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Main Page Site Index Getting Pregnant Pregnancy Parenting Pregnancy and Parenting Journals	by Jonathan Kronstadt I've always considered decision-making to be a four-letter word. Even before I was a parent, when the most daunting decision of my day was which of my two clean shirts to wear, it paralyzed me. I needed a consultant to choose pizza toppings. Then parenthood visited me, and I realized I had never made a serious decision in my life. Seriously. All of a sudden I was at the bottom of an avalanche of daily decisions: bottle or breast (I had help with that one), rock or cry to sleep (me, not the baby). The list, like me, went on and on. Uncertainty dogged me like a basset hound, only with longer legs and a little less drooly. I cursed my parents for allowing me to attend a liberal arts college, where my addiction to questions and aversions to answers was nurtured and given no worse than a B-minus. Doubt was wearing me out, so I gave in to indecisiveness and decided to make it work for me. I didn't really know what that meant, but it sounded good. And in the process of questioning every move I made, once in a great while I would come up with a question actually worth asking. For example, why is it that when you're young all you want to be is older, and as soon as you're older all you want to be is young? What was the person who coined the expressions "sleep like a baby" and "work like a dog" possibly thinking about? Why doesn't the word "albeit" subscribe to the I before E except after C rule? And when is the exact moment when innocence and trust are replaced by inhibition and fear? How do we go from seeing every individual as a friend in the making to wearing that glazed, please-God-don't-make-eye-contact-with-me public transportation expression on our faces? It's been three years since I held a real job and was one of the millions of plodding, faceless commuters who clog the sidewalks of urban America, but even then it amazed me that you could put so many people in such a small space and produce so little human interaction. Life is, thankfully, very different at the local playground, or wherever one moseys with a toddler or two in tow. I've often said--repeating myself is sort of a hobby of mine--that if everyone were as nice to each other as people are to me when I have the little one along then, well, the world would be a revoltingly saccharine place. With a cute toddler by my side, I am transmogrified in the eyes of playground mothers from a potential stalker/rapist/masher into a sensitive, 90s kind of dad who takes time out from clawing his way to the top to stop and smell the wood chips. It's one of the perks of being a stay-at-home-father; people just assume that you've given up some dazzlingly lucrative and/or interesting career to stay home and nurture the next generation. I will, if asked, explode this notion for people by admitting that I begged my wife to free me from the yolk of occupational oppression I was under by allowing me to stay home, but I am rarely asked. I wind up talking to a lot of parents at playgrounds mainly because a) it's the polite thing to do, and b) my daughter gloms on to other kids like a suckerfish. Remember the character Judge Reinhold played on Seinfeld? Elaine's close-talking boyfriend? Alison makes him look like an agoraphobic. She arrives at a playground, surveys the toddler inventory, picks a victim and becomes a stalker in Pull-Ups. Inside five minutes she'll be wanting to hold hands and professing her undying love for her new playmate. Some kids run screaming to their parents for protection, but most accept her overtures and toddle off to with her to playground nirvana. Happily, I've also learned some new math: one child plus one child often equals nearly no child, allowing me to rest my rapidly decaying carcass on one of many benches the county has so generously provided. From these benches I watch the way the world should be, with everyone and everything in it an opportunity to bring joy. She plays with a little black girl and the only color she notices is the red--her favorite--of her new friend's shoes. Her lobbying technique is simple: "Come on, it'll be fun" works for each and every new idea. Of course it will be fun. Why wouldn't it be? I'm bracing myself for the inevitable loss of her innocence. I actually witnessed what I believe was the first time she was pushed by another child, a playmate who did not share Alison's view that personal space--even a few centimeters--is a bad thing. Not only was there no retaliation, there was no acknowledgment of the push as a hostile act. I worry sometimes that she's a little too eager to please. The same playmate hit her at pre-school the other day, and in that 1990s way of trying to get everyone's feelings out, she was asked how being hit made her feel. "Great," she answered. I'm not smart or strong enough to protect her from the unrelenting hostility and fear that seems to plague us humans. It's there on the playground too, waiting for her as she gets older and learns how to hurt and be hurt. I think about escaping to a small town or even Europe, but in small towns you can't get good Chinese food and in Europe you can't get the scores, so I guess I'll have to figure out a way to make this venue work. Fortunately, I have a great little helper. This work is copyrighted by the author, Jonathan Kronstadt. Reproduction of any kind is prohibited with out the express consent of the author. 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