Gotta Hand It To You, Girl, You Sure Were Special…

Always celebrate those things that make your child unique.

And the more embarrassing, the better…

“Lay off of her! Our child is completely normal!”

Okay, so maybe my response to the innocent-enough questions, “Have you noticed that The Younger likes to religiously wipe everything with the back of her fingernails? Do you think there’s something wrong with her?” was a bit too impassioned.

Sure, one could argue our 4-year-old daughter’s habit was borderline O.C.D., but what good would it do it slap such a negatively-connotated label on the kid? When I asked why she would run the back of her fingertips over everything–couches, iPads, the perimeter of the kitchen countertops, various body parts of her family members, and even the occasional toilet seat–every chance she got, she simply replied, “Because it feels good on my fingers.” So why give her guff for her doing what just felt right to her, when it really wasn’t hurting anybody else? In fact, I was the opinion of that it gave her “character.”

“I can relate, kid, I can relate…”–that was my special Daddy way of helping her affirm her identity when other family members were less-supportive of her life choices.

And I could indeed relate, because–as it would seem–her unusual Savior Complex was not the only outlying behavior she inherited from her paternal genetic lineage. I tried to tell the other adults around her that, I too, took particular pleasure in running my fingernails along things when I was young.

So, yeah, I was actually a bit proud that she was taking after her Papa. Though, unlike her, I usually limited to my activity to my own pant legs…

“Stop. Making. Fun of me!”

So what? I was involved in one case of mistaken identity when I was about 4. Big deal. I was just a child for Heaven’s sake!

Yet, there I was, 6 years old, and Mom and 1SkinnyJ–my slightly older brother–would just not let me forget one teeny-tiny social faux pas I made well over 2 years earlier. It was almost a ritual for them, every month or so, drudging it back up and getting a good laugh out of my misfortune.

“Whoo-wee! You should have seen the look on your face! You were red as a beet, you were so embarrassed!”

“Shut up!”

I mean, really, who makes fun of kid for something that, frankly, scarred them for life? What kind of sick, twisted people am I stuck with calling “my family”?

Do you even know how emotionally impossible it is for a toddler to process such a psychologically damaging life event? Not to mention having to be repeatedly reminded of it by so-called “loved ones”?

What are these horrors that I wouldn’t even wish upon on the child of my sworn enemy, you ask?

Look, if you really want to know what happened, then fine, I’ll tell you. But you’ll be just as guilty as them for perpetuating childhood trauma.

It shouldn’t have been that big of a deal anyways. Where at a graduation at our local high school back in the mid-80s, and I recall standing in line with Mom to congratulate the new graduates…

“Hey there, kiddo, it’s good to see you!”

From across the way, I heard one of my aunts¹If you really care about historical accuracy, I must state for the record that I don’t know if it was an aunt for sure. But it was either a family member or a friend of the family. holler my name. And in spite of being an incredibly shy child who was permanently attached to his Mommy’s hand, I bravely ventured out and scurried over to say “hi” to the trusted, friendly face of said family member.

A good 90 seconds was about all I could bear out in the dangerous world, so after offering Auntie my greetings and salutations, I made a bee-line straight back to the safety and security of Mom’s hand.

“Oh…well hello there, little fella.”

Wait, what was wrong with Mom’s voice?!?

In a panic, my eyes followed the path from the hand that I was gripping ever-so-tightly, up the arm, and lastly to…

“Aww, sh*t…YOU’RE NOT MY REAL MOM!!!”

That face.

That face was not my mother’s! Hell, I didn’t know who’s it was. Like a complete ass, I hadn’t bothered looking up and confirming that it was Mom I was sidling up to before making physical contact!

I was so stunned, I couldn’t do anything but just stand there petrified, forgetting that I was still latched onto the hand of a complete ----- stranger.

From a few feet up ahead in the line, I saw my real mom turn and around, and, a little beet red herself, scurry back to detach me from the mystery woman’s appendage.

“So sorry about that…he’s, uh…a little special…”

“Another Easter egg hunt? Yayyyyy!!!”

The Elder’s Taekwondo dojo²Is it racist that I knowingly use this incorrect term? was hosting yet another Easter egg hunt this past holiday weekend, and I was just too busy with around-the-house projects to go. So I convinced the Boss Lady³As a friendly reminder, The Boss Lady is my wife. to take our two girls by herself.

I would later deeply regret this decision, as it turned out that by not going, I missed out on perhaps one of the most formative childhood events in the life of The Younger.

When the Boss Lady came back, she had this weird grin on her face.

“So, I gotta tell you what happened at the Easter egg hunt, but you gotta be standing up for this story.”

“Uh, okay…” I humored her by standing up, though I couldn’t see what in the world that had to do with the proverbial price of rice in China.

