Class war!

Yesterday was screeching hot in New York City, so JP spent a good part of the day in the playground cooling off in the sprinkler. Later in the day he was joined by one of his little buddies for a playdate, and his friend’s mother brought along some water pistols for them to play with. Now, I happen to live in a neighborhood in Brooklyn that is rapidly gentrifying (please direct all your hate mail to the Dadwagon tip line): bodegas and over-priced cafes and the like. One of the odd ways to see this social dynamic is in the playground.

First, you have the gentrifier parents with their gentrifier kiddies. This is not, as one might expect, an all-white crowd. There are mixed race families, same-sex families, the whole Benettonian rainbow. Along with that are the non-gentrifier families, which are almost entirely non-English-speaking Latino (with some Russian).

I could write a book on the tensions and pleasures of that juxtaposition. I’ll focus on one thing: water pistol aggression. JP and his friend were blasting away with their little guns, in a very friendly way, and for whatever reason, not at each other. A young Latino boy decided to join the fray, but when he sprayed JP, JP cried and ran away. Not too surprisingly, the little boy thought this was amusing, and spent the rest of the afternoon chasing JP with his water pistol and shooting, with tears from JP the unhappy result.

I tried a variety of things: first, I told JP to spray him back. This worked initially, but not for long, as JP ultimately just didn’t want to be sprayed. More tears. I told him to tell the boy to stop then. Didn’t work as the kid didn’t speak English, or if he did, he wasn’t letting on. I told JP to move away from the kid if he didn’t like being sprayed. No go. The kid followed him around, spraying and evidently enjoying the tears he was provoking. I tried talking to the kid. He sprayed me.

All of which is no big deal. Eventually the kid got tired of JP, JP found other kids to play with and everything was fine. But one thing I thought about was the total embargo on male aggression among the gentrifier families. Aggression is a disease in the “enlightened” classes these days, something that is stamped out whenever it rears its ugly, pushy head. JP, at least at this stage of his life, just doesn’t have it. That’s largely good. I don’t want him knocking other little kids around, and I don’t want anyone hitting him. But this child he encountered had plenty of aggression. He identified a weakness in JP and pushed at it.

There was no real danger for JP so my instinct was to push him to work it out himself. I stepped in when that didn’t work. And when my intervention failed, well, I didn’t really know what to do. The kid didn’t respond to me and his parents weren’t in evidence. Not the most dramatic tale in the world, but it is a part of the odd mixture of families and upbringing that you see in a neighborhood like mine.

Yesterday, if you can remember, was hot. Hot and muggy. And by the end of the day, it was as if all the filth on the sidewalks had evaporated and was floating around in midair.

Inside my apartment, it was nearly as disgusting, and while the air-conditioner struggled valiantly to cool the living room, Sasha’s room had no such newfangled technology. There’s a long story to be told about why her own air-conditioner had been sitting on the floor, under her window, for months, but no one wants to read that. Anyway, Sasha went to sleep in the airless box easily enough, but an hour later, when we checked on her, she was soaked in sweat. Something had to be done.

So I did it. I installed the air-conditioner in her window, in the dark. It did not fall to the sidewalk below. It turned on and immediately began cooling the air. I sustained only minor injuries—a burned thumb, thanks to a hot screw. (And not the kind of hot screw I prefer, either.) And, best of all, Sasha did not wake up throughout the entire endeavor.

In the world of modern urban fatherhood, there are few instantly satisfying experiences to be had. This was one of them. L’chaim!

I can’t get this out of my head. You go to the zoo on a summer afternoon. With your wife and 6-month-old daughter. They stop on the path so you can snap a picture, and a moment later your baby is dead and your wife is permanently hurt.

The aftermath is predictable, this being the litigious, finger-pointing society that it is. There’ll be a lot of trying to blame people who work for the Park or for the zoo, for letting maintenance slide or some such, and whether that’s appropriate or not, we’ll know soon enough. But in any case, outlandish and horrible things like this happen—rarely, but they happen. Bad things. My own family made the same trip to the Central Park Zoo, a month ago, and paused at that same spot (I am fairly sure, from the photos) to admire some tulips and take a picture of our own. [UPDATE: More distressing details in the expanded Times story, here.]

Do you think about such horrible possibilities? I do, probably more than I should. I am a catastrophist by nature (my officemates know this; I often find myself assigned stories about things like earthquakes and gonorrhea-infected waterways). I linger over the feelings inspired by such a monstrous day; what our daily existence would be like afterwards; whether I’d ever be able to live some version of my life again. (Off-the-cuff answers: a whole new kind of horror; a whole new kind of darkness; I’m really not sure, but maybe eventually.) I tell myself I’m bracing for the worst, but really, it’s just introspection, because I really doubt anything prepares a person for that.

Do you think this way? Comments invited.

I understand the evolutionary imperative that babies have to coo and smile and goo-goo-ga-ga their parents until those parents forget that they are no longer sleeping, having sex, or rock-n-rolling on any level. It’s a way to ensure that babies don’t get purposefully thrown out with, as they say, the bathwater.

But what has evolution wrought with the toddler, who remains incontinent and therefore, in my mind, should continue to be grateful to have a roof over his head? Instead of ramping up his charm offensive in the interest of self-preservation, our 2-year-old is heading in the other direction. He is beating us down, trying his best to dry the vast oceans of love we have for him, and he’s doing it through repetition. A sample conversation:

• “That way!”
• “We can’t walk that way. We are going to the park.”
• “That way!”
• “We’ll go that way later.”
• “That way!”
• “We are going to the park. To play. Most toddlers like to play.”
• “That way!” (now whining)
• “Look, Nico, a squirrel!!”
• “That way! That way!” (now moaning)
• “Argh. Hush up.”
• “That way!” (now screaming)
• *sullen silence*

Thus has he chopped away, with his “that way” axe, at the sacred child-parent bond. Thus has he made us feel like angry children ourselves. Thus has he once again proven that, even on the second child, we sometimes have no clue how to keep him or ourselves happy.

I know readers could point out some developmental reasons why a child may ask “why?” or “who dat?” to the point of physical nausea. Repetition clearly has some benefit for the young, squishy mind. But in the end, the father still has some power in this relationship. I feed him, clean him, make sure he sleeps on time. Is it too much to ask that evolution just give me a break from time to time?