The Monkey, the Ape, and Why I Am a Better Parent Than Someone Who Lets Her Child Fall in a Gorilla Pit

This past weekend, a four-year-old child climbed through a barrier at the Cincinnati Zoo and fell into a pit in the gorilla exhibit. Harambe, a 17-year-old silverback, grabbed the child and kept him for approximately ten minutes. Onlookers varied in their accounts, describing the gorilla's behavior as alternately protective and threatening, perhaps agitated by screams from the crowd as they watched. In the end, zoo workers shot and killed the gorilla and the boy was taken to the hospital.

The first thing that occurred to me was that trope from old comics, the one where some lady wearing a hat and gloves screams, "Superman, help! My baby!" And then we see that the baby carriage has gotten away from her or whatever and is headed toward to train tracks or the lion cage or wherever it is. (That's a trope, right? I'm not just imagining it, I'm sure.)

The story seemed like a relatively simple one to me, one that simultaneously combined an endangered child with the tragic killing of an animal that is very closely related to us. It's easy to see why the news media picked up on it.

Yet like so many things in the last decade or so, the story has taken on a life of its own, one that might have not happened in a less media-rich world. There were instantly dozens of memes circulating on social media and almost everyone had an opinion on it. Suddenly, everyone was an expert on the behavior of silverback gorillas, had studied the intricacies of zoo design, and were well-versed in zoo-rescue protocol. More than anything though, everyone was an expert parent.

It's such an easy target. I mean, if the bar is, "Well, my child has never fallen into a gorilla pit," then congratulations: you're all parent-of-the-year. I mean, that's rule number one of parenting, right? "Keep your child away from gorilla pits." Everyone knows that.

The near-universal verdict on social media was quick and unforgiving. The fault lay clearly with the mother. She should be punished, arrested, fined, jailed. At least one of my Facebook friends called for her death.

The truth, as is always the case, seems to be a little more nuanced than that. The woman had several kids with her. The child had gotten away and the family was actively looking for him. He crawled through a fifteen-foot barrier of shrubbery to get to the gorilla enclosure before apparently falling in.

Yeah, my gut feeling is the same as a lot of people: I would never let my child get away from me like that. I mean, there are even signs everywhere warning you to keep an eye on your child.

But can we just take a breath for a minute.

I love social media. I'm really not one of the naysayers who wishes for the days when you believed what was printed or what Murrow or Cronkite told you and then forgot about it. I like the fact that it allows near-instant response to our world and that it is relatively democratic.

But I can't help but sometimes wish that we could all root for Superman and the endangered child and breathe a sigh of relief when he is rescued.

I know, I know. A majestic, beautiful, and intelligent creature was destroyed, quite possibly because a mother didn't keep a close enough eye on her kid.

Yet the truth is, almost none of us gave a shit that the western lowland gorilla is endangered prior to this event. Most of us won't give a shit after it's all over. We don't care that they are routinely killed by poachers for bush meat. We don't care about their habitat or the things that we may all be doing that could potentially lessen their numbers.

Because we like clean narratives. We like a villain. And we like it when the villain isn't us.

It makes us feel so morally superior, too, doesn't it? We get to pretend that we simultaneously care a lot about our fellow primates (we don't, as a rule) and that we care more about the welfare of a child than his mother does (you're fucking kidding me, right?).

The thing I have noticed most in the responses among friends is how the most censorious and virulent responses have come from those who have no children. "Is it so difficult to keep an eye on your child?!" "If you can't take care of them, then you shouldn't have them!" Et cetera. Ok, friend. I mean, last week you were posting about how you had only eaten Fruity Pebbles and beer for three days because you couldn't find the will to make it to the grocery store, but if you think you're an expert on caring for other people, who am I to disagree?

Here's the deal: children are unwieldy. They are humans. They do unpredictable things. They have an independent will and at times will even plot to thwart their parents' best efforts at supervision.  I mean, I'm sure you never did that as a child, but many do.

If you have more than one of them, they get more unwieldy. You can find yourself distracted taking care of one only to find that another one has slipped your grasp. Older ones put younger ones up to dares. Younger ones are disbelieving of the dangers of which they are warned.

I can think of several examples in my own parenting, but the one that comes to mind was a couple years ago when the Goddess left me alone with the Monkey while she took the older kids out for a few hours. I fed him, bathed him, and played with him, then I let him crawl around while I sat on the couch and put on a movie. I was exhausted. I had a full day at work and I wanted to veg out for a bit.

I put up a safety gate going into the kitchen, because I didn't want him to get into anything. I put on the movie. The Monkey was playing around my feet and heard him go around the corner of the couch to an open area in the room, behind the sitting area. I did a quick mental check to make sure there was nothing for him to get into.

