Category: psychology

At the Movies

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No matter how hard they try to wreck movies, I still love them. I love a great book, a fantastic album, and even a mind-blowing painting, but nothing beats spending ninety minutes in the hands of a master movie maker. Thanks to the VHS, and every medium before and since, I’ve watched more movies than just about anyone I’ve ever met. I write “just about”, because I had a “Who’s watched more movies” showdown with a fellow movie freak who cut the debate short by asking, “Do you watch porn?” I said I didn’t. He said, “I win!” 

Nobody ever died wishing they watched more movies, and it’s not something we normally lord over someone to a point of superiority. When comedians start dropping references from movies, however, movie freaks enjoy getting those jokes that the others –who didn’t waste so much of their life watching movies–don’t.  

“Before we go to a movie, we have to get to the movie theater, and is there a better way of getting there, or anywhere, than in a Jeep Wrangler? (Cue the video backdrop of a Wrangler managing various rough roads, icy snow, and large rock terrains.) “Hi! I’m somebody famous, but I have a moderately-dressed family (cue the entrance of the wife and kids and remind the paid spokesman to put his arm around his daughter’s shoulder), who need a reliable automobile to get them places. We put some serious consideration into purchasing a sensible family sedan, and then the snowstorm hit.   

“When hazardous conditions hit, the 4-wheel drive (4WD) drivetrain of the Jeep Wrangler will go from a luxury to a necessity. We don’t always need it, of course, but hazardous conditions strike, we can push, pull, or otherwise engage the 4WD to the supermarket, the drugstore, or the movie theater with comfort. The comfort 4WD owners know can be so great we might consider it a little weird. Most of us don’t care if others have a faster car than we do, and we don’t care if they think have a better car, and we never have. We’re not car guys. When that snowstorm hits, however, and it brings ice and everything else that defines hazardous conditions, there is something embarrassingly unusual that happens to us when we’re not only able to manage hazardous conditions but dominate them. 

“We all learned how to drive in the snow and ice in other cars, and those cars taught us to be cautious and never over-confident in hazardous conditions, no matter what we drive, but how often have you felt so intimidated by the “here/there be dragons” roads that you decided not to leave home. If this was you, the makers of Jeep have the antidote. The 4WD Jeep Wrangler not only provides the piece of mind that comes from making a decision that protects your family, but it can lead to some feelings of masculine machismo as you conquer nature. (Cue the son’s growl.) And now back to the show.”  

The Action Movie

“Jason Statham is our new action hero!” they say with all sorts of exclamation points. I yawn. Action movies? Does anyone still lust after a great action flick? I have nothing but compliments for Jason Statham. He’s a quality actor who picks some quality movies to star in, the Crank movies stand out as his best so far, but action movies as a whole are just dead to me? We all loved what Stallone and Schwarzenegger did to and for the genre, in the 80’s and 90’s, but didn’t the whole action movie format kind of peak in that era? How many twists on the genre can we put on this otherwise tired genre? The John Wick movies supposedly proved I am wrong. People were a buzz about them. “You have to see this next one. Do you want to see it? Do you want to see it with me? If this one is anywhere close to the first one, it’s a must-see.” So, I saw it, and as action movies go, it was really good, but I couldn’t have been more bored. Maybe there was a time when I found choreographed fight scenes exciting, but I can’t remember it. All scenes in movies require some suspension of disbelief, but we all know they’re going to win the fight. They are all so formulaic. 

To introduce his guest action-hero Steven Seagal to his show, Arsenio Hall had a great line, “This man could probably whip your tail with a french fry.” I’m sure Steven Seagal could probably beat me up, and I kind of don’t care,, but we’re talking about a man who played a character in a movie, and most of his physical exploits were choreographed with players executing moves that allowed him to punch them or kick in pre-planned moves. Does that mean he could beat me up with a french fry in real life? We all know they’re not fighting for real, of course, but we suspend our disbelief long enough to enjoy the choreography involved. If it’s not real, and all the moves by the main character and his adversaries are choreographed, aren’t we basically watching a ballet with some punching, kicking, and bullets thrown in? “But you’re male, and every male has just been intoxicated with fight scenes since about Bruce Lee. Why, because we’re males. It’s as every bit apart of us as our ring-a-ding-ding.” Well, then, I’m obviously not as male as you, because I’d prefer the verbal, cerebral exchanges we can hear in even the most average Woody Allen film over the finest choreographed fight scenes of the best Van Damme flick. 

