My Elephant Boy
I fear my two-year-old-son is a Republican. He hasn't come right out and told me he's one, (mainly because the only words he can say are "dada,"
"mama" and "more"), but his behavior and attitude as of late have certainly said plenty.
For instance, last week at the beach we passed by a vendor selling small American flags. My son was bent on getting one. So touched by his patriotism,
I bought him a flag. When we made our way down towards the water, we saw some children building sand castles. My son immediately went up to one and
planted his flag on top of it. Then he picked up the flag and proceeded to plant it on all the other sand castles. He was real aggressive about it,
too, slamming the flag down over and over again with loud and boisterous shrieks. The children working on the castles were clearly upset and
intimidated, but my son was having the time of his life. It was ugly. One of the boys working the castles appeared to be of Middle Eastern or South
American descent and he looked real put off by my son's sandwich bag full of Cheerios. He looked hungry.
I assumed that was just an isolated incident, as it was hard to believe a son of mine would be a Republican given how liberal and correct my political
beliefs are, but then the other day at the park we met a little girl and her two mommies. I was excited to be at a park that was open to having kids
with same-sex parents, and I was real proud to have my son playing with a kid who had same-sex parents. I told him so, too. "This little girl has two
mommies!" I said. Then my son smacked the girl with a toy shovel. I was mortified. I mean, I don't know how many times I've talked to him about civil
rights, and diverse families, and Ellen DeGeneres and stuff. The poor fatherless girl was terrified of him. I apologized to her mommies and asked them
where they were registered so we could send them a high-end wedding gift. They just looked at me blankly. I don't know, maybe they were sisters. I
hope not. That'd be kind of disappointing.
But the thing that sent me completely over the top happened just this morning. I was reading him an article in The Nation titled "A Festering
Boil: Lancing the Neocon's Agenda for America" and I could tell by the way he unenthusiastically sucked his pacifier and kept on wanting to turn the
page before I was through, that he wasn't particularly moved by the piece. But then we came upon a political cartoon slamming Bush's despicable and
deceitful defense policies, and my son let out a hearty laugh. Thank god, I thought. He was finally getting it. Or so I thought until he pointed to
one of the faces in the cartoon and shouted gleefully, "Dada! Dada!"
"That's not Dada," I said. "That's Paul Wolfowitz."
"Dada! Dada!"
"No, not Dada, not Dada! Wolfowitz. Wolf-o-witz. He Republican. He bad man."
"Dada! Dada!"
"Shut-up! I look nothing like him! He Wolf-o-witz! He dee-spic-able! He dee-ceit-ful! Wolf-o-witz a bad man!"
"Dada! Dada!"
It was awful. I couldn't argue with him anymore, so I crumpled up the magazine and threw it against our framed art poster heralding the rights of
migrant farm workers from somewhere or other. "Dada sad!" I shouted. "You make Dada very sad!" Then he started to cry and my wife came into the room
and yelled at me.
"You keep this up and I'll vote for Nader!" she warned.
Where did I go wrong? All my friends' children are on course to be card-carrying liberals, why isn't mine? They're off having play-dates with their
African-American and Latino and mentally handicapped friends, while my son harasses brown kids at the beach and hits lesbians' children with shovels.
I can't tell you how distressing this is. Next thing you know he'll take a crayon to my Springsteen collection.
But I'm not going to give up without a fight: he'll learn to see the errors of his right-wing ways whether he wants to or not. I rented All the
President's Men, Bowling for Columbine, and The Deer Hunter and we're going to have ourselves one helluva lefty movie marathon tonight.
Then before bedtime I'll read to him a couple of Krugman's latest New York Times op-ed pieces, and maybe even some Zinn, too. That'll show him!
Jerk. I'm not going to raise the next Alex P. Keaton. Nope, not on this lefty parent's watch!
Christopher Monks' stories have appeared online at McSweeney's, Eyeshot, Yankee Pot Roast and other fine literary and humor websites. He also maintains the website Utterwonder.com. Christopher lives in Massachusetts with his wife and two sons. He hopes you've appreciated this sober, typo-free bio because it took him forty-seven minutes to write the thing--forty-seven minutes he can never have back. Ever.