As the best-selling book says, “It’s all small stuff.” One thing parenthood is good for is driving you crazy from one minute to the next, and causing you to lose your perspective. On the flip side: One of your biggest tasks as a parent is working to maintain the proper perspective. Here are a few of our family’s minor, yet notable, drive-Dad-crazy experiences. I would love to say that I had an even-keeled response to them. I would be lying.

Dating: Kid Division

As much as I love all things Harry Potter—and believe me, you won’t get far in our house without a sufficient love for all things Harry Potter—I do have one bone to pick with J. K. Rowling.*

(*Which, I’m sure—sitting in her mansion making paper airplanes out of £100 notes—she is very concerned about.)

The odds that you will meet the love of your life at age fourteen, commit to him or her by seventeen, and be in a happy long-term marriage with him or her by the Epilogue* are . . . um . . . slim? But thanks to J.K.—and Hollywood, and the Disney Channel, and Glee, and Degrassi, and a million other inputs I’ve worked really hard to block out—my kids have been utterly and absolutely convinced that they must have found “the one” for a long-term, committed relationship by the age of fifteen, sixteen tops.

(*That’s another bone: The Epilogue? Bad.)

This belief led to nonsense at best, tragedy at worst. The year they were thirteen and fifteen, the kids went to different summer camps, where they each met someone. The total time they spent talking to these someones—combined—was probably about an hour. This meant they were dating. After camp, they continued dating, even though said someones lived at least an hour away. I think each boy saw his someone exactly once. I’m pretty sure they spent those outings discussing china patterns and honeymoon destinations.

A year or so ago, Mark reflected that so far, he has had only one relationship. It took me until the next day to realize that this “relationship” was the time he went to dinner and bowling with someone when he was about sixteen. Once. With her mom as a chaperone.

For his part, Daveon decided he needed a relationship by about age twelve, and he spent the next few years dedicated to achieving this goal by any means necessary. The process always went something like this:

* Step 1: Meet girl. This didn’t need to include an actual meeting. If someone smiled at him from across the room, she was fair game.
* Step 2: Decide she was the one. Again, this decision could happen before the actual meeting. You can tell a lot about someone from a smile!
* Step 3: Pursue. Relentlessly.

And by relentlessly, I mean: coming on so strong and getting so overattached so quickly that he pretty much scared off, freaked out, grossed out, or otherwise alienated just about every girl in sight. Including a few who, with a slightly subtler approach—like, maybe a conversation or two before you’re offering to buy the ring—might have actually been candidates. This rejection, in turn, led to some of the self-harming behaviors I describe elsewhere.

I was in my finest wise-old-man mode when I reminded the kids that a person could date from ages sixteen to 106 (look at me—I’m still working at it), so there’s no rush. They in turn hit all the dramatic teen notes:

* “It’ll be awful if I don’t have a relationship by the end of freshman year.”
* “It’ll be awful if I don’t have a relationship by the time I graduate.”

And everything in between.

Ironically, as they got older, they eased up on the dating pedal somewhat—the opposite of what you might expect. Daveon figured out that he had many more opportunities to explore in college,* while Mark resigned himself to being too busy with skating to worry about much else.

(*This didn’t stop him from calling me on a Wednesday to tell me that as of Tuesday, the girl he had met on Monday was his new girlfriend. Some things never change.)  

As the dad who sees pretty much everything my kids do in terms of how it might impact me, I of course am more than happy for them to take their time pursuing serious involvements. If they can find some happy middle ground between Harry and Ginny at one extreme (committed before they’ve left the acne-prone years) and me at the other (still in the hunt at fifty-plus), we’ll call it even.

Pets

Let’s cut to the chase: I am not a pet person. I would happily have no pets, ever. Forever.

On the other hand, if my kids had their way, our house would have looked like an indoor petting zoo, reptile house, and bird sanctuary all at once.