The Car Chase   

Some say that the greatest car chase scene that ever took place in the history of cinema occurred in 1971’s French Connection. People still talk about this scene as if it’s one of the greatest scenes in movie history. They talk about how dangerous it was, and Screenrant.com writes that director “William Friedkin had no permission to film the car chase the way it was done, which is why The French Connection could never be made today.” They also drop a note about how the car accident in the scene was real, and Friedkin kept it in the movie to add to the scene’s gritty realism. I drop a big “who give a crud” thud. When I saw that that scene for the first time, before I knew anything about the hoopla and the hollering, I thought the scene ran too long. After hearing people gush about the scene in the decades since, I watched it again with a renewed sense, and I thought it ran too long. That scene, one car chase scene, runs approximately six minutes. About five minutes too long. “But you have to understand how difficult the logistics of the scene were,” they say. “You have to sink yourself into the drama of the moment, and how well it was edited to a perfect pulse pounding pace.” No, I don’t. I don’t care about the particulars of the artistry of the film-making, I just want to sit down and enjoy watching a movie. I also don’t plan on ever shooting a car chase scene, so why would I be influenced by anything involved in the shooting of it? I watch a movie to be entertained, and when a chase scene, or a fight scene, interrupts the pace of that movie, “because that’s what we love”, I now have the luxury of fast forwarding through it to see what happened.

The Bad Guy

Our familiarity with portrayals of bad guys began in preschool when our teacher put on a puppet show and introduced the bad guy, “And here’s comes mean Mr. Johnson,” “BOO!” we all shouted in unison. “All I care about is money!” she has mean Mr. Johnson say in her mean guy voice, as our throng of boos strengthened. It was fun and funny back then, but we fully grown, mature and responsible adults are still doing that today. When the bad guy enters our adult productions today, the writers will introduce him by having him kick a cute, little puppy down a flight of stairs, light a physically-impaired individual’s house on fire, or do some other equally heinous act such as declaring there are some virtues to profit. At some point in the production, he will declare that a side character isn’t pulling their weight in the company, and he will do it in such an over the top, mean, bad and dastardly way that it’s almost embarrassingly cheesy to watch. Enter our good guy, “C’mon man, that’s no way to talk to a person.” We all but cheer our good guy for saying what needed to be said, but doesn’t anyone else see this as the movie’s obnoxiously obvious way of endearing the main character to the audience?

I would submit that the characterizations of bad guys haven’t progressed much beyond that preschool puppet show portrayal of the mean Mr. Johnson bad guys. “Hey, if you don’t think money is important, I’d like to see you get along without it!” mean Mr. Johnsons say in modern, adult movies. “Boo!” we shout in unison. Most adults don’t openly boo in theaters, but do we avoid openly booing because we’ve matured past that impulse, or does decades of movie going let us know that the writers and directors of our beloved productions are going to make something awful to him? That’s what separates us from preschoolers, we know the movie makers are going to expose him as the bad guy he is, and we know he’s going to get his comeuppance. We’re not talking about comedies either, where it’s more acceptable to have exaggerated characters for comedic purposes. We’re talking about otherwise complex dramas that basically write Scooby-Doo bad guys as actual characters. “He’s going to get his comeuppance,” someone in the audience says, as if they’re watching a sporting event. He’s one of those “I told you,” guys who love to say they knew what was coming, even though it is as obvious as it was in our preschool puppet plays. As I wrote I don’t need, or even want, a complex, deep narrative on par with a Dostoyevsky novel, but I wouldn’t mind seeing some writers shake up these tedious, bullet point tropes that adhere to the 80’s cookie cutter characters that Scooby Doo made famous.    

