Raising children gives us so many gifts; for example, you never really learn to use profanity until you have raised children. You can’t really say you are an expert in profanity until you have taught one how to drive.
It was a few of the other gifts that children give you that I was thinking about. Just a few minutes ago, I was cooking some curried onions. I usually cook these spicy enough to cause pain in people who simply observe them: you don’t actually have to eat them to be in pain. Needless to say, my wife, the Doc, won’t touch them. So, I was spooning most of them into a jar so I could refrigerate them—when I suddenly noticed that my mouth was wide open. Have you ever spoon fed small children? You open your own mouth wide open in the foolish belief that they will imitate you long enough for you to shovel the baby food into their mouths.
I haven’t fed any infants in more than twenty years and I still hold my own mouth wide open whenever I move a spoon full of anything toward a round opening… This is a conditioned reflex of the highest order. Pavlov would write about me.
Nor is this strange behavior the only reflex my children have given me. When you brake your car suddenly, do you slap the passenger seat with your right hand? Even when there is no one in the car with you? Now, when children’s car seats are mandatory, and most people put them in the back seat, do parents still learn this reflex?
The Doc claims that I am still doing this because it gives me a great excuse to grab her breast while driving. She’s wrong, but it does give me a great excuse to brake suddenly. “Look! A Squirrel!” Three miles further down the road, “Clouds! Clouds!”
Neither of the boys still lives at home. Actually, neither lives within two hundred miles. So why do I wake up every night with the sudden desire to check their bedroom to see if they are all right? Why do I wonder if they are okay every night about 10? Because several thousand nights of doing the same thing will produce a conditioned response from a rock.
If I go to the mall and I hear a small child yell, “Dad!” I still turn to see what my son might want. Me, and every other father in the mall. None of us have any more choice than a trained circus animal. As soon as the calliope starts playing, we all strain to get into harness and start the show.
Years ago, I used to write my father a letter almost every week. Most of the letters were full of nonsense and whatever I happened to be thinking about when the urge to write him hit me. Long after he died, some trivial event during the day would suddenly trigger an urge to write him a letter. I would have over half the letter composed in my head before I would remember, with a start, that it was impossible to send him the letter.
Am I writing this blog to my father? Or am I writing it to my two sons, What’s-His-Name and The-Other-One? The phrases, “Dear Father” and “Dear Son” are powerful words. Powerful enough to create new conditioned responses.
It was a few of the other gifts that children give you that I was thinking about. Just a few minutes ago, I was cooking some curried onions. I usually cook these spicy enough to cause pain in people who simply observe them: you don’t actually have to eat them to be in pain. Needless to say, my wife, the Doc, won’t touch them. So, I was spooning most of them into a jar so I could refrigerate them—when I suddenly noticed that my mouth was wide open. Have you ever spoon fed small children? You open your own mouth wide open in the foolish belief that they will imitate you long enough for you to shovel the baby food into their mouths.
I haven’t fed any infants in more than twenty years and I still hold my own mouth wide open whenever I move a spoon full of anything toward a round opening… This is a conditioned reflex of the highest order. Pavlov would write about me.
The Doc claims that I am still doing this because it gives me a great excuse to grab her breast while driving. She’s wrong, but it does give me a great excuse to brake suddenly. “Look! A Squirrel!” Three miles further down the road, “Clouds! Clouds!”
Neither of the boys still lives at home. Actually, neither lives within two hundred miles. So why do I wake up every night with the sudden desire to check their bedroom to see if they are all right? Why do I wonder if they are okay every night about 10? Because several thousand nights of doing the same thing will produce a conditioned response from a rock.
If I go to the mall and I hear a small child yell, “Dad!” I still turn to see what my son might want. Me, and every other father in the mall. None of us have any more choice than a trained circus animal. As soon as the calliope starts playing, we all strain to get into harness and start the show.
Years ago, I used to write my father a letter almost every week. Most of the letters were full of nonsense and whatever I happened to be thinking about when the urge to write him hit me. Long after he died, some trivial event during the day would suddenly trigger an urge to write him a letter. I would have over half the letter composed in my head before I would remember, with a start, that it was impossible to send him the letter.
Am I writing this blog to my father? Or am I writing it to my two sons, What’s-His-Name and The-Other-One? The phrases, “Dear Father” and “Dear Son” are powerful words. Powerful enough to create new conditioned responses.
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