Being the ever-mindful dad, I tried to find ways to compromise over the years. Attempt number one: fish. Fish seemed easy, they live in a small glass box, and I would never have to take them to the vet. This was, in a word, dumb. First off, fish take a ridiculous amount of work for inch-sized creatures whose life consists of: swim in circles, swim to the food, lather, rinse, repeat. Second, although they liked the fish well enough, my kids were never really interested in them—which meant that these particular pets became, from day one, solely my job. Nothing I love better on a Saturday than cleaning out smelly tank water.

From fish we started negotiating warm fuzzies, with this caveat: Nothing that could run underfoot. I already had two kids, I wasn’t trying to trip over anything else. That led to—what became the first in a series of—hamsters. These were Daveon’s pets, and true to form, Mr. Man took excellent care of them—even if they did get creative names like Hammy.* Not just the minimum feeding and cage-cleaning, but talking to, holding, and playing with them.

(*To go along with his stuffed snake, Snakey, and dragon, Draggy. I fully expect to one day happily hold my grandchild, Kiddy.)

Unfortunately, hamsters only live about a year and a half. After number five or six, I think Daveon got tired of the little funeral ceremonies we would hold in the planter box on the side of the house. Later he talked about wanting an iguana.

My biggest pet mistake was rabbits. For a long time, Mark begged and pleaded for a rabbit. Clearly my inner voice was working strong here, because I held back. But he persisted, and persisted, and . . . after about six months, I relented.

When we got our first rabbit, Blackberry, from the local animal shelter, he came with a phonebook-thick set of instructions.* The dos and don’ts included an endless list of what he could and couldn’t eat:

(*I realize that readers under a certain age might not know what a phonebook is. Google it.)

* Iceberg lettuce, out—too much water, makes them gassy.
* Romaine, OK.
* Pellets? OK in small amounts for one meal only. The rest, greens. Organic greens. Pesticide residue is bad for bunnies.
* Carrots are the perfect rabbit food, right? Wrong. Too much sugar. One baby carrot per day, tops.

Once I was at the store buying organic dandelion greens, basil, mint, and cilantro. The woman next to me said, “Wow, you eat really healthy.” I told her, “It’s for our rabbits.”

And then later, same grocery store: 

Bagger: “You cook with a lot of herbs, huh?” 

Me, shaking head: “Rabbits.”

That’s just food. You’re also, according to the instructional phonebook, supposed to let your rabbits run free in your house. Let me repeat: Rabbits, which are basically big mice with cuter ears and tails, running free in your house. Except: They love to chew on cords, so you need to unplug everything, keep the cords high, and cap your outlets for good measure.

Did I mention that I work from home, writing for tech companies? Do you know how many cords there are in our house? I would have had to quit my actual job to take up a new full-time gig chasing the rabbits around the house, unplugging and replugging cords along the way.

Then there was: You can’t let your rabbits outside, because it’s too cold, and they might get picked up by a hawk. The shelter wasn’t even wild when I told them I was building a pen for the rabbits, because even that would be too cold.

In our garage. In California.*

(*When I was a kid, I had a rabbit who lived for twelve years, outdoors, in the Northeast. Sniffy ate nothing but pellets, and survived real winters. My mother would have no sooner let him in the house than the Grim Reaper. Sniffy was kind of grumpy—maybe he missed getting organic Italian parsley—but otherwise he seemed fine.)

When we first got Blackberry, he lived in a pen in Mark’s room, under the loft bed. That worked for a while, except Mark was scared of the rabbit. So it made perfect sense that he started pleading for a second one. When I finally agreed and we went for number two, I built a large, two-story pen in the garage—the one the shelter said was cruel and unusual punishment.

This led us to: Bunny dating. I am not kidding. You bring your rabbit to the shelter, and put it in a small enclosure with another rabbit, and see how each pair does. You continue doing this with a series of rabbits. Sometimes they go straight for the jugular—not good. Sometimes one chases the other’s butt—not good. Sometimes they ignore each other—not great, but better than the other options. If they sniff and start grooming each other, that’s the best-case scenario. We tried about ten potential roommates for Blackberry, never getting any further than ignore. So that was the one. And into our life came Hugs.

