Mr Jam gets locked out

Family life makes your patience muscle grow to enormous size

MORE AND MORE adults are choosing not to have children. This will “reshape human society”, according to social demographers in the UK.

I guess they mean “reshape” as in “wipe out”.

But before that happens, something scarier will happen. There will be a pandemic of meltdowns.

You see, having totally helpless dependents (children, grandparents, pets and some husbands) causes an adult's capacity to tolerate problems to expand until it is roughly the size of Australia or Donald Trump's ego, whichever is larger.
*
Here’s proof. A childless, only-child, unmarried friend of mine received the wrong lunch order. Apoplectic with fury, he was unable to work for the rest of the day (and possibly the rest of his life).

The same afternoon, the father-of-three next to him was informed by telephone that one child had smashed the TV and another had poured Ribena into the Blu-Ray disk player. This news had no affect on him.

Parents become immune to disaster. Children alternate between ruining our lives and giving them meaning, and sometimes do both simultaneously.

The other night, I kissed my two most helpless dependents (granny and my youngest child) goodnight and took another one (the dog) out for a walk.

I returned to find that they had gone to sleep after accidentally locking the door that connects the living room to the bedrooms, the toilets, the shower, and so on.

My wife, a teacher, was working late. When she got home, she saw why I was worried. Granny and our youngest child are world-class sleepers: I'm talking Olympic gold level. The child can sleep 16 hours straight and Granny 20. Both remain comatose through alarms, thunderstorms, earthquakes and teenage parties.

Bereft of beds, toilets and showers, we spent hours trying to break in.

We tried every key in the house, and then hairpins, screwdrivers, pliers, wrenches and our teeth.

We tried kicking the door down like in cop shows.

We threw our bodies at the door like in Hollywood movies.

We used a battering ram like in Viking cartoons.

Nothing worked.

We spent the night on the sofa in our working clothes dreaming of toilets.

At dawn we awoke to the ghastly prospect of going to work in our dishevelled, cross-kneed, unwashed state.

Then my wife had an idea. Educators have a secret weapon called the Teacher Voice. It's not exactly a shout, nor a shriek, but a sort of controlled, powerful missile of low-frequency sound. Could it penetrate several layers of doors, the roar of air-conditioners and the cocoon of Olympic-level sleep? I was skeptical.

She took a deep breath and yelled out the child's name in Teacher Voice.

In return, silence.

She did it a second time.

Pause. Then… was that a slight sound we heard?

She did it a third time.

Pause.

Click.

The door opened and the cute face of a sleepy child looked out. The previous night’s trials were immediately forgotten.
*
Tonight, one of the kids will probably microwave my phone.

Tomorrow the dog will eat my wallet.

The next day Granny will burn the house down.

Am I bothered? No, it's all part of the rich tapestry of events which make up that joyful thing called family life.

I can survive anything. Even getting the wrong lunch order. I am invincible. I am unruffleable. I am a parent.

 

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Comments

[Priyantha Liyanage]

Wow,So inspirational.
Have you ever wondered how people like Pierce Brosnan,Roger Moore,Harrison Ford, will smith open even the bank doors with just a flick of a special key they always seem to carry?

[Angela]

I like children, especially if they are not mine :)

It's true that parenthood ups your immunity level against most things life throws at you. It certainly redefines what disgusting means to me.

We were having a family dinner at a seafood restaurant when suddenly a very familiar stink coming from my 10 months old baby's rear end forced me to leave my chili crab and bring her to the wash room to change diapers. We came back to the table, I put her down on her baby chair and continued to pick the meat from my crabs.

When she had runny nose and keeps crying coz she couldn't breath, my mother told me to suck the mucus out of her nose. When I said it's disgusting, she told me she did the same to me when I was a baby and now it's my turn.

My former boss once asked how I could stay so calm in the face of a stressful event at work, I told her I am a mother. Crisis? what crisis?

[Angela]

I just realized, it may not be very clear but the second incident was my baby having runny nose, not my mother..LOL

[farah]

i guess this is what my mom means when she tells me that i will understand when i will have my own kid.

[Nury]

Wow, I am very impressed with your mother, Angela -- no wonder you grew up to be such an impressive person. She must have really loved you.
I know that parents are supposed to do that when baby's nose is blocked. Lucky for me none of my babies ever had such a problem. I don't know whether I would have passed the test!
Loads of people are childless by choice these days, including all three of my brothers.

[fardel]

You are family man and forgot to ask a wise member of your family for assistance?!
mmmm
Strange, that you did not ask your dog;
He could have opened the door in one click with one of those special bark that only children and grandmothers respond to.

