Green Buttons
Parenting is hard. If you were perusing the newspaper, just hoping to find a magic cure for sibling rivalry, teenage angst, or raging hormones, you’re about to be disappointed. Being someone’s parent is very much like managing an automated factory that makes buttons, for instance. The employee who runs the button molds always runs late. Half of the time he doesn’t place the plastics in the right cylinders. The red buttons all have blue streaks, and the brown buttons wind up a putrid green. The woman who is over the packaging machine typically forgets to line up the backer boards, causing the cutter to snap most of the cartons in half. And, as the manager, with a floor full of putrid green buttons and chopped up cellophane causing you near decapitation as you slide to and fro, trying to negotiate a retreat to the fire escape, you cannot help but blow a fuse or two here and there. But, the machine operators weren’t trained on molds and packaging. Messing up royally is the only way they will improve. So, you trudge on, blowing occasional fuses and sliding on broken button packages, just trying to stay employed in a cruel world. This, my friends, is parenting. At least, this is how parenting seems from the inside out.