At which point, Mark immediately decided he didn’t want to take care of the rabbits, and could we bring them back?

Luckily, Dr. Daveon Doolittle stepped in, agreeing to take over half the chores. And there they remained, two love bunnies in their split-level garage condo—at least until Hugs passed on to rabbit heaven. And my electric cords survived to live another day.*

(*When Mark went off the college, Blackberry—who had to have been at least fifteen, sixteen by this time—went back to the shelter. They claim that there’s a farm where they take old bunnies, to run around together and share war stories of how they had to eat conventionally grown basil. Hopefully this is true, but believe me—I wasn’t asking too many questions.)  

Driving

There’s a common-wisdom belief that having kids keeps you young. That’s true enough—but it’s just as true that there are lots of ways that having kids makes a person feel old. Most of them have to do with crappy music or current TV depictions of high school. Not to mention the Harry Potter view of relationship.

It also happens when you compare the way you experienced something at a certain age, and the way your kids are experiencing it at that same age—and they have nothing in common. And you think, “Wow. Am I that old?”

A major example of this for us is driving. Anyone from my age group can remember that learning to drive went something like this: In high school, you took driver’s ed as a class in school. This covered both the written work and driving time with an instructor, who was the probably terrifying-to-you football coach who always smelled like cigars. At fifteen-and-a-half, you took the written test and got your permit. This cost maybe $10. You drove around for a while, whenever you could convince a grown-up to get in the car with you. At sixteen-ish, you took the driving test and got your license—another $10. Then your life was divided between doing errands for your parents—usually your mother, and usually involving shuffling your younger siblings to gymnastics or piano or Little League—and taking off with your friends, usually with no destination in mind but just for the sheer joy of being out on your own and driving.

Fast-forward thirty years. Here is what driving looked like for my kids (you might want to take notes): First, you need to take an online course—there are no school driver’s ed classes anymore. This costs anywhere from $50–150, depending on whether you can find a discount code. Assuming they pass they course—if not, they need to take it again, and no, there’s no second-try discount—they get a certificate in the mail. You take the certificate to the DMV, which allows you to take the written test for your permit. This I believe is another $30, but don’t quote me (it certainly isn’t ten). Again assuming you pass, you get your permit.*

(*This really happened: Daveon and I took his course certificate to the DMV to take the written test. The very nice DMV woman told us that this particular course wasn’t approved by the DMV, but she was going to let him take the test, anyway. I asked her for a list of approved courses, so we wouldn’t run into this same problem later with his brother. She said, without even blinking, “Oh, we don’t have a list. We can only tell you whether the course is approved after you bring in the certificate.”)  

Then you need to do six hours of driving time with a professional instructor. The cheapest one I found was $65 per hour, for a grand total of $390. The instructor needs to sign off on the permit.

Then you need to do fifty hours of driving with a licensed adult over the age of twenty-five. Fifty hours probably takes two weeks in Los Angeles, where there’s no public transportation and it takes at least an hour to get anywhere—even the 7-ll down the block. (Nobody walks in L.A.) Here in the Bay Area, with our awesome public transportation, it took us over six months to get the fifty hours for Daveon.

It took even longer with Mark, who, spending all of his free time at the rink, didn’t exactly have many hours to spare.*

(*You may wonder why, given our wonderful public transportation, the kids needed to get licenses at all. My reasons were simple. One, if I ever fell down the stairs, I wanted one of them to be able to get me to the hospital, stat. And two, their athletic activities took them far afield, well out of the reach of our bus and train service areas. After you’ve driven your kid an hour to the same ice rink three days in a row, having other driver options starts to look pretty appealing.)  

Fifty hours later, you go back to the DMV for the driving test. If you fail after all of that practice, this isn’t a good sign for your competence as a driver in years to come. Assuming you pass, congrats, you have a license!

