an hour, at which point she forgot about the Chuds and resumed jumping up and down. Progress, not perfection.
When the neighbors living below us inevitably decide to move out, they always make the polite request that we hide our existence from potential new tenants. We comply because we feel horrible for having had them suffer under the weight of our world for a couple of years. We agree to help them trick new neighbors into moving in below us just like we agreed to help our former downstairs neighbors trick
them
into moving in below us. We are very ethical in our dishonesty.
Hiding the fact that our apartment is essentially a nonmovable clown car is not easy. We must remove all proof of children from the hallways. This involves taking in scooters and strollers into our already cramped apartment. We scour the halls for any telltale plastic toy or a dropped goldfish cracker. We remove our children’s holiday artwork from the front of our door. Our pre-Italian downstairs neighbors, Steve and Andrea, actually offered to buy us lunch so my family wouldn’t even be in the building during an open house. A really kind way to say, “Just get the hell out of the building!” I thanked them for the kind offer and instead took it upon myself to get our chaos the hell out of the building for a couple of hours.
There was once a surprise visit by a very serious prospective tenant. Our neighbors called us at the last minute. We really had to scramble. It was too late to take the kids out for fear of exiting the building and running into the unsuspecting buyer with a gaggle of foot-heavy toddlers. When we heard the Realtor in the hallway with the nice couple, we shooed all the kids into a back room and told them they had to play “the quiet game.” I forgot at the time that a two-year-old does not understand the rules of “the quiet game” or any rules of any game.I clapped a hand over her mouth, and suddenly it became the scene in
The Sound of Music
where the von Trapp family is hiding in the convent from the German SS.
As we continue our search for a new apartment, our “must have” list does not include anything about “prewar,” “original moldings,” or “good neighborhood schools.” We just need to find a place where the downstairs neighbors are deaf or some other example of people who can’t hear that is not offensive to deaf people. Either way, I just don’t want those Chuds to come after us.
Monsters
Kids are actually afraid of monsters. I remember being afraid of monsters as a kid, but now it seems pretty absurd. My son Jack is a confident, outgoing six-year-old, yet at night, monsters are a sincere concern of his. He’s not making it up to get attention. To him it’s a realistic possibility that there is a monster in the hallway, and he needs me as a security escort to go to the bathroom. He is not at all concerned about a domestic terrorist attack or an economic disaster, but he is terrified of monsters.
Personally, I think that the concept of an old white guy with a beard in a red coat coming down a chimney in the middle of the night or a fairy with a tooth fetish sliding things under my pillow while I sleep would be way freakier, but no, for kids it’s monsters.
Monsters are no different from fear of the dark. Why are children afraid of the dark? Because monsters live in the dark.You can tell a kid there is no such thing as monsters, and they will look at you like you are naive. “Right, Dad. There are no monsters. And we didn’t really go to the moon either.” And they walk away from you like, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Where does this fear come from? It’s just the fear of the unknown. They can’t describe the monsters nor can they verbalize what these monsters will do to them if they ever actually do encounter them, but they know they’re out there. Watching. Waiting. We never really completely lose the fear, but as adults we just give the monsters different names, like
When the neighbors living below us inevitably decide to move out, they always make the polite request that we hide our existence from potential new tenants. We comply because we feel horrible for having had them suffer under the weight of our world for a couple of years. We agree to help them trick new neighbors into moving in below us just like we agreed to help our former downstairs neighbors trick
them
into moving in below us. We are very ethical in our dishonesty.
Hiding the fact that our apartment is essentially a nonmovable clown car is not easy. We must remove all proof of children from the hallways. This involves taking in scooters and strollers into our already cramped apartment. We scour the halls for any telltale plastic toy or a dropped goldfish cracker. We remove our children’s holiday artwork from the front of our door. Our pre-Italian downstairs neighbors, Steve and Andrea, actually offered to buy us lunch so my family wouldn’t even be in the building during an open house. A really kind way to say, “Just get the hell out of the building!” I thanked them for the kind offer and instead took it upon myself to get our chaos the hell out of the building for a couple of hours.
There was once a surprise visit by a very serious prospective tenant. Our neighbors called us at the last minute. We really had to scramble. It was too late to take the kids out for fear of exiting the building and running into the unsuspecting buyer with a gaggle of foot-heavy toddlers. When we heard the Realtor in the hallway with the nice couple, we shooed all the kids into a back room and told them they had to play “the quiet game.” I forgot at the time that a two-year-old does not understand the rules of “the quiet game” or any rules of any game.I clapped a hand over her mouth, and suddenly it became the scene in
The Sound of Music
where the von Trapp family is hiding in the convent from the German SS.
As we continue our search for a new apartment, our “must have” list does not include anything about “prewar,” “original moldings,” or “good neighborhood schools.” We just need to find a place where the downstairs neighbors are deaf or some other example of people who can’t hear that is not offensive to deaf people. Either way, I just don’t want those Chuds to come after us.
Monsters
Kids are actually afraid of monsters. I remember being afraid of monsters as a kid, but now it seems pretty absurd. My son Jack is a confident, outgoing six-year-old, yet at night, monsters are a sincere concern of his. He’s not making it up to get attention. To him it’s a realistic possibility that there is a monster in the hallway, and he needs me as a security escort to go to the bathroom. He is not at all concerned about a domestic terrorist attack or an economic disaster, but he is terrified of monsters.
Personally, I think that the concept of an old white guy with a beard in a red coat coming down a chimney in the middle of the night or a fairy with a tooth fetish sliding things under my pillow while I sleep would be way freakier, but no, for kids it’s monsters.
Monsters are no different from fear of the dark. Why are children afraid of the dark? Because monsters live in the dark.You can tell a kid there is no such thing as monsters, and they will look at you like you are naive. “Right, Dad. There are no monsters. And we didn’t really go to the moon either.” And they walk away from you like, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Where does this fear come from? It’s just the fear of the unknown. They can’t describe the monsters nor can they verbalize what these monsters will do to them if they ever actually do encounter them, but they know they’re out there. Watching. Waiting. We never really completely lose the fear, but as adults we just give the monsters different names, like
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