Arguing Children and Dancing Turtles

James L. Davis

I have designed my dream house. It has everything I feel you need in a really great home. Large rooms with ceilings that are a quarter of a mile high, lots of light, a television spaced every six feet apart, bathrooms that can quite nicely produce an echo and a family room with a pool table, video game system, hot tub and walk in refrigerator. There are only two bedrooms in the house. One belongs to my wife and I and it is large enough that we should carry GPS units with us to avoid becoming lost. The other bedroom is for guests.

There are no bedrooms for our children. They live next door in the Children’s Home. In the Children’s Home all of our children live quite nicely. They have their own rooms, their own kitchen (no messy dishes to clean or keep track of, just paper plates), their own living room (already designed with food stains and a strange, moldy smell of old socks) and sound proof walls so passers-by are not tormented by the incessant screaming of siblings trying to kill one another. My wife and I can monitor our children from the safety of our own home through the use of a video surveillance system. We can watch them bounce off the walls, throw things at each other, wrestle inside the house and leave messes here, there and everywhere. We cannot hear them however because there are no speakers inside the house. Hearing them might lead to them arguing with us about the color of the sky. We can go and visit them on occasion if we please, perhaps some day we even would.

It is the greatest home I believe that has ever been dreamed of and if I had only dreamed it so much sooner I would have been able to retain some small portion of my sanity. But, unfortunately, I did not dream up my dream house in enough time and therefore I have gone completely mad. It is the only defense mechanism I had left after living with my children for such an extended period of time.

I used to think that my children were relatively normal, but I have been forced to reconsider that thought. The reasons why I have been forced to reconsider that thought are long and complicated. My therapist has encouraged me to write the reasons why my children aren’t normal down on paper as part of a cleansing process. OK, I don’t really have a therapist, but I do have a voice in my head that I like to refer to as my therapist because the Voice is always giving me suggestions on things I should do. The Voice suggested that I write down the reasons why my children aren’t normal after I wouldn’t take its earlier suggestion to have them all shipped to Antarctica. I have used three reams of paper so far and the end of the list doesn’t appear in sight.
Just as a sample of something that is wrong with my children, consider this: Is it normal for children to argue with every word that comes out of your mouth, even when they are not words, just grunts of frustration verging on homicidal rage? I believe it is only normal if children’s purpose in life is to drive their parents insane or to see how long it takes to produce a nervous breakdown. My children inherently understand that I am only three eye twitches and a maniacal laugh away from a complete meltdown, so as a self defense mechanism they do not argue with me a great deal, in fact they tend to avoid me, which is exactly what the Voice in my head has long been hoping for.

But by avoiding me, they have begun to bother my wife far more than I believe her also fragile grasp on reality can withstand. Just the other morning while blissfully reading the newspaper at the kitchen table and listening to the Voice in my head explain to me that only I could see the dance of the lavender turtles taking place in my living room, I happened to overhear my wife talking to our youngest son about combing his hair. She was combing his hair because we have discovered with some of our children it is safer just to do for them what needs to be done. Waiting for them to do some things only leads to frustration and Voices in your head talking about dancing lavender turtles. For our youngest that includes pretty much everything. We don’t have to actually chew his food for him, but I believe that is only because he hasn’t thought of it…yet.

While my wife was combing our young son’s hair he began to explain to her that she was not combing his hair like she normally combs his hair, to which my wife replied that yes, she was combing his hair just as she always did. Of course, because our son is not anything close to normal, he argued with her that the activity she did every day she was on this day doing in a completely different way. Rather than shaving his head immediately, or at the very least allowing her eye to twitch menacingly, my wife continued to argue with our son about how she combed his hair until finally I heard a shrill scream and my wife marched out of the bathroom and sat down at the kitchen table beside me.

I patted her softly on the hand and talked to her about my dream house. She nodded, smiling blissfully as she looked into the living room.

“Look, dancing lavender turtles,” she said.

On St. Patrick’s Day Everyone is Irish

Judi Bishop

Were you among the millions who celebrated St. Patrick’s Day on March 17? If so, what do you know about the man himself, or the meaning behind the day?

Saint Patrick was born in the 4th century in Wales. His name to begin with was Maewyn. When he was 16, a group of Irish marauders kidnapped him and took him to Ireland. He served six years in servitude as a shepherd. At age 22 he studied at a Monastery for several years. That is when he took on the new name of Patrick and his role changed from shepherd to converting his now fellow Irish countrymen to Christianity. Along with abilities as an orator, came the mythical saying that he drove the snakes from Ireland. There are no native snakes in Ireland and therefore he couldn’t have driven real snakes, but it is speculated that the snakes he drove from Ireland were in fact the human version.

The Shamrock became one of his most valued and cleverest teaching tools. He used it to explain the Trinity---three elements forming one entity. Consequently, from this came the reason for his becoming St. Patrick.
How was March 17 selected as the day to celebrate St. Patrick Day? It was the reported date of his death in the year 461. It is now the day traditionally celebrated as his feast day. The festival in Dublin is celebrated for a week, with theatre, music, dance, treasure hunts and fireworks. With the migration of citizens of Ireland going all over the world the tradition of this day was carried with them. With Ireland being known as the Isle of the Green, the day is thus associated with the color.

With the Irish migrating all over the world, the day has grown and become a worldwide holiday. The first parade took place not in Ireland, but the United States in New York City in 1872. In larger cities where there are a great number of Irish citizens, St. Patrick’s Day is comparable to Christmas and Thanksgiving. It was a religious holiday until 1903, when it became a public holiday. Traditions around the holiday have grown to include such “traditional” fare as Corn beef and Cabbage in America.

As the saying goes, “On St. Patrick’s Day everyone is Irish!”