So now you can hop in the car with your buddies, right? Um, no. Unless you are eighteen (and by the time you get those fifty hours, you might already be eighteen), for the first year you have your license, you can only drive (a) by yourself, or (b) with at least one licensed driver over eighteen in the car. If you want to take off with your buddies, buddy-mom (or uncle or older sibling) needs to go with you. Not exactly the same thrill of freedom.

You can, however, be coerced into errands by your dad. So it’s a lose-lose for the young driver.

Even with all of the expense, having driving kids was a big plus for me. I no longer had to cart them everywhere—only in those situations when we couldn’t make it work for Daveon to have the car and Mark to get where he needed to go. I got so spoiled that when there was a BART strike, I spent the whole time whining about needing to get my kids back and forth to school and activities—for two whole days!

But, on balance, it was a win for everyone—except maybe the car, which kept appearing in front of the house with new, mysterious scratches and dings.

White Middle-Class Lady Problems

This little section covers a topic that extends well beyond parenthood. But like many things in my life, it took parenthood to teach me the lesson. So, here goes . . .

It was one of those days. On top of the usual routine of work/ chauffeur/cook/etc., this one included volunteering at the kids’ elementary school, grocery shopping, and—why not—a trip to the vet. (See “Why Dad would happily never have pets,” part infinity.) Not to mention needing to get it all done in a few hours to be home in time for a conference call. Which meant that—of course—the SUV in front of me was trying to set a new slow-speed record, and the (I’m sure very nice) fellow shopper insisted on keeping her cart directly in the center of the aisle, and was apparently very concerned with getting exactly the right brand of toothpaste. Which involved careful study of the fifty brands on the side of the aisle she was blocking.

Being the gentle, calm Bay Area dude I am, I wanted to ram her cart, ram the SUV, and probably holler at a few puppies for good measure. Because, you know, my day sucked.

And these, dear readers, are my white middle-class lady problems.

A few years ago, my friend Pete told this story: He was a trainer at a large credit card bank on the East Coast, and he was training a bunch of twenty-somethings in, you know, credit card bank stuff. The training was not going well. Pete’s stress level, heart rate, and voice were rising. And then he thought:

You know, this is annoying, but at least I’m not suffering in war-torn Bosnia. And I’ll bet that right now there’s no one in war-torn Bosnia who’s thinking:

You know, this is annoying, but at least I don’t have to teach credit basics to a bunch of twenty-year-olds.

That, my friends, is called perspective.

Meanwhile, back at hell day: So I’m in my car, and the SUV speeds up at the last minute to make the last tenth-second of the yellow light, which means I get stuck at the red. And I can already see that the train signal crossing is coming down two blocks ahead. And—of course— it’s one of those two-mile long freight trains . . . and . . .

Wow. If these are my problems, my life is pretty good. I’m in a car I own, having just left the awesome school that my kids—who are also awesome—attend. I just left a grocery store where they have fifty kinds of toothpaste, because that’s the world I’m fortunate enough to live in. And when—very long train aside—I get home, it will be to the house I own*, from which I’m able to work and support myself and my family. And oh by the way, the Bay Area is really pretty and has great weather.

(*Unless something changes, I won’t actually own my home until I’m about 123. But you get the point.)  

Given this as the backdrop, my issues are, as I like to call them, white middle-class lady problems. Which, hey—no knock on white people, or middle-class people, or ladies—I’m most of those things.* But giving these issues a silly name helps put them in their proper place.

(*There’s a term that’s since come up to describe the same phenomenon: “first-world problems.” But I think mine is funnier.)  

Moral of the story: As a parent, you’re definitely going to have (many more than) one of those days. And let’s face it: Problems are problems—or, at least, annoying. That’s real, and there’s no sense trying to deny it. But perspective helps. And I find that when my brain is actually working from the right perspective, I can see—and you might, too—that we white middle-class lady variants have it pretty good.

Next Chapter: (Not Really) Big Stuff