My favorite illustration of this point comes from Quentin Tarantino: 

“Critics always really preferred Bill Murray movies to Chevy Chase movies,” Tarantino said. “However, it does seem as if the point of all the Bill Murray movies is that he’s this kind of hip, cool, curmudgeon, smartass guy, who in the last 20 minutes gets a transformation and becomes this nice guy. And almost apologizes for who he was the entire movie before that happened.” 

Tarantino continued with examples: “Stripes, Groundhog Day, Scrooged. The whole thing. For instance, Stripes. How does he go from where Warren Oates kicks his ass, deservedly kicks his ass…to where now he’s rallying the troops? Now, he’s getting their army on during the parade and now he’s leading a secret mission. Same thing with Groundhog Day. I mean, does anybody really think a less sarcastic Bill Murray is a better Bill Murray? Maybe it’s better for Andie MacDowell, but not for us as the viewer.”

“Yet, Chevy Chase movies don’t play that s***,” Tarantino said. “Chevy Chase is the same supercilious a**hole at the end of the movie that he is at the beginning. He never changes in his stuff…I mean, unless they have him playing a dope like he is in the Vacation movies. But when he’s playing like a Chevy character, he never apologizes for who he is, stays the same way through the whole film, and even if there’s a slight change, that’s not the whole point of the movie, like changing him into a nice, cuddly guy.”

Information Age and Movies

Another huge component of watching modern movies is all of the insider information we have at our disposal. Thanks to news aggregators, the internet in general, and the other chairs on late-night talk shows, we now know so much about movies that we crossed a tipping point of too much information about the production of a simple 90-minute movie. I used to find the information actors, directors, and everyone else involved in the production provided in the other chairs on late-night talk shows somewhat fascinating, but somewhere along the line I realized it’s all just self-imposed deification, and their sign to them that they made it. For some reason, we all want to know everything we can find about our definition of our royalty, and the roles they play in movies, and we can never get enough. I did. When the actor told me that they put weight on to play the role, I didn’t really care, but I considered it a worthwhile dedication to the role. When the host began to ask questions about the diet they used to add weight, I turned the channel. When the person in the other chair informed us that she didn’t wear make-up for their role, I didn’t care. When the host said, “You are very brave,” and he appeared to mean it, I turned the channel. When it was revealed in an aggregator, that this actor didn’t get along with that actor, their onscreen lover, we all learned that many considered working with that actor difficult. When we learned that the actor became so immersed in his method acting that he demanded everyone on set call him Weasel, because he’s playing Weasel, I found that fascinating at first. Then, when everyone copied that immersion technique, I found it trite, redundant, and a little pathetic and dumb. We learn that some actors aren’t nice, but others are. “It’s true. I know he’s a good guy, because he asked me my name when giving me an autograph, and he called me Harley from then on, and he even winked at my kid.” That director used this technique, this setting, those cameras, that soundtrack, and the movie studio budgeted it at such and such an amount, but as usual the artistically demanding director burned through that the first week. We still care about the quality of a movie, of course, but all these other late-night talk show talking points enhance the movie experience for us. Why? I honestly don’t understand how any of this information enhances your cinematic experience. You like a movie better, because you found out she’s nice, and you won’t go to see another movie, because you heard a report about how one time that star didn’t hold an elevator for an old lady carrying groceries? You might be a victim of too much information. 

Even with all that, I still love movies. I find a trip to the theater, a night at home with Netflix, Prime, etc., and a quality movie, a great evening. No matter how hard they try, they can never take that away from me.  

Rilalities XIII

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“80% of success is showing up,” Woody Allen once said.

“So, what you’re saying is if I want to succeed, I should show up?” you ask. To answer that question, we ask another question, how many people don’t? How many apathetic and self-destructive types didn’t show up for the opportunities-of-a-lifetime Woody Allen received? Was Allan Stewart Konigsbeg (Woody Allen) the most talented person in his troupe, or did he show up so often that he got the job, the jobs, and the career that the apathetic and self-destructive did not, because they weren’t there.

In his book I’m Dying Up Here, author Arthur Knoedelseder suggests that Woody Allen’s 1978 Annie Hall winning numerous Academy Awards that year opened up all kinds of opportunities for standup comedians, comedic actors, and writers of comedy. Most of those who would land multiple picture deals would go onto be the faces of comedic humor in the ’80’s and beyond. The question is was Woody Allen funnier than those peers, or was he in the right place and the right time in Hollywood history?  

