Chris Pascoe’s Fun Tales
Only chris could end up in the wrong when trying to agree with his daughter!
You will never win as a parent. Whether they’re a toddler or a teen, the same rule applies – you’re an idiot, they win and you lose. The only real difference is that when they’re toddlers, they don’t fully realise you lost so you sometimes get away with it.
This “no win” scenario was perfectly illustrated last weekend during a conversation with my now teenage daughter Maya, that I couldn’t help but feel mirrored an exchange with the toddler Maya more than a decade earlier.
Our weekend conversation went like this: Maya walked into the kitchen and, with a huge grin on her face – slightly disturbing to see a teenager with a huge grin actually – told me about a forthcoming movie she’d just read about on the internet.
“OK Daddy, there’s this guy right, who’s bringing out his own movie, and it’s going to be really, reallllly long.” “How long?” “Well, put it this way, he’s released a trailer that’s over 7 hours long and next year he’s doing a 72 hour trailer.”
“What?” I replied, slightly stunned. “A three day trailer? How long’s the movie?”
“720 hours! And it’s only going to have one showing ever, and you can’t record it so you’d have to watch it all
“Daddy, don’t youthink you’re being extremely shallow ?”
in one go, but it’s 30 days long so nobody would ever be able to watch it.”
As she finished she gave a little shrug and shook her head incredulously. I couldn’t help but agree with her sentiments, for once.
“That’s stupid, isn’t it!” I laughed. “Why the hell would anybody do all that, and then make it impossible to watch? That’s just plain crazy!”
My reply was met with a stony silence. Maya’s face dropped. What exactly had I missed here?
“Daddy, don’t you think you’re being extremely negative and shallow? If all you can do is make negative comments like that, I won’t bother telling you anything.”
With that, she turned on her heels and huffed out of the room. She wouldn’t speak to me for three hours. I’d somehow agreed with everything I thought she’d said, and was still deemed to be totally wrong!
The incident that took place more than a decade earlier happened at The Goat Centre, that thrill-seekers’ pleasure-centre of farmyard wonders often mentioned in earlier columns…
Sitting in the Happy Goat Café for lunch, I was, for reasons I won’t go into, in a particularly downcast mood (I was often in a downcast mood at the Goat Centre).
An oblivious three-year-old Maya was happily playing her usual games, holding a big cup of milk to my face and repeating, “Hello, I’m a cup,” over and over until I finally cracked and smiled at her.
Delighted, she shouted, “Speak to the cup, Daddy, speak to the cup.”
“No, play with Mummy Maya, I’m not…”
“Speak to the cup, Daddy, speak to the cup.” “No Maya, I’m…” “Speak to the cup, speak to the cup.” I sighed and gave in. “Hello cup,” I said. “Don’t you talk to me!” said the cup.
You see what I mean?
Chris Pascoe is the author of A Cat Called Birmingham and You Can Take the Cat Out of Slough, and of Your Cat magazine’s column Confessions of a Cat Sitter.