Ice Cream For Breakfast and Other Adult Truths

This summer I had the opportunity to spend a day at Cub Scout Day camp.  Some of you may question my use of the word “opportunity” and think I might have done better to choose “chore” or “penalty,” but as I didn’t have a kiddo there of my own to fret over (and was simply filling in a needed chaperone spot per my church responsibilities), I did think of it as an opportunity to be outside in the sunshine with nothing more to worry about than making sure our van returned with the same number of small humans it arrived with. TBH, I wasn’t super worried about making sure they were actually same small humans as made the morning trip in my vehicle, but I figured getting the right number was good enough.  Fortunately for all of us, we did manage to match up the correct large human to small human at the end of the day.  Go us!

During the course of the day, however, I had an odd conversation with another adult chaperone and it was on a topic that I’ve thought about for many years: why we energetically and enthusiastically do stuff we hate.

Here’s the setting.  Our particular group of kiddos was made up of chunks of three different troops, so there was a fair amount of getting-to-know-you going on among the adults and finding-the-weak-link among the kiddos.  It was very awesome to watch most of the grown ups, without any prior discussion or agreement, take turns redirecting errant scouts and gently dispersing growing tensions between tiny warriors.

By mid-afternoon, it was hot and everyone was tired.  Two had gotten stung by yellow jackets but were putting on a brave face.  Three had declared they were still hungry despite having just finished lunch.  And now we were assigned to play field games.  Joy.  So we trudge out there and immediately all cluster underneath the tiny bit of shade provided by one pop-up tent.  The two teenagers running this station are no less disenchanted with the prospect of running helter-skelter under the blazing eye of the death orb in the sky than are any of the grown ups.  Sadly for the teens, this is what they are getting paid (albeit poorly) to do.  So they get the game of Capture The Flag going and manage to eke out about 2/3 of a game before everyone is either exhausted, sweating to death, or bored.  At this point, the teens basically abandon ship and slink away.  But, because eight year-olds can fully recharge their batteries by sitting down for 38 seconds and drinking one slurp of water, the moms are left with 20 minutes to kill before we can move to the next station.

Earning instant hero-status, one of the moms engages some the kids in another game.  Those not inclined to do any more running go with a second mom to work on the day-long scavenger hunt.  Within a couple minutes, all the kids are once engaged in doing something that doesn’t involve whining, fighting, or telling the same knock-knock joke on endless repeat (shudder).

At this point, one of the adult chaperones in our group, an adult with plenty (2+ decades) of parenting experience, made what I thought was an odd comment: “I guess they’re just really in to this,” meaning the moms who had stepped up to the plate to keep the boys involved.  She went on to say, “this isn’t really my thing.”

I was kinda floored.  I mean, holy flying cats, OF COURSE it isn’t really any of our thing.  Does she really think either of those moms was just waiting for the teens to flake out on us so they could get a turn to answer the same question 17 times from 5 different kids?  Was she under the impression that all the other adults were eagerly waiting for a chance to spontaneously create a high-energy game with a complex rule system that allowed every single player to be victorious?  (Because if you think, during a “we don’t keep score” soccer game, that every single kid on that field doesn’t knows EXACTLY what the score is, you are clearly an pediatric academic without kids.  Honestly, early childhood education professionals should look at “no score” sports games as a clear-cut way of teaching all kids how to count effectively.)  Furthermore, this impromptu activity would need to keep these miniature, bipedal nuclear reactions, also known as “children,” constantly both happy and engaged so that they didn’t devolve from Sméagol in to Gollum with the speed of a “but it’s MY turn to hold the flag!”

NONE of us WANTED to do this by this point in the afternoon.  ALL of us would have rather been, I don’t know, sitting by pool with a cool drink, or eating lunch with a friend, or having a bit of an afternoon rest, or honestly just sitting in a dark closet staring at the wall!  And yet there we were, out in the middle of a hot field, trying to create a system of scoring that allowed all players to win simultaneously.

This is what we do.  It’s what being a grown up is all about.  To the basic question, “why would any sane person willingly undertake a task they hate doing with little to no reward,” pretty much anyone would answer, “They wouldn’t.  That’s ridiculous.”  And yet we do all the time.  For example, basic human instinct causes all of us to be repelled by fecal matter.  And yet we willingly (please note this is different than happily) change diapers and scrub bathrooms.  We generally avoid honey buckets like the plague, but we will stir the biffies if we have to (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m guessing you’ve never been to a rustic sleep-away camp.)  Why do we do this?  Because it has to get done.  Thankfully, toilets don’t care if we have a happy tone of voice or if we consider equally both the seat’s and the lid’s feelings.  In fact, you can swear nonstop at them and they won’t even blink an eye.  Trust me.

But sometimes that unpleasant job does require that we put on the happy face and pretend “to be really in to this.”A LOT of a parent’s job, especially and specifically a stay-at-home parent, is doing all the crap nobody else in the house wants to do, either because they simply aren’t able or aren’t physically there.  I do not love laundry.  I do not love dishes.  I seriously do not love cleaning toilets in a house of five sons.  I am SO not in to this.  But I do it and I find ways to be “in to it” because it has got to get done.

This is basic adulting.  And so I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge each and every one of you who GET THIS.  You over there, the one who stands in the rain every Saturday morning when other adults are having a relaxing morning in bed, who is willing to coach the team despite having no experience when no other coach could be found, THANK YOU.  And you, the one who researches the best way to work with dyslexic kids because none of the teachers your kid has knows what to do him or her, even though you have no educational background, THANK YOU.  The one who drives the carload of middle schoolers to the football game and then sits through the game so you can drive them home again, even though you have zero interest football, THANK YOU.  The one who stays up late hot-gluing feathers to a T-shirt to create an epic macaw costume so that your twelve year-old feels confident enough to participate in the class play, even though the last time you used a hot glue gun you literally glued yourself to the chair, THANK YOU.

Thank you for doing the stuff you don’t want to do.  Thank you for doing it with a smile and a light step when you were inwardly dragging your feet as though you were approaching a three-hour dental appointment involving the words “multiple,” “root,” and “canals.”  Thank you for understanding that the manner and approach you present to children when you interact with them is critical in their developing sense of the world.

Thank you for being an adult even when adulting sucks.  Just remember, adulting also means we really can have ice cream for breakfast, nay for all three meals, elevensies, and high tea, if we want.  And we can use bad words when cleaning inanimate objects.  And throw away our serving of broccoli when no one is looking.  I promise I won’t tell.