To listen to modern screenwriters tell their tale, Woody Allen’s story isn’t the type of story we enjoy. We’d much rather hear the story about “the kid,” “the natural,” or the one everyone agreed was the most talented person in the room who finally got his big break, and in the next scene, they’re asleep or dead with a heroin needle hanging from their arm. It happens so often on screen, that it’s a trope, but is it true? We’re sure it’s happened, but has it happened so often that it’s a truth, or do we just love to cringe so much that screenwriters feel compelled to write about it.

I can only imagine that the screenwriter tries to sell his script pitching about “the kid,” “the natural”, and the potential Hollywood producers asking “Okay, but where is the arc? What does the American public love more than anything else, the rise and fall. We build him up as the kid, the natural, and then, on the cusp of him finally realizing his talent on a national, worldwide scale his dysfunctional, self-destructive traits rear their ugly head. It’s the Freddie Prinze story. People love that story. They love to cringe.”  

It can be a little scary to put all of our potential to succeed, and all of our hard work, on the line. How many of us have the potential to succeed, and how many can stand before others, relatively anonymous and proverbially naked, to showcase our potential? Are you a fraud, or are you so confident that you’re just waiting for an opportunity to show your talent? Are you the type who creates your own opportunities, or do you wait for them to happen? If you’re the latter, will you not show up, because you’re afraid you’re not ready? Even if you’re “not ready” in a relative sense you’ve defined, that might just be your opinion. If Woody Allen’s quote holds any weight, it might redound to your benefit to show up anyway to see what happens.   

Some of us cringe when we hear tales of the dysfunctional and self-destructive types, others laugh, and we all feel sorry for them, but they’re the ones we replace. We’re the ones who show up and do it so often that we might overcome whatever relative level of talent we might have.

Showing up is also starting up. How many of us think about doing something, how many of us daydream, and how many of us actually do it? Showing up suggests that you’re ready to make it happen. You’ve surpassed the dream stage, and you’re there. You’ve shown up and you’re ready to work with others to make it happen.  

Stop Letting Your Bullies Bully You

There are few things that bother me more than watching a victim of bullying make their problem worse by the manner in which they deal with a bully. When I hear, read, or see a member of an audience become so offended that they’ve become outraged at something a standup comedian says, I say, “You’re going about it wrong! You’re doing it all wrong!”

There might be some exceptions to the rule, but my bet is every standup comedian was a former class clown/bully. The essence of the craft is such that it attracts guys and girls that someone, somewhere once called a class A jerk. (A class A jerk is someone other than the class D jerk who pokes fun at others for sport and backs down if anyone informs them they’re offended in anyway.) 

When real life darkened their door, most standup comedians admitted they didn’t know what to do. They were as lost, or more, as the rest of us. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if my predecessors didn’t do what they did in this craft to make it what is it today. Not only am I not good at anything else, I didn’t particularly like doing anything else.” What is it they’re doing, on stage, every night? What is it they enjoy doing so much that it saved them from the depths of despair? If we dig through all the particulars of the craft, we find that making fun of other people is the core of standup comedy. Where do you think they discovered their talent, and how did they hone it? They did it on your back, and your delicious tears told them they might be onto something. It’s what they do. It’s who they are.

One other special ingredient that defines the difference between most great comedians and the ones who never made it to the main stage, pushing boundaries. What does that mean? We think pushing boundaries is about filmmakers teaching us what we don’t want to hear, and it is, but it’s also about standup comedians telling us what we don’t want to hear. They’re mutually exclusive, diametrically opposed, and the same. Tell a standup that they can do anything they want except this, and this will be the only thing they want to do. Tell them that they can make fun of everyone, except these people, and a joke about those people will probably make it into their intro. My problem is not with standup comedians. We all know who they are. They’re bullies. The problem is with the offended. If the standup comedian is wrong, tell them why, and do it from a position of power not weakness.

