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During last July’s 5.8 earthquake, 3-year-old Bronwyn told her 1-year-old sister, “We’re going for a wiggle.” READ MORE
Fatherhood
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The most powerful words in a 3-year-old's vocabulary are "I don't want to," but the most interesting ones are "Let me do it myself." How did it happen that this...this recent embryo is now taking a screwdriver and batteries from the utility drawer and proceeding to change the batteries in his yapping toy puppy? I approach my boy, exercising the caution one should always exercise when approaching a 3-year-old who is holding a screwdriver. "Maybe I should do that," I say. "Let me do it myself!" He fits the screwdriver into the screw, turns it to the left, and opens the battery hatch. I am, to say the least, impressed; it took me until I was 30 to internalize the logic of "righty-tighty, lefty-loosey." I still have occasional problems with the notions of clockwise and counter-clockwise. My son is a real sport about these things, though. He thinks I can fix anything. Yesterday I got on a ladder and changed the air conditioning filter and he reacted as if I'd spawned human life from a spare rib. The boy has enough confidence in me; it's just that he's got even more in himself. The battery compartment on the pup's tummy is open. My son pulls on the ribbon and the shiny dead triple-As pop out. I take two new batteries and start inserting them side-by-side, one rightside up, one upside down, as prescribed by the little diagram on the hatch cover. "Let me do it myself!" "Well, let me show you how." "No, I wanna do it myself!" He sticks the batteries in with the two positives pointing in the same direction. He flips the switch and the pup does not yap. Score one for Dad. I take the batteries out, turn one around, start to put them back in. "Let me do it myself." He does it himself. He does it right. He screws the hatch shut. The pup yaps. Same day, 10 minutes later. My wife tells the boy he needs his eyedrops. The kid's got a case of pink eye, and today's day one for drops. Last time we had do to this, it was a nightmare or forcible head-stabilization and some very loud screaming. This time, though, he takes the dropper from my wife's hand. "Let me do it myself!" The kid puts drops in his own eye. Let me be clear on something: I cannot put drops in my own eye. It seems these days there is only one thing my son cannot do himself, and in that connection, I have a diabolical little plan. Tonight, when my son asks his mother and me to stay in his room till he falls asleep, I know just what to say: "I'll let you do it yourself." Greg Blake Miller is a writer and college instructor in Las Vegas. The UC Irvine graduate is a longtime contributor to Churm Publishing, Inc. |
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