On Fools And Suffering

I do not suffer fools gladly.*

By which, I mean that anyone who does something I don’t like is, therefore, a fool and I want that person out of my line of sight and out of hearing just as soon as humanly possible. I am a bit of a misanthrope, I realize. However, considering the people I’ve had to rub up against (metaphorically, of course) in the past, you’re lucky I’m not outside your house right now with a very large stick and a print out of a picture of your face with the eyes cut out.

Wow. That escalated quickly. Tell you what? Let’s back this down a bit.

I like to define a fool as someone who doesn’t know how to do something, denies that he doesn’t know, then goes ahead to do that thing badly and get upset when offered the help he so desperately needs. A fool is someone who is so self-involved that anyone else on the planet is only there for the fool’s convenience. A fool is someone more demanding than Demando, The Wonder Demander, on his worst day. 

A fool. . . You know. . . Now I think about it. . . 

I pretty much just described every kid ever right there.

I might be more thoroughly scarred by parenthood than I thought.

The thing of it is, though, I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who feels that way. As adults, we expect a minimum competence from others around us, a minimum engagement with consensus reality that mirrors our own. When that doesn’t happen, we tend to become . . . well. . . irked. Greatly irked.

Because they look like little human beings, I think we as dads tend to expect our spawn to actually behave like said human beings. But, while they might look like a human being, they really, really aren’t.

Not only are those bodies significantly different (they accrete stickiness from the open air, are capable of storing infinite amounts of mucus in their bodies for disopsal whenever it’s least convenient, can fit marbles into their nostrils, but not out, etc) than the human bodies they resemble, but their minds (They have minds?) seem to exist on a whole other plane of reality than ours.

I’d call most kids mental processes screwier than the Tasmanian Devil, if that weren’t an insult to Taz’s cogintive abilities.

I mean, I once walked into my living room to find Sarcasmo, my eldest spawn, hammering away at a table with a real hammer and real nails.

“What,” I yelled, “are you doing?”

He paused, looked at the hammer, looked at me, looked back at the hammer, then at the table, then back at me.

“Nothing,” he mumbled. He pointed at the table. “It was like that.”

I honestly think he believed that when he said it. Only a child could even attempt something that stunningly oblivious.

And that is only one of many, many more instances when I’ve run up against foolish behavior on a scale that beggars the imagination and leaves my comprehension staggering around in the dust, clutching its chest and screaming for “Eliz’beth!”***

I’ve come to believe that, whether we suffer fools gladly or not, it’s our job as parents to take the foolish and gently point them in the right direction, to help them ask the questions that matter (Is it really a good idea to drop the TV remote control into the toilet to see if it would fit?) before those questions cease to matter. We need to de-fool the fools.

It is an exacting, excruciating process that, as far as I can tell as the father of one nominally 21-year-old son, continues long after they can drive, vote and order a beer. 

All this makes me wonder: How well does my dad suffer fools? 

It made me wonder, but no way am I actually asking him that question. So I guess I’m not as foolish as once I was.

Errata & Footnotes

* Ha ha ha. Yes, I know that means I must not suffer me very much either. Wow! You’re funny. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that joke**.

**Although, apparently, I’ll suffer sarcasm until the cows violate curfew.

*** Really old joke.