The Child In Pants

Dear Expensive Mind Doctor,

You have instructed me to make a list of three realities that have shaped my life. To clarify, my realities do not need to be grounded in mutual consensus with the rest of society, but that I am still expected to explain myself to validate my position regardless of how agreeable or not my realities may be. Just to note that you didn’t explicitly say what the purpose of this exercise was, only to trust you and do it before our next session. Fair enough. I can play along. 

Reality One: My Hometown is the accumulation of everything wrong in the world. 

While attending university I happen to find myself in a law and ethics course. The diversity of the populace of this specific class could only be alluded to as the Breakfast Club on extremely potent Adderall - minus the life long bonds of friendship, existential awakenings, and a theme song that will be recalled involuntarily from the darkest recesses of the mind that should never be explored, let alone acknowledged.

Sayrah, with a ‘Y’, had embarked on a beautiful life experience she shared with a select group of peers a whole six months ago when she was still in high school. Did I say high school? I meant, an enlightenment pod for the woken youth of tomorrow.

She had made a cake from scratch, how archaic, with a message to a dear fellow peer’s awakening to who he actually was, and apparently, always had been. Written in gluten-free, sugar-free, dye-free, and clearly taste-free icing, she translated his sexual identity into words onto a cauliflower-based cake to commemorate the experience and metamorphosis of a teenager who had all his chakras in a row to finally realize who he is, was, and will forever now be. 

I asked Sayrah if they ate the cake. She told me that wasn’t the point. I followed up with asking if the point was not to eat the cake because it was art. She flatly declined my simpleton assumption. Not ready to accept defeat, I inquired to know if they didn’t eat the cake because they were trying to make a statement. Sayrah rolled her eyes at my inquiry and as condescending as her nineteen-year-old being could emit, verifying my latest conclusion. 

The room went silent. The professor of this course jumped up to sit on his desk at the front of the class, he looked as if he had just taken a seat to watch the newest box office hit in the theatre. You know, the one that everyone goes to see and walks out at the end wondering where the past three hours of their lives went. Even though I knew he could already predict every element of the plot ahead of time, he was clearly there for the special effects and mind-numbing computer-generated imaging. I think he might have accepted popcorn if it was offered to him. This was my cue to push further. 

I then asked Sayrah what it was like growing up in a test tube of idyllic oblivion. She shot around faster than I could have anticipated. She demanded that I explain my accusation, so I obliged.

I explained that her experience, although rewarding and drenched if warm fuzzies, would only be possible in a liberal-minded progressive utopian construct she was privileged to be immersed within growing up. How unique of an opportunity that must have been to be able to celebrate a friend’s identity is such a public setting without the repercussions of societal norms or expectations bursting in to crash the party? 

Sayrah was not impressed with my observation, so far as to attempt to debunk the notions of social norms and expectations as merely a patriarchal weapon of repression of a dying patriarchal worldview. How society today does not recognize labels made by capitalistic hounds who salivate at the idea of control.

I want to say I felt bad about what I said next, but the hammer needed to drop sooner than later. The identity cake memory was so special to her, and to this day I question whether or not it was really my right to pull the curtain away and expose it for what it was. 

I told Sayrah, and the rest of the class, that it had been a few years since I graced the halls of high school myself as a dutiful student. However, the idea of a class celebrating a student's sexual identity in such a manner would never have happened. If it did, there would have been abuse, assault, and blood spewed around our sweet little ‘enlightenment pod’ we called school.

Sayrah was appalled and in denial that such prejudice was prevalent today. Shaking her head in disbelief, she turned back around to face the professor, who just shrugged his shoulders and stated that such barbaric behaviour would never be part of her reality.

I persisted by explaining to her that she and I were real. We both are real and in the same room, sharing the same space and the same air. So, technically we were sharing the same reality now. If her reality excluded a society who would attack an individual for identifying any other way than what the societal status-quo deemed right, then is my reality not real? Or, did I just wake the dormant monster in hers? 

To be honest, her reality sounded like a dream. A wonderful dream where people could be whatever they wanted to be and say whatever they wanted to say and never have to face the opposition or judgment of the reality I lived in for so long. Pass me the kool-aid, that sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me. But, as all dreams come to an end, and reality sets back in, I knew her reality was still too fresh and unaffected. 

I realized it wasn’t fair to taint her memories with hatred and discrimination that was never her’s to experience. At the same time, how fair was it for me to have to live a life of fear for being anything other than the poster child of traditional conservatism in a small town that expected nothing less. Thoroughbred, through and through.  

Evidently, between the two of us, we each had our obstacles growing up. In retrospect, I think being raised in the restrictive orthodoxical supremacy of a small town definitely left its unwelcomed marks on me, but those scars tell my story and shape who I am, not what I am. I wouldn’t trade that for naivety any day.   