After a few minutes, I noticed he was being awfully quiet. I turned around. He was nowhere in sight. Panic shot through me.

I looked all over the room. Nothing. I looked under furniture. I called his name.

Then I heard him.

He was upstairs.

See, here's the thing: he had never climbed a single stair. I hadn't even considered putting a gate up at the foot of them. Yet in the space of about three minutes he had gone up a staircase of about twenty steps.

If you've read any of my blog, you will know my many parenting failures. We've had babies fall and hit their heads when they were left to be watched with siblings because mom had to pee. Hell, I had two babies playing with push pins last week when I turned my back for a few minutes. The Monkey was able to open a drawer that was heretofore too heavy for him and gave a handful to the Ape. We try to baby-proof everything, but it is nearly impossible, especially since the seven-year-old or eleven-year-old will leave things laying around.  Yesterday, the Monkey pinched the Ape, apropos to nothing.

That's the other thing, too. Watching one child is one task. Add another child and the difficulty doesn't just double. It increases exponentially.

I've heard stories from friends over the years that make your skin crawl as a parent. There was the pastor who enjoyed tossing his son on the couch and missed, breaking his arm. Then there was a music teacher I visited once who lost his newborn in the house because he was half delirious from sleep deprivation. There's the mom who dropped her month-old child because she tripped over a vacuum cleaner her toddler had overturned. My cousin ate a bottle of children's Tylenol when he was about three while my aunt was in the same room, unaware of what he had. I was hit by my twin sister with a 2x4 when I was about a year old and then took a tumble down some stairs on the same day.

We would like to pretend that the world is safer than it is. We would like to pretend that we are better parents than we are. We want to believe a simple narrative where bad people do bad things and that's all that's wrong with the world.

I'm not saying the mom doesn't shoulder some blame here, maybe even the lion's share. I'm not even saying she's a great parent. I don't know anything about her, apart from what's been reported in the media. What I do know is that she was taking her kids to the zoo, ostensibly not to feed them to the lions. Shitty parents don't typically plan trips to the zoo.

There's the other side to this, too, which is that if we accept the simple narrative, we do not have to worry about a complex problem.

We can demonize one mother, and yet be unwilling to have a conversation about the hundreds of accidental childhood deaths that have been caused by firearms in this country. (That is such a common occurrence that it doesn't even make national news. I can't ever recall seeing one of those parents decried in social media.) For that matter, thousands of western lowland gorillas have perished because of the behaviors of humans. There is little fury around this issue and I imagine the vocal social media vigilantes who seek justice for Harambe will find another source of outrage once this story has faded. (Cecil the Lion, anyone?)

Real problems tend toward complexity and real solutions are difficult. If we want to make the world better for children like mine, like yours, like the four-year-old who fell into the gorilla pit — and for the children of Harambe — then we need less moral indignation at mothers and more hard thinking from all of us.

The Fighter

I used to be religious. I'm not anymore, but it's something that's hard to shake. Religious imagery, paradigms, language, and stories creep into my thinking. Especially stories.

This week I am thinking about one of those. It's the parable of the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd was out one day, taking his sheep to pasture. After returning them to the fold, he realized than one of the 100 sheep was missing. So he left the others and went to find the missing sheep, the Bible says, because he loved that sheep so much.

The Bible leaves out the part where the shepherd later makes a pie with the sheep's kidneys, but you get the point.

The last three days have been tough.

Wednesday evening was frenzied. I got home from work at about 5:30. I was looking forward to the evening. I had decided I would take Friday off from work and enjoy a long weekend. I was in a good mood. I wanted to get the kids in bed and play some music.

I helped finish the dinner the Goddess had started while she took the seven-year-old to gymnastics.  The eleven-year-old was outside playing with kids in the neighborhood. The Monkey had a complete meltdown the minute the Goddess left, crying, "Mommy! Mommy!" This, of course, set the Ape into a crying fit and the two of them were inconsolable for about 30 minutes. I was wrapping up dinner when there was a knocking at the door.

I opened it and it was my neighbor Crystal. This immediately set the Monkey crying again, as he thought it was his mother.

"You better get out here," Crystal said.

She explained that the eleven-year-old had been in a near-altercation with a group of older kids. Six of them. According to Crystal, there was an initial round, but as the older boys walked away, the eleven-year-old called after them, calling one of them a name and causing another loud argument.

I called for him and he came into the house. He was crying.

"What's wrong?"

"They were picking on me!" he screamed.

"What happened?"

