d buckle them back into the car, feeling happy we had had a full day out in the world. It’s still surprising to me how gratifying it can be to simply check off those basics, to feel like I’ve provided them with simple comforts and a little joy.

  But before I get too misty-eyed about it, the other thing that was gratifying about that trip was—without fail—they’d both completely crash out either on the way there or back. So to sum up: guaranteed quiet time, ability to listen to NPR like the good liberal bubble-dweller that I am, boundless opportunity to drink my coffee in orgasmic peace while also escaping the natural disaster that was our house? Obviously add me to your mailing list, science nerds. Of course I’ll join your museum. Take all my money.

  I’m not going to be modest about this: September 17, 2010, still stands as the single best day in my parenting history.

  Our morning started out as so many others had—a loose plan, a patriotic amount of snacks packed, coffee in hand, and fully ready to feel the glory of the open road. Let’s get the hell out of this house and out into the world, kids. We’ve got people to irritate! And like so many other mornings, there was a whole lot of repeating of instructions and not listening and it taking us as much time to get out the door as it would have to drive all the way there already. They were fighting and foot dragging and working my last nerve, but I didn’t see those as signs of things to come, I just saw thos
e as signs that we were all awake.

  We broke the surly bonds of our driveway and then our street, our neighborhood, then that other neighborhood and a few more, finally gliding onto the interstate—nothing but super-sexy highway as far as the eye could see. Initiate driving sequence: Coffee being ingested? Check. NPR on? Check. Kids quietly relaxing in the back seat, not at all sticking their fingers into each other’s armpits, tummies, eyes, and/or ears? Negative. Houston, we have a cliché. This was not the blastoff I was hoping for.

  That day was overcast after a storm and puddles of sloshy, muddy water dotted sidewalks and roads. My kids were still relatively little—four and six—but certainly the proverbial “old enough to know better” on so many levels. They more or less understood rules, they pretty much knew what would get them into trouble, they mostly listened to me, and I thought they understood what would send curtains of hellfire raining down upon their heads, but clearly I was mistaken.

  It hadn’t even been a half hour before it became clear it was still bullshit o’clock in my car in a big way. They didn’t listen. When I asked them to stop, they did the straight-up opposite of the words that were coming out of my face. Their expressions told me over and over again, “Oh we heard you. We just really don’t seem to care about what you’re saying at this particular moment.” Undaunted, and having already invested entirely too much time and effort in our jailhouse break, there was no way in hell we were turning back now. OR WERE WE.

  Why were these children who I loved so very much trying to rob me of my simple joys? This was my chill time, my you-guys-shut-up-and-I-listen-to-NPR time, and they were totally ruining it. It also became clear that “I went to the bathroom before we left” was the biggest lie that had ever been lied and we were already pulling off at a rest area.

  Much unbuckling and holding of hands ensued. The whole performative dance that is little kids and a mom in a rest-area bathroom commenced. My son was terrified of loud sounds and hadn’t yet mastered the one-arm-wrap-around-cover-both-ears move that would become his signature later. So he shuffled in with hands mashed over his head, wary of the hand dryers that were going off as all the callous adult hand washers went about their business, blasting those things left and right. He had no hands free to actually undo his pants and pull down his underpants. So that was definitely one of my favorite arguments we always got in, the one about needing your hands.

  “NO, I’M NOT MOVING MY HANDS.”

  “YOU NEED YOUR HANDS.”

  “NO, IT’S TOO LOUD.”

  “BUT HANDS” and on and on until I keel over dead.

  Whenever we would actually survive the hand-dryer assault, it’d be on to the horror of spontaneously flushing toilets that would send both kids over the edge. In all fairness, if there’s one thing that should be predictable in its behavior, it’s a toilet. Nobody needs to be naked from hips to knees and shift their weight ever so slightly only to be greeted with a random spritz of toilet water up the ol’ caboose while simultaneously feeling like maybe you’ll be sucked down into the center of the earth.

  Mercifully fleeing the Tasmanian vortex in the bathroom stall, it’d be off to the sink to wash hands, which, again, is hard to do when you don’t use your actual hands because they’re slammed against your ears as prep for the HAND-DRYER REMATCH. OH MY GOD.

  After what easily felt like five days, we were finally free of the bathrooms. I beelined for the car, wiping my dripping-wet hands on my jeans and thinking, did I ever really used to enter, use, and exit the bathroom in under a week in my previous life? I feel like I did. I mean, I must have. As my brain was caught up in trying to solve this life puzzle, I whipped around to make sure my kids were actually still following me.

  That’s when I saw them, just as they spied the muddy puddles. They heard me say, “DON’T JUMP IN THOSE MUDDY PUDDLES!” and “SERIOUSLY DO. NOT. YOU DON’T HAVE ANY CLEAN—” and there they went. Jumping and giggling, with that glint in their eyes that said, “LOL PARENTING.”