If we ever effectively find a way to diminish, deter, or defeat bullies as a whole, the one detriment might be our inability to deal with bullies. The only solution we’ve found at this point is to inform them that we’re offended by something they’ve said. Who cares if you’re offended? Some do, of course, and there are probably more now than ever before who aren’t afraid to say that they’re offended, but I can tell you one person who doesn’t care, the offender. I’ve been offended by something a comedian said, and I always think that’s just one man’s opinion, and it’s not an informed one. (I use the term offended, here, for the purpose of illustrating a point, because I can’t think of any comedian who has ever offended me.) You getting offended is exactly what the offender wants. It’s what their audience wants too. How many nice guys finish first in the world of standup? What is it .0001% The nature of the beast is such that if a comedian goes clean and tries to avoid offending anyone, the audience might chuckle politely, but the chuckle will be soft and almost internal, as they wait for that hurtful haymaker to punctuate the joke. Most good guy, clean comedians are widely regarded as too safe to be truly funny. We, as a whole, want our standup comedians risqué, we want them to push boundaries, and we want them to speak out against unsafe targets. Who are the unsafe targets though? That’s the question skippy, and that’s the point Howard. The unsafe targets have shifted from my guys to your guys, and from my issues to yours. We didn’t handle it well, claiming offense and outrage, and now you’re doing the same. 

If this is true, wow do we stop the mean-spirited comedian then? I don’t think you do. I think they love it so much there’s nothing we can do or say to stop them. You can see it on their face. They were born to do this, they love it, and they wouldn’t want it any other way. They define your offense as effective penetration. Their audience, comprised mostly of former bullies and class clowns, love it too. Do we get in their face and try to mow them down? Have you ever been bullied by a class A jerk? They’re unusually very good at what they do. They’re often unusually smart, and not only are they smart, they’re quick, and not only are they quick, they’re funny. It’s often that final nugget, funny, that just tears into our soul. They come up with material quick, and how do we defeat them? If it’s a class A jerk, we’re on their turf when we’re trying to outfunny them. The only way to defeat them is to switch the playing field to our internal home court and outdo them there. If we can convince them, there, that they’re not getting in, we’ll take all their fun out of it for them. That’s all I got, and I know it’s not great, but it’s obviously better than everything you’ve come up with thus far. You’re encouraging them and making them think they’re onto something when you declare that you’re offended. You’re making it worse.   

Crazy Joe Davola

Crazy Joe Davola (actor Peter Crombie) has died, and Fox News reports that his friends suggest that even though “he was cast as a bad guy on Seinfeld, and he played numerous interesting and complicated characters, including Bernard Goetz, he was very sweet in an old-school way. When not working as an actor on stage or in front of a camera, he was genuinely humble, preferring others to talk and take main stage.  He was always helpful, giving and funny. He was one [of] the kindest, soft-spoken, loving and caring people I have ever met. A gentle giant.” It’s a fitting tribute, but it’s not funny? We might not want funny to be on site forever more, but in private, on stage, I think Peter Crombie would’ve loved it if someone, someone like Lewis Black, offered Crombie a comedic sendoff. “It wasn’t much of a challenge for Peter Crombie to play the awful characters he did, because he was awful. He was an awful human being. I remember one day he saw a kid with ice cream, and he stole it. He didn’t want their ice cream. He didn’t even like ice cream. He would pitch it in the nearest receptacle. He did it just to do it. Just so he could say he did it. He said that he liked to hear kids cry. “The younger the better,” he said.”   

Review of Self-Reliance

If there’s one thing an aspiring writer can learn from the movie Self-Reliance, it’s that your audience doesn’t want anything bad to happen to the fictional characters of your stories, until they nothing does. Leaving out all of the other particulars of the plot, the primary plot of this movie is that a bored, lonely man is offered a proposition. If you can survive for thirty days, with murderers trying to murder you, we will give you $1 million dollars if they are unsuccessful. There is a catch for the murderers, however, they cannot kill him if he’s within three feet of another person. The need to have someone near him, leads the character to realize that in his life before the contest he forgot to make real, human connections throughout his life, and he forgot to live life to the fullest. That underlying theme would’ve been engaging if, IF, it was properly balanced with the character narrowly escaping harrowing threats. The problem with this movie is that this viewer (you might be different) never feels the threats are anything more than an excellent plot device to sell the movie. There are some threats made on the character’s life throughout the movie, but they are easily, too easily, vanquished. This reveals to us that the threats on the character’s life are basically ancillary to the underlying theme. It’s as if the writer said, I want to write a post-COVID script that reminds the audience of the need for human connection and companionship. The problem is how do we go about writing about that without getting too gushy? I got it. Let’s develop a contest for the character in which he needs to have people around him. All of that would be fine, except the writer/director forgot to concentrate enough on the threat therein. 

