This is How They Play

Not too long ago, one of my work colleagues got a puppy. A really adorable one - a mix of Pug and Boston Terrier, just supremely cute. And supremely wild, as puppies are meant to be.

One day, another co-worker brought his dog - a larger, older, hairier Shelty into work to meet the newcomer. They circled each other, did their sniffing thing, and finally just began fighting like mad. The two canines were pawing each other, growling, biting, barking - the works. I began to freak out, certain someone was going to end up dead, and nervously suggested we pull them apart.

My two friends laughed it off, one telling me to "Relax. They're having fun! This is how they play!"

I guess I looked skeptical, because the other quipped: "They're dogs. They don't have opposable thumbs. What are they supposed to do for fun?"

Whatever. This is LA. I once watched a dog surf.

It didn't look like "play" to me and I probably wouldn't be convinced were it not for my two puppies at home. I'm told girls sit and play with dolls, quietly tucking the creepy plastic mini-mes into minuscule beds. I've witnessed my two-year-old niece conduct a tea party to end all tea parties for a room full of guests (just don't ask her for more imaginary sugar when the imaginary sugar has OBVIOUSLY run out. She gets PISSED.).

These are quiet activities. Elan and Ariel, bless their little hearts, don't believe in many quiet activities. Actually, that's not totally true - each on his own will partake in coloring, reading, and playing with action figures up until a point. But together -pretty much all they want to do is fight. The physical kind. With hitting? Kicking? You've seen it, I'm sure, in kung-foo movies.

Y is used to it. But even as the only girl growing up in a houseful of boys, I wasn't exposed to much of it. Not for sport, not for spite....Just not.

Of course, as Y is always apt to point out: "No, you guys preferred to just think of the most hurtful, below-the-belt, straight-to-the-heart, ripe-for-future-therapy-sessions things to say to each other, instead. Much classier."

Touche. We're a word family.

So all of this physical fighting, the limb-flailing, the knee-buckling is relatively new, and even after a couple of years more than a little unsettling to me when my boys are in the midst of it, smothering each other with the couch cushions, which, as I mentioned, is pretty much any given waking moment.

For all of the noise and the number of arms or legs or other strange, stem-like swords, light-sabers, bicycles and kitchen sinks flying through the airspace of our small house on, say, an average Tuesday at 4 PM, I often feel as though I might as well have six boys instead of two.

I went through a stage of yelling, naturally, because it seemed the only way to get heard. It was, as the Super Nanny would surely have predicted, largely unsuccessful and even more exhausting. I'm afraid, you see - I'm ALWAYS afraid - someone will get hurt. Because someone always does. Always. It never ends any other way. So I screamed, in vain, for them to stop, put them in time-outs, untangled their bodies a toe at a time and shoved them into separate rooms, slammed the doors shut.

They'd just open the door. Yeah, after some time and struggle, I'd get them to calm down, apologize, the whole nine yards. I'd try to get them to explain WHY they felt the need to be touching each other, bothering each other, as long as they were awake, WHY they needed to pretend they were super-heroes by actually trying to make one another become dead.

Eventually, I'd win. I'd get mumbled answers followed by requests for food and drink. But their answers were never very good, their arguments anything but logical ("He said my NAME and he said it in A VOICE" or "It's fun" or "Ariel flies"). And by then, I'd be emotionally and physically spent, aching to put them to sleep, and feeling, mostly, like a maternal failure.

So I decided to change tactics. I'd just...do nothing. Let them destroy each other, and instead of trying to prevent the injury, simply clean up after it. Bandage, ice, kiss. Fight over. Accept the inevitable boo-boo and uh-oh and let them figure out for themselves when it's gone too far. In the meantime, shovel the wild mess of bodies into the backyard, whenever it isn't raining.

It doesn't rain much here, so this has become my coping mechanism of choice most of the time. And it works, sort of. A little.

So the other night, when the Computer Guy was over treating my ailing PC with antibiotics or whatever it is they do, and it was bed-time, and everyone was crying and screaming and whining and demanding ALL AT ONCE, I did a whole lot of nothing. I just brushed little teeth straight through the noise, dealt with the chaos, pretending it wasn't there, until I re-gained control and got the boys to bed. It was ugly and a little humiliating but I didn't lose it entirely. And the Computer Guy witnessed the whole thing.

Something happens when you become a mother - maybe it has to do with the process of giving birth and all of those interns you've never seen before coming in to brazenly check how dilated you are, but you concede most shreds of dignity at the door. And though you do, naturally, worry that others are scrutinizing your mistakes, blaming you for every obnoxious scene your child puts out there - you also give up trying to save yourself the embarrassment. You borrow a wet-wipe and blot up the barf. You let the tantrum unfold in the snack aisle of Ralph's. You let your kids act like maniacs in front of guests - anything, not to give in. Not to let them win.

Now, the computer dude is a dad himself and not the judgmental sort, but I acknowledged the scene later anyway, when all was quiet, as I cut him a check. "We had a bit of a rough night. I take it your kids aren't quite as insane?" I asked sheepishly, by way of apology.

"Well, mine are smaller," he admitted. And you've got, what, like three or four boys?"

HA! VALIDATION: If you build it...

"Nope, just two! Believe it or not."
"There were only two boys in the house all night?"
"Mm-hm."
"It sounded like - well, double that."

"Trust me, I know. This is how they play."