Parenting: The Alex Traynor Way

Let me state right from the start, I am not a parent, and my only parenting experience comes from taking care of a turtle for 2 weeks sometime in 1997. That turtle later died, but to my credit, it seemed sick when I bought it.

As children, we all believe that we know everything, and that there is nothing left for us to learn. But sometime during that brief period of self-superiority, we shit our pants and start to cry. We later learn how to use the toilet, flush, and sometime in our late teens, we realize the benefits of hand-washing. Eventually, we actually do finish absorbing all of the basic knowledge of society.

The biggest dilemma of our human lives, is not the actual learning of facts, but more or less, dealing with how others learn the facts without kicking somebody in the head.

It can be frustrating at times, and we’re all going to have to control that frustration, or else we’ll have a bunch of 35 year olds too busy shitting their pants to give us sponge-baths. My father did the best he could with me, even though he took shortcuts like most parents do. I’ll never forget the wisest piece of fatherly advice I received from him,

“Stop Yelling! Please God, stop the Yelling! There isn't going to be a bathroom for 85 miles, so shut the fuck up and piss on that tree over there.”

Of course, most people wouldn’t have handled it as well as he did, but as long as there isn’t a dead kid on the side of the freeway after the incident, you should be fine.

Here are my ideas on how to handle current parenting issues:

Homosexuality:

My best ideas on how to talk to your child on this subject are very similar to the techniques that my mother used on me.

When your child starts listening to an increasing amount of ‘Village People’ music, sit down with them and say something similar to this,

“(your child’s name here), we need to talk about the music you’re listening to. The people who sing the songs you listen to, are not like you or me. You know how men are supposed to like women, and women are supposed to like men? Well, these singers are different in the fact that they like men instead of women. You can’t listen to this music any more, because I don’t want you becoming one of them. If you ever become one of them, you will die a slow painful death and when you do die, your face will explode into blood and guts and it’ll mess up the rug. Do you want me to have to clean that up? I sure don’t.”

Puberty:

Puberty is not only a time of emotional change, but a time of bodily change as well. My best advice as to dealing with how to break it to them, is to not tell them at all. You don’t get very many opportunities to scare the living shit out of your child in this day in age, so, not only does it save you an embarrassing conversation, it’s also very humorous to observe.

Racism:

You have to take a firm stance with your child about this issue, tell them that Racism is never OK when said race is around, otherwise it’s just good clean fun!

In the few days I spent with my turtle, Nordberg, I learned a lot of things I never knew about parenting before,
1. You can learn to love them,
2. They make you feel good about yourself, and
3. They die when you don’t feed them.

My suggestion to you: Before you decide on having children of your own, kill a few pets as practice for the real thing.