Anyone who watches this movie will realize as much as we don’t enjoy cringing, we enjoy cringing. We want to see scenes where the character stupidly gets into harrowing situations that he can’t possibly escape, until he does, and we’re awash with relief when he does. We want to experience the ups and downs of what it must feel like to have people trying to murder you. We want to scream, “Don’t go in there!” when he approaches the wrong door. We want to see pianos fall behind him while he’s talking on the phone, comically unaware of what just happened. We want to grip the arms on our chairs when a gigantic ball comes rolling after him, as he runs through a cavernous region in which there’s no lateral escape, and we want o see a poison-tipped arrow hit a guy standing somewhat near the main character after the main character bent down to pick up a piece of garbage that some rube just threw on the ground. “Hey, it’s called littering man!” The main character shouts at the litterer, as the man with the arrow in his neck, behind him, slowly falls gurgling to the ground. There can be humor intermingled in the tension, but we want/need the tension. What we get from Self-Reliance are all of the hypotheticals a man who must survive a scenario might have to go through to insure his survival. The movies is really about the social interactions a person might not go through if there wasn’t an ever-present, or in this case never-present, threat of death. My takeaways are that the movie accomplishes two things: It teaches writers what not to do with a thriller, and it leaves you with the weird, uncomfortable feeling that you actually want bad things to happen to fictional characters. Those of us who know and enjoy so many of Jake Johnson’s projects, enjoyed this one too. He’s a funny, interesting actor, and Self-Reliance is not a bad movie in anyway, except for that lack of threat, and the ending is more of a wrap-up than an exciting conclusion. The character basically tells us what happened at the end, and he shows us some shots that visualize what he’s saying. 

To Parent or Not to Parent

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When it comes to the prospect of parenting, an overwhelming majority of us hang between “I’m not sure if I’m ready” and a friend sitting us down with a “listen my friend, you’re definitely not ready”, but did you ever meet someone who was ready, at a very young age? Did you ever meet someone who was parent-material? I have, a couple times. I didn’t know it at the time, of course, as it’s not something that you can spot, but when you’re parenting, and you’re thinking “What the hell did I just do?” with that screaming kid on your shoulder, you think back on the Bills and Courtneys of the world, and you kind of wish you were more like them, sort of, and in a roundabout way.

They never complained about anything, and they never said a bad word about anyone. I’m not eulogizing them, because I’m sure they’re still alive out there, somewhere. They were just responsible, well-centered, strait-laced people who were so happy. As a student of cultural tropes, I expected to eventually find something scandalous about them, but there wasn’t. They were just happy, well-adjusted people who really enjoyed life, but I found them so boring I couldn’t be around them. They probably made some excellent parents though.    

The rest of us hang somewhere between between dysfunctional and self-destructive on a graph, and we need to seriously consider our level of sanity before having children. If I had a kid in my twenties, like the rest of you, that kid would probably be in a straight-jacket screaming something awful about my parenting skills in repetitive cycles. He would know how to read, and his math skills would probably be somewhere around adequate by the 5th grade, but all those interaction cues that we pick up from our parents would’ve been so out of whack that his pediatrician would’ve rushed him to a place where he could be monitored 24-7, or on some radical, experimental drugs that I would’ve had to sign off on.   

One of the 10 commandments of quality parenting that I would’ve failed most miserably is the “don’t be selfish” one. Don’t be selfish with your stuff, and don’t be selfish with your time. I’m sure I would’ve seen to it that he was fed, and I probably would’ve made sure he had clothing and all that, but the minute he started touching my stuff or saw to it that I couldn’t go out boozing with my friends, because he decided to show some signs of diptheria, I would’ve resented him for taking my fun time away.   

