Yesterday, while I was out, my wife asked my kids what they wanted to do tomorrow. My daughter was excited about a treasure hunt, but my son proclaimed, and I can only imagine loudly, “play with dad!”
I don’t know what I’ve done to merit this interest. I’m lousy at playing. When I’m not losing interest in the game and bugging the kids to do something else, I’m having to cut short the game, or pause it to make a cup of coffee or something.
I enjoy playing with my kids—I’m glad that my son has picked up on this—but I don’t think I’m good at it, and I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before this realization hits. But reading with them? With enough library books, I could do that all day.
As a reader, as an English major, I’ve been into reading with my kids since they were babies. From repetitive board books to the present-day YA graphic novels, there is nothing so enjoyable to me as coming home from the library, settling into the couch to explore new stories and characters together.
My kids, unaccustomed to iPads or even much television, enjoy reading (or being read to), as well. For six and four, their endurance to listen to their dad narrate book and after book is impressive. They can sit there for hours just listening. And when I finish a book, they hand me the next one eagerly asking, “can we read this one now?”
When I go into the bookstore, even if I can sneak away for a moment, I don’t even bother looking at the rest of the store, I just hang out in the kids’ section, helping to steer the purchases into things I want to read as well. When we go to the library, I’m the one making almost all the selections, saying things like, “hey, look, the author of Smile has another book!” or “all right, a new Babysitter’s Club!”—Books which would’ve been anathema to me when I was my kids’ age have been transmuted into exciting worlds I may have missed out on earlier but I’m still able to catch up on.
The sole catch is that the most common moral of these stories doesn’t have the same urgency or even relevancy for me. A surprising amount of these stories develop a sense of inferiority in the protagonist which is resolved in one of two ways. 1. They eventually discover what they good at (usually with the help of supportive peers). Or, 2, they have a glimpse of a talent, a heretofore unconsidered ability, that helps them understand that they are still developing; they have time to figure it out.
I’m 42 years old. The idea that some unexpected talent should suddenly manifest itself is a bit ridiculous even at my most optimistic. Especially given that I consider myself a fairly adventurous person. It’s not like—as so often happens in the books—there is something I enjoy doing that I’ve never allowed myself to fully explore. Everything I’ve ever had the slightest inkling in, I’ve had a period in my life where I’ve gone after with unadulterated attention—like a dog chasing a ball.
When I first discovered that I could bike across town at about 13 or 14, and that I enjoyed it, I started doing it all the time. For the rest of my young adult life, I eschewed cars and rode a bike everywhere. When I discovered I liked long-distance hiking. I hiked the entire Appalachian Trail. When I discovered I liked reading books, I switched my major to English and spent countless hours in diners and cafes late at night poring over 19th century novels, making all kinds of senseless annotations in the margins. When I discovered I was interested in other cultures, languages, modes of living, I lived abroad for several years, and, really, I thought I would for the rest of my life. Sometimes, it still seems odd, accidental, that I live in the US now. I was never “good” at any of these things in the sense they present abilities and talents in books, but I enjoyed doing them, and I wonder now if that was enough.
Simply, the moral of YA books is entirely misplaced on someone like me—not because I am old, but because I never developed any particular talent, though not for lack of trying. What I hope is inspiring/comforting my kids—making them feel as though they can be themselves and find strength in that—continually serves to remind me that, well, I don’t have my whole life to look forward to, that I’ve made all the decisions that the books are poising the readers for.
So, I examine the choices I’ve made. Is there anything I neglected while rushing around in my youth? Were there any opportunities I missed? Should I have stayed a certain course longer, or cut another off more quickly? I can very easily say “no”, but that’s really because I never ardently pursued anything, at least not when I was younger. As I delineated above, I flitted from interest to interest almost as soon as they presented themselves as possibilities. I did not focus on becoming, say, a professional athlete and then, after countless hours of practice when I should’ve been eating/sleeping/socializing/studying, met with intense disappointment when I didn’t make the final cut, though I was close, so close that I reevaluate the championship game over and over as though I could go back and change it. No. Nothing like that. Nothing at all like that.
And the thing is, I’d recommend this ADD-influenced mode of living. If I could summarize it into a plot for a kids’ book, I would. Something like, “it’s a crazy, multifaceted world out there, kids. Why get too bogged down in anything? Why even worry about trying to be particularly “good” or “successful”? Just let life blow you where it will” –I’m not sure this “Tales from a 42-Year-Old Nothing” would sell well, however.
Constantly reading about the precipice of adulthood, I have to consider my formative years in high school, when I, too, was part of a social clique—though thankfully not a mean-spirited or exclusive clique—and made all kids of bad decisions. I read about kids forming meaningful relationships, and avoiding the associations which might mean social advancement, but would not permit them to be their true selves. It is tempting to lament my reckless adolescence. To summarize it as only leading me down a path where I have not learned to really focus on anything, or develop a solid character. I didn’t learn discipline by wanting to win the championship game, or get into the best school, but, I guess, I did eventually learn it, only when I realized that everyone else had it and it was something I would need.
Rather than single-mindedly pursuing a goal, I did a bunch of disparate things which have led me to be the kind of person who likes making things more than buying them, reading more than watching TV (though reading YA graphic novels is probably on par with watching Game of Thrones as far as my mental development is concerned), riding a bike (or skateboard) more than driving, etc, etc. I might not be particularly good at anything, but I enjoy the things I do, no matter of half-assedly, and, at the end of the day, if my four-year-old son’s most anticipated event for the next day is simply playing with me, I can’t have screwed up too badly. Even if that playing, too, is something I’m not particularly good at.
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