I’m Done

We are at a museum. It’s already been a long day. But knowing my wife, there is no way we are leaving until the security guards kick us out. My daughter and I are well accustomed to this ritual. We are prepared with patience. The kid in the stroller next to us is not.

“I’m done,” he declares to his mother. Followed by another “I’m done.”

What follows is between two to five minutes of nonstop “I’m done, I’m done, I’m done, I’m done.”

When children get in this rhythmic sing-song sort of whine, time enters a vortex. That’s why I can’t tell you exactly how long it lasted. It may be happening right now. Maybe Mom and child are still in between the minerals exhibit and the display of crab shells.

Props to the mom that did nothing. I wouldn’t have understood this until becoming a parent myself, but the ability to tune out your child is quite a skill. Sometimes kids get all wound up like a rip cord has been pulled. Young parents match the spazz, and go into a frenzy trying to squelch the madness. Seasoned parents know the moment dissipates on its own. If you can wait it out, you don’t have to waste your own sanity. I know it might seem unkind to subject strangers to the whines of your offspring, but tuning out others' judgment is another parenting skill. Sometimes it’s just about survival. Others in the general vicinity of the blast be damned.

A couple thoughts on the child’s proclamation.

First, I totally get it. You are done. You’ve had it. Reached your tipping point, and you don’t care who knows. Shame has exited the building. Public propriety is a thing of the past. Get me out of here.

One of the cool things about children is their complete honesty. They haven’t learned about lying to fit in, going with the flow, or just keeping it to themselves. What’s the function of those approaches anyway? A child is only concerned with their own world, which is pretty small. It only contains a few brain cells, and very mushy routines and expectations set by a few adults you can’t ever seem to get away from. As for these other strangers, why should I care? It isn’t until the puberty train arrives riding on tracks of hormones that you start to have an awareness of yourself. And that self consciousness lasts until you are so old, your bodily functions mimic those of your childhood self. So enjoy it while you can. Say what you feel. Speak with conviction. Say it with your chest.

Second thought about the phrase, “I’m done.” Lately I find myself wanting to say it quite often. Scream it in fact. The daily news is what’s driving me crazy. It’s not what is happening, it’s how it gets reported. Everything is black and white. Only one side to the story, and the story goes like this, “I am right, and anyone who thinks differently is the devil.” Then you flip the channel and guess what, those other people aren’t the devil, it’s the first people that are evil. One sided. No nuance. No contemplation. No humility. Just an endless barrage of all the reasons you should hate half the people on the planet.

I’m really done with all that. I feel like the kid in the stroller. I want to say it until someone takes me somewhere else, another planet if need be.

Unfortunately I am not a child. And thank goodness. They are cute, but they don’t know anything. In fact, the kid, and the people on the news, voices on your favorite podcast, and let’s go ahead and throw myself in the same basket - we all want the same thing. We want a world that looks like what we want it to look like. We want everyone to act like we want them to act. We want everything to function as we see fit. And we want it now. We are all a little selfish and unaware of how the public declarations of our feelings might affect anyone else in the general vicinity.

It’s ok to have feelings. Good to have convictions. Important to live by principles. I’m not knocking those things.

Maybe the lesson here is that adults should behave differently than children. At least the kid had an excuse. What is my excuse? Maybe I don’t have one. And if I don’t, maybe I should spend more time listening rather than declaring. Maybe I should be more inquisitive than unmovable. Maybe I should think about other people in the museum.

After all, I don’t want to be stuck on repeat, shouting the same thing over and over again, do I? If it’s so unflattering coming from a child, what does it sound like reverberating out of an adult?