Foot.. err hammer in mouth!!

A hardware store is the last place you want to see someone bring their kids along. Especially the ones that make you want to pull your hair out .. or the ones on a constant mission to kill themselves. Now you see i don’t hate kids, i love my niece. But there are tv commercials featuring an incessantly stubborn kid making a scene at a supermarket for a bag of chocolates – in a condom ad … for a reason!! Let me explain …

Kids have phases of “likability”, if you will. When they are between “oh i just popped out” to about 8-10 months they are this little eating, sleeping and pooping machines that are notoriously accurate at communicating everything to their mothers through …just a wail. Between the ages of 1 to 2 , is when they start walking around wobbling, and start learning their first words… this is a phase when they are the most fun!! Between 2 and 3 is when they become insanely restless, put a dozen things into their mouths all while trying to eat and speak at the same time. This is also the time when the whole world is under their magnifying glass. You make up more stories than a man will ever need for his entire lifetime just to keep their minds occupied. And about everything too… even a little button on a frock… if thats what it takes to get them distracted. Ever tried hiding something.. like a cellphone … from a 3 year old ? Dint even try.. ! Because you have better odds of keeping something away from a russian spy than the little diaper wearing toddler who can barely look over a table. No matter how good you are … they will find it! Even if your hiding place was a cave on the moon!! Its also the phase where they can help you build an incredible amount of patience.

While i was running down this story with my mother, contrary to my belief she had something rather surprising to say. She quoted numerous occasions, at which she believed that I shouldn’t have grown older at all. She believes i was more manageable when i was three or five, very innocent and obedient. And i see what she means, when i look at my six year old niece. Give her a bowl of cereal or a bar of chocolates and put her in front of a TV or her aquarium … that pretty much is all there is to baby sitting her these days. An occasional check to see if she is working through her food and not the fish food makes even a guy like me … look like the best baby sitter in the world!!

This was all very confusing …. because there was proof from personal experience that was shooting holes in my funny theory about kids.

Several minutes “of staring at the roof” later
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and some more
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something dawned on me…. that being young is something we secretly crave all the time. Not because it gives us an escape from the insufferable idea of being old or being responsible … but because it lets you be innocent and ignorant. In innocence alone , we have no worries, or sorrow or sufferings … though we have had a thousand experiences a day. Its not the experiences that disturb or corrupt the mind, but what they leave behind – the residue, the scars and the memories … these accumulate over time and pile up… and that is when sorrow begins!! And this, is what we are constantly trying to run from in our “adult” life.

So here’s thanking the kid trying to shove the head of a claw-hammer into its mouth today, helping me figure this out.

Wishing everyone a very happy, prosperous, an innocent and a “residue free” 2012!!