[dul]

Nury the same thing happened to my aunt the other day! She got locked out of the house at about 6 in the morning with only my grandmother inside!
She had made every noise possible but didn't have a teachers voice I suppose and she only got inside when my grandmother came to the kitchen to see what was for breakfast. That's at around 8 am lol!
Apparently my grandmother thought all the racket was because someone was fixing the windows!

[sej]

Locked out in the middle of the night...

As a young whipper snapper, coming home late after a night out partying and being locked out? No problem!! Simply climb (read break) in through the bathroom window. Ahh, they were the days!

These days, live in an apartment. I need to climb 7 stories to get to the bathroom window. Hang on, don't have one! Hmm... probably the reason I didn't use it.

Anyway, wife and kid in bed, and asleep. Bedrooms are all the way down the other end from the entry. I've gone to take the garbage out. Door locks behind me. Even using the intercom from the building's front door, the neighbors complained about the noise before I was able to raise either the wife or the kid.

[Leo]

I prefer to have a dog or a cat instead. Maybe I will get a child when I get married...but not at this instance.

Well, I can live my life with all kind of children anyway. I am popular among kids, from the WIERDO to the SSA TRAMS. I can blend into their circle easily since I am a BIG KID myself.

Easiest way to keep yourself young, THINK and ACT LIKE A CHILD, your life will be much more simple.

[sashi]

wonderful! u make family life an attractive alternative to being single-great post....makes one think

[martin]

Sashi, have to disagree with you. I think the post is accurate, family life is a series of catastrophes, but that doesn't make it attractive, not to me anyway. It just confirms all my fears about settling down.

[Chamin]

Not sure why, getting to know more about catastrophes posted here makes me want a family even more.

Probably family life is like an extremely long roller-coaster ride. We go for those rides while knowing all the scares :-p

[fardel]

When we get beyond 30 years old and get a first child,we wonder how we could have survived childless so long.
It would take a whole book to describe THE experience of a lifetime.

[fardel]

SEJ
To reach your bathroom window, there is a better, easier way than to climb 7 stories.
You need
1 a lifting device ( lift, elevator , crane or helicopter )
2 a good rope
3 The alpinist manual
4 the sailor's handbook of knots

1
Study the alpinist manual ( there is only one way to wrap the rope around your body)

2 Use the lifting device to hoist yourself on to the roof

3 TIe the rope ( NOOOO! not your shoe string, a ROPE!! ) to a solid object, using the the sailor's handbook of knots as a reference ( any other knot would slip, and you with it)

4 Stand up on the edge of the roof with your back to the empty space behind you. YES, the building is in front of you and what you see moving below ( behind you that is,) are cars,and pedestrians ,not ants!)
5 Keeping your legs straight you let yourself backward, downward until you reach a horizontal position (I know, this is the scariest part)
Do not go beyond the horizontal position

6 At this point you let the rope slide very gently ( did I remind you not to let go of the rope?)

7 Keep your feet on and off the wall ( like when you were jumping on your bed , as a child, but more gently); IF YOU JUMP TOO HARD , YOU WILL PUT YOURSELF INTO ORBIT

8 You let yourself down to your bathroom ( YOURS, not the one for the lady upstairs, you pervert!)

WHAT NOW ?!
The window is smaller than you?!?!
Didn't you think about it , BEFORE ?!?

No problem ,
you let yourself to the ground

WHAT NOW ?!

the rope is too short?!?!
Didn't you think about it , BEFORE ?!?

what a dumbbell

You just hold tight ( very tight ) and start screaming.
The guys in uniforms, coming to pick you up will make sure that you will never lock yourself out again

A secret ( you will be able to use this technique to escape from jail as well, but do not tell anybody!)

[tamanna]

i once invited 20 of my classmates for dinner without informing my parents when i was 7...when the doorbell rang i said to mom "oh by the way ma i invited ppl for dinner*angelic smile*"..i still remember her look mixed with anger and embarrasement and worry..simply priceless:D

[fardel]

Wow
Tamanna
I think that you are simply ...the best

[Nancy]

Oh so true...too true, even! ;-)

[sej]

Fardel,

"8 You let yourself down to your bathroom ( YOURS, not the one for the lady upstairs, you pervert!)"

I get the feeling you know me too well already.

[Uli]

As you can guess by the decreasing frequency of my postings raising a family means having too many other things to do than switching on one's PC... It is already nearly two weeks since the last time and I am suffering seriously from an acute state of being "turkey". Locked out? Minor problem ;-) Mummy's going to solve any problem ....!