or, in the case that your parents are teachers, it's probably exactly like a first-year teacher.
either way, the first child is when expectations begin. by the third or fourth kid, there can't be too many surprises. though i may be entirely wrong there.
for my first kid, i'd like to tell them useful, life-related facts, that seemed to miss my ears growing up.
the problem is when we think of what we'll tell our children, we think of it all as a philosophy. we transform the question into, "how do i want my children to turn out?" which can't be answered and wasn't the question. there are things i could tell my kid in hopes to mold them into a certain type-- but that may or may not work and isn't the point.
there are certain things we need to tell our kids. these things are not about philosophy, and they're not about controlling someone's personality. they're just facts.
i would tell them one on certain birthdays.
on their third birthday: bees sting. if insects still exist in the future, and my kids like playing with them as much as i did, i'm going to need to let them know that bees sting. i don't remember being warned that this was something i might need to know as an amateur entomologist-- and if i was, it was certainly not made clear that bees can still sting you after they've died, or that bees will sting you if you touch them in any way, even if you weren't trying to capture it, and even if it was an accident.
then, maybe when the kid has grown a few years, i'd like to hit them with another juicy birthday-fact: there are brothers and sisters who are born on the same date, and look exactly the same-- right down to their god damn fingerprints-- they're called twins.
i don't know if i'm the only one who was never introduced to twins as a kid. i mean, at what logical time would a parent bring up a discussion of twins unless the kid had first seen a pair of twins? my first elementary school had no twins and therefore i had no reason to ask how they were possible, and my parents had no reason to concoct a colorful explanation.
i met a series of twins at my second elementary school in the fifth grade. and the only thing more bewildering than the concept of what seemed to be living clones, was that all twins had the same birthday. i couldn't imagine the coincidence or the magic necessary to pull off such a stunt. to be honest, i think i might have been scared.
i want to tell my kid before they see twins, because otherwise it is a horribly mind-blowing experience.
on their seventh birthday, i would want them to know a little bit about persimmons. this may not sound useful, but i did learn a few days ago that it is very useful. the fact is simple: persimmons shaped like tomatoes can be eaten raw, the ones shaped like acorns have to be cooked.
i'm tempted to say "try it." if you have never experienced eating the wrong type of persimmon. one bite felt like it had immediately dried my entire mouth of saliva, coated it with a thin sandy-paste, sucked my cheek-skin inward, and managed to taste bitter all at once. it was a horrible surprise-- like thinking you're about to drink a guinness and finding out it's actually a sam adams black.
sometime in my kid's early teen-life, i would like them to know something that no one ever told me. this is a life-changing piece of information so amazing i sometimes wonder if it was intentionally never told to me.
you don't have to separate your color laundry from your whites unless this is the first time you're washing the clothes.
some people will argue this and that about maintaining the integrity of the colored clothes, and how it is actually very important to separate the laundry loads-- but i don't envision a spawn of me and someone crazy enough to marry me growing up to be one of those people.
do you know how much better i became at doing laundry when i finally realized that clothes do not turn pink because of a red sock like they do in the movies? i mean, they can-- and i would definitely let my kid know this, too-- but only if the sock is new and has never been washed.
but somewhere later in my child's teenage life, they will inevitably want nothing to do with me and my trivia. so i don't think i need to plan out any special facts for those years yet.
and then on their eighteenth birthday, i'll tell them the last fact; the most important one:
you have super-powers.
not because i think they'll have super-powers, but because i think it could be good comedy if my eighteen year-old child believes it on even the smallest of levels. i'd like to see what happens next.
i think sometime around their twenty-third, or twenty-eighth, they'll come back and thank me. or argue with me-- which would be okay, too.
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