The Five Things Every Kid Needs to Survive
My daughter (little m) came to the office after school. I gave her my phone and she began watching videos and playing games. At 415pm we drove together to get medicine for the dog, then to pickup my son, then we dropped by Mommy’s office (where the girl stayed in the car) to say hi (Mommy had to work late), then another quick stop at the store, and then home where we arrived about an hour after we left my office.
Inside the house I convinced the boy to take an early bath before dinner, and while he bathed I heated up dinner, fed the dog, cleaned dishes, put away dishes, made the rice, and then helped the boy finish his bath.
All of this while m was still on the phone. Around 5:45pm I announced dinner, and she sat down at the dining table. She offered me no help, and I didn’t ask her for any. Little j was having trouble in his room, so I asked her to check on him. She said, “Sure,” and walked up the stairs, still watching videos on the phone. She reported down to me that her brother had not in fact taken a bath, that he hadn’t done his hair, that he hadn’t used soap.
I replied that he had indeed taken a bath, that I had supervised said bath, and he was to simply get dressed for dinner. She came down to the table where I had already set out a bowl for her, complained about what was in the bowl, then waited until I was back in the kitchen to continue watching videos on the phone. When I wasn’t looking.
But I could hear it, and from the kitchen I said, “No phones at the table.” I didn’t hear the sound anymore, so I figured she’d turned it off. So I finished dishing out two other bowls of food and brought them to the table. My son was still upstairs trying to get dressed. Little m looked down in her lap, and I knew she was still watching videos on the phone. I calmly set the bowls on the table and said, “Let me have that so we don’t use it at the table.”
It was 6pm.
She tossed the phone on the table like she was being forced to hand over something she knew didn’t belong to her but she wanted to keep anyway. I picked it up and set it on the piano behind me. She huffed. “Why can’t we be like normal families?” she snarled. “Why do we have to be so weird? So different?”
I said nothing, just lifted a fork of food into my mouth. Honestly, I didn’t know how to react, whether to be angry, or sad, or both, and I sat there stoically putting food in my mouth in order to give myself time to consider how to respond. Finally I said, calmly, “This is what normal people do. They sit together and they have dinner together and they talk together. They do not get lost in their own little video screens.”
She stared down at her plate and for a moment I saw a flash of the rebellious girl she would grow up to be, the one who talks back and questions and pushes to get a rise. She says what she says because what she wants is the reaction, the outburst, the sometimes catastrophic anger.
Then she changed tactics.
“Who invented technology?” she asked.
“I’m not sure, exactly. Why?”
“Well, whoever did, thank him for me.”
Skipping the opportunity to teach about sexism in the “him” assumption, I asked, “What would you thank them for?”
She was shuffling food around in her bowl. “For technology, of course. Technology is all you need. You could live on technology.”
I stifled a laugh and said, earnestly, “How?”
“Well, with an iPhone, like the one you have, all you need if you get hungry is the Papa Johns App. If you’re thirsty you only need the Starbucks app.” She thought about this for a second, and then she said, “I think there are four things a person needs to survive. A phone, a house, a dog, a car. That’s all anyone needs.”
The boy finally came downstairs for dinner. I held out four fingers to remind myself of the next question I wanted to ask. “How would these things help you survive?”
“First, obviously, you need a phone. So you can call for food, and call your friends. Then, you need a house, because, duh. Then, a dog, so you aren’t alone all the time. And a car so you can get where you want to go.”
I nodded. “Okay, okay. I see you. Now, let me ask you. How are you going to pay for all this?”
“Oh, oh, there was the fifth thing. The fifth thing. I forgot about the fifth thing. Money. So, you need a phone, a house, a dog, a car, and money. To pay for everything.”
“Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” I found myself falling into the Heathcliffe Huxtable voice, and I could hear the audience begin to laugh with me. “And, uh, how are you going to get the money?”
My daughter, now playing the part of Theo, replied, “Okay, six things. A phone, a house, a dog, a car, money, and a job.”
Eventually she got to a full ten things, the rest of which I cannot remember save that she was looking around the house trying to figure out what she had that she would need to survive. And then she said, “But that’ll all change when I’m 19 and move out.”
“Nineteen?” I asked.
“Are you going to kick me out at 18?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No, not all. You can stick around as long as you want.”
“Don’t worry, Dad,” she said. “I’ll come visit.”
