by Chef Troy
In "The Road Song of the Bandar-Log," Rudyard Kipling wrote of a tribe of apes that believed anything was possible simply by wishing it so. I've got news for you, Mr. Kipling: Those weren't apes, they were toddlers. After four years of watching my own little bandar-log romping around the house, I've come to the conclusion that the conventional strictures of reality simply don't apply to small children--or at least the children don't THINK they do, which comes to the same thing. I now believe that children have the innate ability to distort reality around them; growing up is the process of learning the scope and limitations of that power.
One aspect of the distortion field most parents have experienced is its ability to make time do cartwheels. Anyone who's watched a Barney video four hundred times in a row knows that time isn't always linear; sometimes it gets stuck in a loop, and there's usually a kid involved. Another way the field affects time is to make it seem to suddenly be zooming by at unbelievable speed. After all, my son was born last night--a week ago at most--and yet he has the audacity to be four years old. I'm going to have to have a talk with that young man.
The field's effect on time is localized, however. When I tell my son he has to wait for something until (say) Friday, he inevitably responds, "It's Friday!" and is then astonished when the magic doesn't work. The field can't manage it because there are too many grownups around who know it ISN'T Friday, and its strength is nullified. Too bad; I actually wouldn't mind jumping ahead to Friday once in a while. If there are more kids than parents around, though, it's a different story. All too often at the park when I tell my son it's time to go, he says, "It's NOT time to go!" And before I know what's happening, by golly, we stay another fifteen minutes. Now I know how those Stormtroopers felt when Obi-Wan Kenobi hit them with the Force outside the cantina.
Another way the reality distortion field warps a child's environment is by filtering out certain sounds and enhancing others. If you call a child to dinner, for example, he isn't ignoring you; he honestly doesn't hear you. If a child acts as though she doesn't hear something, it's just the same as if it wasn't said at all. Unfortunately, some parents don't fight against the field as hard as they should, and wind up with wild kids who don't listen to them. Be strong, my fellow parents! You can pierce the field if you try. All you have to do is say one bad word.
I'll bet every parent has experienced this manifestation of the reality distortion field. You can call your kid at the top of your lungs to come take a bath until your voice gives out and she won't hear you at all, but mutter a swear word under your breath after you hit your thumb with a hammer and your little darling will go around repeating it endlessly like a Gertrude Stein poem.
So how can a hapless parent deal with the distortions? The thing to do is not to try and destroy the field, but channel it. After all, you still have yours, you know; you just use it differently. If you do it right, you can use the field to make good times last longer than bad ones, or to hear only the nice things people say about you while discarding the mean things. It's there for you, but like all fields, it must be tended if it is to grow.