I know I was selfish, but are you? “No!” No one says yes, and very few say, “Well, maybe a little. Maybe in some circumstances, I might be a little self-involved, but who isn’t?” No, we all but shout a gameshow-quick “No!” answers that suggest we think there there might be prizes for a quick answer. There’s no gameshow button here, and there are no prizes, unless you count feeling better about yourself a prize. 

If you watch the same sitcoms I do, those that loosely revolve around parenting, you see parents with all this free time. Kid walks in the room, says something cute, and exits stage left. I understand that the show is not about the kids, but when I see these parents standing side by side with a sweet smile, looking down at a sleeping child, cherishing him, I wonder what we did wrong. When we put our kid down and he eventually slipped off to the dream world, we exited the room on tiptoes whisper screaming, “He’s down! He’s fricking asleep, finally! Thank you God!!!”

These sitcoms are all about the joys and love of parenting, but those of us who know some elements of parenting now, know that no kid exits stage left in real life. They’re center stage, about twelve hours a day, more if they don’t nap, seven days a week. And if these dependent, little sacks of flesh are not center stage, they’ll find unique and creative ways to get it, until they soak up almost all of your precious and ever-dwindling free time. 

That’s the one thing prospective parents should be ready to give up/sacrifice, more than anything else, before before you agree to bring something so needy and dependent into the world: time. 

Most of us have a very narrow definition of selfish. “I had a big bag of pistachios the other day, and I gave some of them to Henrietta. You saw that. You know I’m not selfish. I share.” Okay, let me rephrase the question, how much of your life revolves around you? If we’re as self-centered as we think we are, we might not be able to answer that question objectively. A better question might be, how frustrated do we get when our friends have to back out, last minute, on a planned, fun-filled night, because of something their kid did? 

Do you have that want, that need, for a-night-o’-fun out of your system yet? Check that question hard, because that could be the proverbial switch in the track that decides it. I know it did for me. I had to get it all out of my system before I was ready. Most people answer one way on Sunday, the morning after, but that answer changes somewhere around 6:00pm, on Friday, when everyone is off work, they’ve finished dinner, and they’re headed to the bar. I knew I wasn’t ready for the end of it for a long time, and I would’ve resented the wife and child for taking up so much of my free time if I rushed that decision. If I had a kid back then, I may have enjoyed spending time with them on my terms, but I can now tell you now, ten years in, that it’s rarely on my terms. 

To be fair to everyone out there, and ourselves, the definition of quality parenting is so relative that it’s almost impossible to define in an absolute. Some of us might surprise ourselves in the beginning, by being a responsible, selfless parent, but we always revert to who we were before we met this kid. The shock and awe of seeing them for the first time changes us. It is, as the old cliche suggests, a moment when you realize your life will never be the same from that point forward. Once a parent, always a parent, and all that runs through our head when we make those vows and promises to this tiny, little thing that we can spin on a finger, like a Harlem Globetrotter, and we live up to those vows and promises…in the beginning. In the beginning, we put our best foot forward when we meet them, like we did its mother. Our brothers and sisters might be in awe of our parenting skills. “Never knew you had it in you,” they might say, and we bask in the glow of that compliment, but everyone who knows us knows that we will eventually revert to who we were/are before we ever met the kid. That’s the person we need to interrogate beforehand, to find out if we’re too selfish, self-involved, or narcissistic to have a kid.   

“Are you responsible now?” I hated the ‘R’ word growing up. Everyone threw it at me. “You really need to act more responsible,” they’d say. Okay, but I’m seven. You know that right? “You are only seven, but you still act like a six-year-old.” Okay, I realize I don’t know much about this real-world you’re always going on about, but this childhood thing doesn’t last forever. You might not remember that, because, for you, that was fifty-three years ago, but there’s something about this childhood thing that leads me to believe I should be focusing on enjoying this as much as possible before it’s over. I don’t think responsibility should even enter my purview here, at least not until I’m eight, and I continued to think that way until I was about thirty-eight. “You can’t do that, you have responsibilities,” or “You’re in a position in life now where you have to be act more responsible.” The ‘R’ word was that annoying itch they put in my hair that I ran away from, screaming, for much of my life, because I wasn’t ready. 

