The System.

While sitting on my couch one day, I glanced to my left and saw my six year-old daughter two knuckles deep in her right nostril, digging for gold. I winced and watched. She pulled out a nugget and opened her mouth. “Don’t eat that!!” I screamed. She looked at me sympathetically. Then, she ate it. With the dark green fleck stuck to her front tooth, she turned her head and grinned at me. I shook my head and smiled. Being a reformed booger-eater myself, I knew that long-term damage was improbable, but I was still slightly queased.


My daughter is a contrarian. I say, “Don’t”. She does. I say, “Do”. She doesn’t. It is a very simple and predictable system. This has been a curse to me for as long as she has breathed air. Being resourceful and certainly familiar with bad juju, I began concocting a plan to remedy the impact of her obstinacy on my quality of life. I am not interested in justice. I simply want compliance. An idea began to emerge, an idea with power. Evil power. I could get her to do anything by simply telling her not to. With this, I could do some serious tide-turning!! This was genius!!

I enjoy making my kids do dumb things. Two problems exist for me. One, my kids don’t listen to me. Two, my wife does not enjoy it as I do. In this idea, I saw a solution. By telling my daughter NOT to do something, she would do it. Also, if I played it right, I could be off the hook with my wife. I would give her my normal blank, nobody’s home look and she would buy it. I could exclaim, “I told her not to!” which technically, I had, and I was safe. This revelation felt like Christmas morning. A new world opened up for me. Gratefully, my daughter’s awareness of my manipulative powers are not as sophisticated as my eleven year-old son’s. I could ride this wave for a long time. I could have anything I wanted. I had to be smart about it, but this wonderfully despicable system was nearly fool proof.

My “system” in action: Last week, my daughter asked me if she could have a soda. I said “no”, with a knowing certainty that she would get the soda anyway. I sat on my living room couch with my feet up and continued watching Sportscenter. When she entered the room carrying the soda, I, looking outraged, exclaimed, “I thought I said no”. “Aww.” She replied. “Give it here.” I said and I now had the delicious refreshment that I had wanted and I had not moved. It was nearly flawless execution on my part, the puppet master at work, a true maestro.

I enjoyed this fabulous system until my son began getting suspicious. As the men in the house, I thought, foolishly, that we had a deal. It turns out that Benedict Arnold Markwell seems to enjoy my floundering as much as the rest of family and would forsake our man’s club for his own pleasure quite readily.

While employing my “system” to receive a much-deserved foot rub from my daughter, my son took it upon himself to begin asking questions. These questions went to the heart of the system itself. “Helena, do you know that dad just tricked you into giving him a foot rub?” he said, out loud no less. I gave him the “shut up” eye, but he continued. “He always makes you do stuff and you don’t even know it.” Good God, man, I thought we were a team. She looked at me dubiously, then looked at the traitor and stopped rubbing my feet.

It occurred to me, upon reflection, that I have no team. The boy I thought I could count on, very happily betrayed me. I had no illusions about my wife or daughter. But my son… it hurt. I am now back to square one, trying to devise an even more clever and deceitful method of achieving something resembling control in my house. I will do this alone. As noted in the greatest movie of all time, “The Hangover”, I am a wolf pack of one. So be it. The wheels are turnin’, kids. Beware.