“After the hunt they handed out prizes–The Younger won the award for least number of eggs found, LOL–and so most of the kids were standing by the prizes as the parents watched.

As they wrapped it up and everyone started to leave, I headed over to claim our two children. But instead of running to me, The Younger started walking behind this Hispanic woman in dark pants.⁴Although The Boss Lady is half-Asian, half-Caucasian, and 0% Hispanic, she can easily be mistaken for a Herspanic, especially from behind. I was about halfway over to get her when she did this:”

The Boss Lady proceeded to demonstrate The Younger’s aforementioned tic by firmly swiping the fingernails across my hind-quarters.

“She just straight-up ran her fingers across that woman’s butt!”

After a fit of tearful chuckling, I managed to quip, “Man…she really is my daughter isn’t she?”

“Indeed, she is your child. Of course, the woman was startled by the fact that someone in the crowd had just grabbed her ass. And I could only watch and try not to laugh as she turned around, and upon seeing who her assailant was, respond like any other woman would respond in that situation…”

After I caught my breathe from guffawing so hard, I eked out the natural follow-up question:

“What…whew…what did…wait, I need another second…so what did the lady say?”

“What do you think she said? ‘Oh…why, thank you.'”

I wiped the remaining tears from eyes.

“Well, it just wouldn’t be the holidays without a little bit of generational trauma…”

The Boss Lady gave me a slightly quizzical look.

“You keep using that phrase. I do not think it means what you think it means…”⁵https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTRKCXC0JFg

The point of the story is, no matter how humorous it may seem to you, when your child’s personality traits–ones that they inherited from you, no less–collide and form one magical and hilariously embarrassing moment, show pity on the child, and never ever remind them or tease them about the event. It only becomes generational trauma if you choose to reinforce it…

…

Aww, f*ck it–this is waaaaay too funny to ever let go of. So you can be danged sure that if and when the day comes that The Younger gets married, her slightly inebriated father will be up there slurring out an unforgettable toast to the bride: “Hey, hey, remember that one time you wiped a strange woman’s ass at an Easter egg hunt…?”

[expand title=”Bonus material: Title notes”]

I would hope that you, my Dear Reader, would pick up on the many puns and other nuances that I try to pack into the titles of my posts. Of course, this is not always easy because sometimes I make either obscure references and/or significant stretches of logic in the process. Or sometimes I’m lazy and settle for a less-than-optimal title in exchange for pleasing the search engine gods at Google.

But with this title, I can’t stand the thought of some the puns embedded in the title to go completely unnoticed, so I thought I would share some inside notes with you about it.

The seedling that I built the title around was “I gotta hand it to you, kid…” Of course, you can see that the final version is slightly modified from this, but nevertheless, much of the punnery remained intact.

The two main jokes here are, first: “I gotta hand it to you”, as in, “I’m genetically passing on to you, my child, some of the same tics and traumas that I experienced myself.”

Secondly, I just had to have “hand” in the title, because both the tic and the embarrassing incident(s) were very much hand-related. Yeah? See what I did there?

“I gotta hand it to you, kid…” Yes, prime dad-jokery abounding here.

Further, I wanted to actually entitle it “I gotta hand it to you, kid–generational trauma, that is!” But I didn’t want to ruin the sub-punchline of “generational trauma.”

On a side note–do you realize how ----- hard it is to find literary-friendly synonyms for “trauma”?!? But I digress…

Ultimately, the title ended up referencing the punchline–always a dangerous strategy in my book–i.e. toasting/roasting your daughter at her wedding.

Another variant riffing on that idea was: “I gotta hand it to you, you were one ----- weird kid…” Well, maybe not with the expletive, but really railing on the idea of lovingly making fun of your kid for all of their idiosyncrasies and particularly embarrassing moments.

It’s like, “Hey, I got made fun of these exact same things and was scarred for life in the process. So of course I gotta continue the cycle…”

LOL…right?

Lastly, one of the final touches was including the term “special”, in part a reference to the end of the second section of the story where I claim that my mom apologized for me being special. Honestly, I can’t remember if she used those exact words, but nonetheless is a humorous tip-o-the-hat to my self-depracating habit of pointing out that much of my life I walked a fine line between “genius” and “complete ----- moron with no common sense.”

Ultimately, though, I’m as much a narcissist as the next guy, and take special loving delight when my daughters take after me in ways that are outside the norm, and, in my humble opinion, what really gives a person character.

Hey, after all, perfection is waaaaay over-rated. I mean, who wants to be that boring? But again, I digress…

The point of the story is I waste an incredibly disproportionate amount of my post-creating time on just coming up with a satisfactory title. (Note that it really helps when the title easily lends itself to my featured cut-and-paste picture creating process, which further complicates things.)

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Content created on: 20/21/23 April 2022 (Wed/Thurs/Sat)

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