Reality Two: We are all children who have learned to wear pants.  

I am a coward. I grew up afraid of everything and everyone. I once went door to door asking for donations for a malnourished child in a malnourished country and made six dollars and thirty-five cents. There was no malnourished child, just two curious kids who wondered what would happen if they went door to door with a cause and an empty margarine container with the word ‘donate’ written on the lid. My neighbourhood friend, who was the mastermind behind the task, got caught by her mother and was forced to return the money to each and every person who donated their coinage for our imaginary cause. 

I ran home and hid behind the couch. Waiting for my mother to get a phone call from some neighbours asking about where their donation was going. All I knew was when the call came, I would be a puddle of undiagnosed anxiety on the floor begging my parents to forgive me, but more importantly not making me face the people I had conned and lied to. I could never digest disappointment well.

The call never came, and I later learned that the neighbourhood thought it was so funny that they allowed my friend to keep the money to treat herself for being honest about her endeavours. I didn’t care that she was rewarded for our blunder. I still lose sleep to this day wondering if my mother will ever find out what dastardly business I was up to as a child. 

I am still that guilty conscience, trouble-making, white lie fabricator of a child that I was all those years ago. That part of me has never faded, I have just learned to wear pants. You can’t put an age on maturity, everyone is still a child on the inside. 

We are ingrained to live for the weekends as a kid. Monday to Friday was school and work. Then Friday afternoons would roll around when our lives could begin and then die out just as quickly Sunday evening as we geared ourselves for the grind of the week ahead of us. Rinse and repeat until we die, mentality. 

Nothing has changed, except we have learned to wear pants and pay someone else to do our taxes.

I recognize that many people choose to remain in this limbo of childhood living. Initially, they want nothing less than to escape and live big, taking risks and answering to no one. When the big bad world becomes too much to handle, these self-proclaimed juggernauts slip back into their cushy and comforting lives where nothing can touch them and mom can still check under the bed for the scary taxman.   

The fallacy here lies in the facade of the reality itself. Pack up that trailer and head for the lake every chance you get, you young whippersnapper. Take that bonus you made working nine to five for three years straight and treat yourself to the adult amusement park of Vegas, baby! Indulge yourself on the fine things in life and drown away your troubles with others who are looking to do the same for the temporary pleasure of knowing tomorrow you will half regret it and half revel in its fact that you were able to forget that Monday is coming to get you whether you like it or not. No control, no risk, no worries. Stay in the rut of small-town life, they said. It will be fun to stay young and nonessential forever, they said. Fun conquers all. Or was that love? Yuck! Cooties!  

On the other hand, have you ever read Lord of the Flies? Children can be monsters. Give them an inch and they will kill their own kind for the game. I can’t help but look around at the people I interact with and wonder if the child in them would want to be my friend and play with me at the playground or would they try to destroy me because I drank the last juice box? Just because we have all learned to put our pants on one leg at a time, is it safe to say that we are expected to be stalwart citizens and contributors to the greater good of mankind? 

Reality Three: The only thing that will last forever is Tupperware. 

My mother’s Tupperware is older and easily much more stable than I am. The devil is in the details obviously, as there is no way anything should actually be able to stand the test of time other than time itself and processed foods. 

I look at her containers and I think to myself, how is this possible? On what molecular level did someone discover a material so trustworthy and reliable that it will outlive numerous generations of people and still be able to fulfill its purpose? My wife probably wishes I was more Tupperware than man at times. 

I’m not a planner for this exact reason. I am flawed. I let myself down enough as it is, why would I plan for something that has the molecular makeup of any given politician? Full of empty promises and as useful as little black cotton mittens in the middle of a freaking blizzard.

Getting caught up in the details is useless. A wise man once told me that worrying about anything out of my control was like fishing with telepathy. I can’t will a fish out of the water with my thoughts, although it would be funny to watch someone try. Why then would I think I could turn my hopes and dreams into fruition. 

Yes, yes, I could put in the work. I can do everything I possibly can to improve my chances of success, but ultimately my control ends at some point and I have to leave it in the hands of the universe or your choice of deity. Why lose sleep over it? Sleep is valuable, worrying is worthless.

Doc, I think I am getting the point of this exercise and I hope you’re embarrassed. I don’t think I will need another appointment with you. You just lost a client, and it was all your own doing. This full-circle method of thinking through my own thoughts really leaves you penniless, doctor. So much for the invisible hand Adam Smith.  

You certainly are not going to make much of a livelihood helping people like this. It’s too successful. If you want, I know a good neighbourhood we can solicit for change if it would help you to keep on your own two feet. 

Sincerely,

The Child in Pants.