Kids say the cutest things, don’t
they? Only last week, my two-year-old daughter said, “Mami, has the moon
got a mummy and daddy?” A few weeks earlier, my five year old son asked, “Do wasps
eat cheese or people?”
At other times, of course, they're total bastards.
Take last week, on the school run, when
my seven-year-old daughter said,
“My best friend Annie thinks you’re
ugly.”
“That’s not very nice is it?” I said,
lamely.
Now, everyone who knows me knows how much I hate the school run. Doing the school run is the
psychological equivalent of trekking hundreds of miles without food or water across enemy
terrain, on your knees, whilst hallucinating. (Even Bear Grylls and Ranulph
Fiennes go fucking MENTAL if anyone asks
them to do the school run. It's true.) So, as you can imagine, the absolute last thing I
need to hear – when I’m up against the limits of my endurance – is that I look
like a hatful of arseholes.
“It’s ok because Annie thinks her
mami is ugly too, and probably even more ugly than you”, continued my
daughter, reassuringly.
Awww, shucks kids. You’re too
kind. I’m gonna fucking MELT here.
 |
(COURTESY OF PEN NAME JANE) |
Later, at bath-time, the abuse
continued, which again, wasn't nice. My five-year-old son, who was playing with his favourite Peppa Pig boat,
was listening to a conversation I was having with my daughter, in which I was trying
to reassure her about a blood test.
“Mummy?” he said, all of a sudden.
There was a blob of iridescent bubble
bath foam on the end of his nose, and some cute tufts of the stuff on his head. For a second, he looked adorable,
angelic.
“I hate you on the inside and on the
outside“, he said.
“That’s very nasty”, I said, equally lamely. “Why do you hate me?”
“I just do”, he said, blithely. “I
like daddy more”.
For fucksakes.
And then, finally, yesterday
evening, as I was putting my two-and-a-half-year-old toddler to bed, she suddenly stopped half-way through kissing me and developed a worried, quizzical
frown.
“Mami?” she said. “Why you got red
eyes and yellow teeth?”
“Well, it's like this, you cheeky little
monkey”, I said, a little hysterically by now. “I’ve got red eyes because you sleep horizontally across my
bed every night - and you foot SHREDS my cornea to bits. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. And as
for the yellow teeth, well, do you remember that time we were
breastfeeding and you bit my nipple off, and I fed it
to next door’s dog as a doggie treat because it was, like, so beyond fucking repair? Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Well, same
time as all that hilarious nipple shit was going on, you were also leaching calcium from me - and turning my teeth the colour of
lion’s piss - you little cheeky little monkey you! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha etc etc... "
“Oh”, she said, touching my cheek
with her finger, and then stroking my hair, very gently,“I want you come to bed mummy.”
“Allright”, I said. “But just for tonight.”
