Children

I have three children. To those of you who know me, many of you may be reeling at the fact that I actually found someone to procreate with me. Yes, I know - shocking. But, then again, mail order brides from poverty-stricken third-world countries will do almost anything to stay in the country.
I was recently married to a woman who also had three children. I say recently, because not long ago, she came to the conclusion that being Mrs. Lindley was not at all what she imagined. That club’s membership is growing steadily. Her three children included twin three-year-old boys. So, for a period of my life, I had three, she had three, and it was nothing at all like The Brady Bunch. It was, however, very similar to graphic depictions of Hell.
On an individual basis, children can be quite lovely, almost angelic. Yet there is a mathematical formula that may be used to determine the exact number of children required to create a mob mentality capable of world domination. It is: P = parents; C = children. When C is greater than P, you lose. When C is THREE TIMES greater than P, Budweiser delivers beer to your home out of sympathy. Thank-you, Budweiser.
All of the children have their own sense of humor and often find ways to entertain themselves, generally at my expense. My 11-year-old son, for example, has recently learned that he can cup his hand over his ass in such a way as to capture and contain a fart, which he then places over my nose, giving me the sheer pleasure of smelling his rotten anus all by myself. Awesome. I have mixed emotions about this. While I applaud his creativity and ingenuity, I have to wonder what he was doing when he learned how to strategically cup a fart and relocate it. In addition, I am concerned about his diet.
The twins were a part of my life, only briefly, much to the satisfaction of my new ex-wife. After working a long midnight shift, I was resolute in my belief that I could watch the spawns of Satan for only a few short hours while their mother ran some early-morning errands. I am, in hindsight, a fool. As I lay on the couch with the twins in the next room (first mistake), I listened to them pummel each other. That was a regular occurrence and no cause for alarm. First, it meant that I was not the target. Secondly, by beating one another, they would be too pre-occupied to ignite a mattress or drown the neighbor’s cat (which, by the way, if you’re reading this, Harold - honestly, they thought it was a toy ... well, a toy that could float. In actuality, your cat did float ... for a minute). But then, as I began to catch myself drifting off to the soothing sounds of a cage match in the next room, I was awoken by the horror of a peaceful silence. Peaceful silence in parenthood, well, that’s a bad thing. In the case of Harold, it translates into a water-logged and extremely passive cat. But on this day, I darted to the boys’ room, stopped in the doorway and hunkered down in a defensive posture to await an attack – which never came – but provided me the ability to duck beneath the plumes of smoke billowing from their room. It took several seconds to realize that the "smoke" emanating from their den of horror was not smoke at all. It was, in fact, the remains of an extremely large jug of talcum powder. Talcum powder, though effective in preventing moisture buildup within my patrol boots on a hot summer day, is not something I would suggest to people to, oh, I don’t know, throw in the air. Rice or bird seed, customarily thrown at a bride and groom exiting the church should NOT be replaced with talcum powder, if anyone was considering that. It is a very fine powder ... and it takes a very long time to settle. If the intake to an air conditioner is located within say, a thousand feet, it will circulate through an entire home. Seriously - an entire home. And while this may reduce the humidity within the home, it is NOT a cure-all for respiratory illness. It WILL clog your lungs. Months later, my snot is still an ashen white.
I finally located the two boys within the battle zone, both naked, both with a look of horror of having been discovered and both covered in a chalky-white powder, very similar to two powdered donuts with arms and legs. Months later, their room still maintains a whitish hue. This was the first time it crossed my mind that hiding the body of a three-year-old would likely not prove all that difficult. I had also considered that since they were twins I could just "lose" one of them considering we had another one just like him. In the end, I succumbed, began the lengthy cleaning process and allowed both to destroy other rooms.
Within minutes of discovery and after failing to shut off the air conditioner, my entire home was circulating tiny granules of talcum power. It was an indoor hurricane that resembled the aftermath of two 18-wheelers barreling at each other at full speed - one carrying sacs of flower, the other carrying military-grade explosives. Cleanup of a substance designed to repel moisture is an exercise in futility. Bathing two three-year-olds who equally seem to repel bathwater and overall cleanliness was not a winning combination. Here's another math equation for you. Twins + dry talcum powder + warm water = twins + paste. Three-year-olds, by the way, tend to eat paste. Using a vacuum cleaner to remove a home-full of talcum powder from carpert and upholstery is very similar to eating soup with chopsticks. All vacuum cleaners suck in air one way and blow air out another. The problem with copious amounts of dry powder is though you're removing a miniscule amount of settled powder, the air blowing out does quite a handy job of re-circulating everything in the opposite direction.
Now, my daughters – they pose an entirely different variety of challenges altogether. Void of the criminal mischief, they rely primarily upon wit, deception and an overall appearance of innocence to wield their destruction. My four-year-old daughter, well, to put it frankly, she’s a liar. She lies. A lot. I think she lies for the sake of lying. She tells some good lies on occasion, but she has not perfected the craft of spinning terrible lies into believable stories. With what appeared to be chocolate lipstick applied by a blind epileptic, as she stood on a stool in front of the kitchen cabinet and the lid of the cookie jar removed, she – when asked if she had eaten a cookie after being told not to simply said, "no". She then hopped off the stool and pranced in the next room and began to color in her coloring book. No … that’s it. That’s all she said. No explanation. No fear of getting caught in a lie. In effect she was telling me, "So what if I did eat a cookie, old man? Prove it. You did not see what you think you saw," as she waves her hand as if using the power of the force to change my recollection.
So, with all of the purity and innocence of a four-year little girl, she begins to color ponies. Meanwhile, I’m actually contemplating the possibility of a blind epileptic breaking into our home to apply chocolate lipstick on my daughter. It could happen.
My oldest daughter is a dreamer – her head constantly in the clouds riding furry dragons, but only the nice ones. I had no idea there were nice, furry dragons worthy of riding. As the creative genius in the family, my oldest daughter, when paired with my youngest daughter creates quite a worthy opponent for me, the idiot father. After climbing on top of the shed to jump into a pile of leaves below, my oldest daughter employed the assistance of the four-year-old as a lookout. So I thought. After walking out to the back porch to avoid another insurance claim, my youngest daughter meets me at the door to tell me, "You can’t come out here."
"Why not?"
"Katey said."
"Is she going to jump off of the shed into that pile of leaves?"
"No," she said, as she danced inside the door and began to color her ponies.
As I made my way to the shed, I arrived just before my daughter took the plunge.
"Katey, are you planning on jumping in that pile of leaves?"
"Where’s Kristen?"
"I asked you a question, are you planning on jumping off of the shed?"
"No"
"Did you teach your sister to talk like this?"
"What?"
"Nevermind … you were going to jump off the shed into that pile of leaves, weren’t you? I mean, I see you, standing with your toes on the edge of the roof with a big pile of leaves right under you. I didn’t rake those leaves, and I know you wouldn’t do it just to do it. So Katey, I’m going to ask you one more time, and I want you to tell me the truth … were you going to jump in that pile of leaves?"
"No"
"What do you mean, NO?"
"I was going to fly down … slowly … on a dragon."
I am confident that I will be able to trace each and every bypass or stroke back to a pivotal moment in my life while dealing with my children. My mother, she laughs. I know that she sits quietly in her chair at night thanking God for the retribution He has delivered to her in the form of grandchildren.