I eventually had so much fun for so much of my life that it wasn’t as fun anymore. We all know the burning the candle at both ends phrase, and I was doing that. Except it wasn’t work, as most attribute that phrase. I was burning the candle at both ends with fun, great conversations, and moments that last forever, until they’re about releasing all the tension and stress from the work week. Are you ready to call an end to all that? How ready are you to spend your Friday nights at home binging on Spongebob, playing Chutes and Ladders, and reading the same Dr. Seuss book for the thirty-ninth time? When your friend calls you up and says they’re headed to the 18th Amendment, how frustrating will it be to say, “Sorry, kid’s got the runs, and no one wants to babysit a kid with the runs.” How much of your precious fun time are you willing to sacrifice to the relatively unrewarding task of raising a child? 

They say it’s rewarding. They say it’s the most rewarding job on Earth, and it is, when it’s all over and we think back. The good times are rewarding, as is the element of how much they’ve added to our lives, but how long does it take to get there? The kid doesn’t even appreciate it. “It’s your job!” they might say on the rare occasion when we humiliate ourselves by asking for a little appreciation. We might conveniently forget all the crap involved, and dung and vomit in between, if we’re lucky enough to live long enough to see them parent someone themselves. At that point, they might appreciate how hard it was for us to raise them, and they might turn to us and offer that one glorious compliment we’ve waited our adult life to hear, but they’ll probably qualify that by saying, “You did a lot wrong too. Here’s what I am not going to do.” 

“Where should your focus be, working on the marriage, or rearing the child?” a priest once asked us. “The child,” we answered in unison. The priest obviously engineered the question to get a wrong answer, so he could explain, “Quality parenting flows from a quality marriage. Not only does a quality marriage give a child the definition of a quality marriage, the foundation of a quality marriage provides a general sense of stability in a child’s life, and it provides them a definition of love and life from both the female and male perspectives.” Anyone who has lived through the death of a parent, or a divorce, knows how seminal these points are in childhood and the subsequent adult life. 

As I wrote earlier, it’s impossible to define the difference between quality parenting and poor, because that definition is so relative, but there are extremes. We all have flaws, good days and bad, but some of us are not systemically sound, and some of us loved dating those types. Some of us are almost instinctually attracted to the dysfunctional, self-destructive types. We don’t exactly know why, but we thought they were so funny, so mean, and so mean-funny. We don’t know who they remind us of, or if they were so unique to our experience that their captivating qualities reside in the idea that we’ve never met anyone quite like them before, but we climb all over one another to date them. They make us laugh, cry, and we feel so alive in their company that we might unwittingly become attracted to their chaotic merry-go-round. They’re exciting, dramatic, and different from day to day, but those qualities often don’t lead to quality parenting. Dating them might be another thing to get out of your system if your plans involve having a family, you might want to find the closest thing to normal you can find. 

There are a number of sites that list top 10 qualities of a good parent, or top 10 signs you are (Or will be) a good parent. We could list those, and even add some things you could do to find out more about yourself, beforehand, but parenting is one of those roles in life that is so relative and so day-to-day that we won’t know the final answer until we’re doing it, every day for months and years. We can know who we are in the now, however. We can ask ourselves a bunch of questions regarding our level of maturity, and our ability to handle responsibility, multitasking, and stress. We can also look around at our friends and focus on those couples who never should’ve become parents in the first place, and we all know those who should’ve known. Every parent thinks this at one point or another, temporarily, but as with everything else, there are extremes. There are those who never should’ve had kids in the first place. Some are so dysfunctional and so self-destructive that they aren’t parent material. Some had such a toxic and dysfunctional upbringing that they should seriously consider ending that horrible legacy. Those of us who have relatively normal dysfunctions and a relatively low level of self-destructive habits, who are still questioning whether we have what it takes to be a quality parent, should consider that nothing answers those questions better than time, and in my case it was a whole lot of time.