  Typically in this sort of situation I would resort to the time-honored parenting method commonly referred to as “losing one’s shit,” which is largely associated with actions that include but are not limited to yelling and counting slowly and loudly up to three. But I had recently discovered when things got especially dark, it was more effective if I took a different tack. With what I imagined to be the sort of approach the Mafia might employ, I pulled both kids close to me, put my lips right to their ears, and in a voice so disturbingly quiet they could barely hear me, I hissed, “get. in the car. now.”

  Why this works, I have no idea. It still works. To be fair, I think if someone came up to me, clasped my head, and whispered something mildly threatening I would definitely do whatever they said. Even let them take me to the second location. Whatever. I would just want the arm or head clasping and the intimate weird whispering to end.

  As I ushered them along through the sheer force of my cumulative anger I announced, “This is your last warning. If you guys don’t listen and keep getting in trouble, we’re going home. Do you hear me?”

  How many times have we all said something like that? I’d also accept other variations on this theme like, “Do you want to leave now?” “Should we go home now?” “That’s it, we’re going home now.” “This is your final warning.” “I’m not saying it one more time.” “This is the last time I say it.” “Did you hear me say this is the last time I’m going to say it?” “Okay I’ll say it one more time, this is it.” And “I mean it this time.”

  There’s really nothing like saying, “That’s the last time I’m going to say it” to boldly underline how much it really is not the last time you’re going to say it. What we’re all basically saying, over and over again, is, “I do not want to go through the physical effort—never mind the behavioral shit storm—that will be unleashed if I try to put this whole thing in motion.” And as we all know, it’s even more meaningless when we’re threatening to leave a thing or place where we as parents actually want to stay. The beach, a movie, a party, anywhere that’s not our own house. That’s when the threats are as hollow as my soul.

  Eventually we all returned to the car, me fuming and feeling the weight of this “final warning” now hanging over me, them only the slightest bit delayed, as if they had hit a speed bump going twenty-seven instead of the suggested twenty-five. I eased the car back onto the highway, turned the radio up, and hoped that was the end of it.

  After what was maybe a fifteen-minute reprieve tops—during which I imagine they had unfurled an old-timey map across their laps to hash out their battle plan like little World War II generals—they started fighting again. And harassing each other. And screaming and yelling. Which caused me to scream and yell back and tell them to knock it off because they had already had one warning—DIDN’T THEY REMEMBER THAT? IT WAS THE LAST ONE. THE LAST ONE BEFORE THE ONE I JUST SAID.

  And that’s when it happened. Of course, like so many other things, the details of what exactly that last straw was remain lost to history. It might’ve been a smack or a slap or a poke or a scream or them calling each other “a butt,” who knows. All I know is that it was enough for me to see an exit coming up, put on my turn signal, and in a remarkably calm voice say, “That’s it.”

  LIGHTNING.

  “I warned you guys.”

  THUNDER.

  My car took the exit.

  THE STORM IS CLOSER THAN YOU THINK.

  Both kids immediately erupted in screams as my car took the off ramp, hooked a left, continued across the overpass, and then got back on the highway—in the opposite direction.

  “NO, MOM, NO NO NO!” I had never heard them simultaneously scream and beg so loudly in my entire life. My ears were ringing. If the windows had been down, anyone passing us couldn’t be blamed if they thought a crime was being committed in my vehicle.

  Neither my husband nor I had ever pulled off such a day-obliterating move before. They didn’t know whether to cry or shriek or beg or completely
flip out, so they did all those things at the same time. BOTH KIDS DID ALL THOSE THINGS AT THE SAME TIME.

  They were hysterical; they could not be contained. They were thrashing around, begging for mercy. They were crying so hard they couldn’t even breathe, one of them started coughing and choking. They kept triggering each other exponentially with their freak-outs, because as much as one kid was freaking out, seeing their sibling freak out at this never-before-seen freak-out level was sending both of them spiraling into the freak-out stratosphere. They begged for one more chance: “Please please please, Mom.” They promised to be good for the rest of the drive, for the whole day, for the rest of their lives.

  “Nope, too late. We’re going home.”

  AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

  Another wave of pure psychological breakdown engulfed the car. They had just learned the world was a real fuck show of a place and other people can destroy your damn lives, just like that. Even people who you had previously trusted and thought you loved. And those people could do it without flinching. Without feeling sorry about it. All while sipping their coffee.

  I turned the radio up. I felt so . . . calm. One might even say peaceful. I had a slight grin that wouldn’t have been out of place on the face of a serial killer. The screaming and begging continued. I turned the radio up a little louder. It’s really hard to hear the latest in national and local news, not to mention the seventeen-minute-long weather report, with all that screaming and carrying on.

  After what felt like infinity minutes of this rolling horror show, I pulled off the highway to send my husband a text. The kids took this as a sign that I might turn the car back around. An eerie silence settled over us. They realized I was capable of anything now.

  I typed, “We were an hour and fifteen minutes into our drive to Montshire. We were less than a half hour away. The kids were acting like dicks. I just turned the car around. It feels good. It feels timeless.”