"I was just standing there with my friend and they started making fun of the way I was standing. One of them called me the 'n' word."

Let me interject here that my child is very white. I'm confused about this part of the story. Maybe he's lying. Maybe the other kids, who were black, were using it in a way he didn't understand. But I believe him when he says they made fun of him. I'm guessing it was his blue hair though, not the way he was standing.

"What did you do?" I asked.

"I called him a little bitch," he answered. Truthfully this time, I am sure.

"What can I do to help?"

"Go out there and shove them! Punch them in the face!" He was crying harder now, with that combination of unbridled rage and emotional pain that only adolescent boys know.

"I'm not going to punch any teenagers," I said. "I'll go talk to them. Go wait in your room."

I go out to the street. There is no sign of them. I ask a couple of adults standing around or sitting on their porches. One of them saw it. He chalked it up to boys being boys, but did note that there were six kids standing around the eleven-year-old, and that they were older.

I go to his room. I talk to him. I tell him I love him very, very much. I talk to him about controlling his actions and especially the things he says. I explain to him that personal insults don't actually hurt you, but besides that, there were six of them and one of him.

"But you wanted to fight a guy who said something to Mom," he said.

"That's true." Fucking kids. Always paying attention and making connections when you wish they wouldn't. "But I don't fight people who insult me. I don't give a shit what people who are less than me think of me, and I don't want to make our lives tougher. You can go to jail for that, then how could I take care of you guys?"

"I don't know."

"Why did you say something back to the kid?"

"Because he humiliated me!" he screamed, as if answering the most stupidly obvious question that had ever been asked.

"There were six of them and one of you. You would have gotten your ass kicked. Which is worse, getting your ass kicked or being humiliated?"

"Being humiliated," he answered, not missing a beat.

That's exactly what it is like to be an eleven-year-old boy. There is nothing, literally, that you fear more than losing face. You are so driven by your hormones and everything is so confusing. I have not forgotten what that feels like.

I talked to him some more about learning to let things go. The rest of us ate dinner while he sat in his room. He wasn't hungry. I cleaned the kitchen while the Goddess got the younger ones to bed. I stayed up late and played some music.

Thursday I was running on no sleep, but the day started well. I was on the road for work, making sales calls. Then I got a call from the Goddess. Her car wasn't starting. Seemed the battery was dead. I was an hour away.

I drove to where she was and tried to jump the car. Nothing. She called AAA and they said they would be there in about 90 minutes. I was going to have to go off the clock for all of this, though my boss didn't complain that I was using the company vehicle. I called into work.

"Just take me off the clock. I was going to take tomorrow off anyway. I'll take this afternoon as well."

The Goddess and I went to a restaurant there to wait on AAA. We talked. Mostly about the eleven-year-old. She was excited. That morning she had an appointment with a local private school. Montessori. It's just what he needs, she said. They will give him more attention, they can personalize things with him, he will have more hands-on experience. This will be a game-changer for him. And she thought we could do it, since she would be working full-time then.

The wrecker showed up. It was the battery. It was just too dead to take a charge from a jumper cable. He charged it for us. The Goddess went to get a battery. I went home.

The eleven-year-old was already home from school. I talked to him while we sat on the couch, but he was mostly engrossed in YouTube videos.

The Goddess came home, with the rest of the kids, and I asked if she minded if I took a nap. I was exhausted.

When I awoke, the Goddess had come into the bedroom. She wanted to talk about a budget. She didn't think we could afford the Montessori school. The conversation moved into the kitchen. I washed dishes while we talked about all the money we spent. It turned into an argument.

I am a very direct communicator. The Goddess is not. She thinks I lack empathy when we talk. I think she lacks clarity.

Fuck. Why are we doing this? Why do people who love each other get in these battles when they are trying to work on the same problems?

We go through a half dozen scenarios, ways we can save money, ways we can make money, alternatives to the private school, etc. We talk for about two hours.

The eleven-year-old comes to the kitchen. He's hungry. He eats a bowl of cereal and we talk to him. I talk to him about the way he speaks to his younger sister. I tell him he needs to not antagonize her. He is sullen.

I worry that we are losing him. Like the lost sheep in the story. 

I want so badly for him to turn into a happy young man. I want him to enjoy his life and succeed in the things he does. But he is starting to disconnect.

It's heart-wrenching, too, because I know how we could fix it. We just can't.

If he was the only child, we could give him the attention he needs. We could sit with him every night and read just to him. We could talk about school projects and play together and devote ourselves to him.

But he's not the only child here. And when you add all the financial stress we've been having, it makes it even more difficult.

I feel like a failure.

But we're going to do this better. For starters, we are going to send him to the Montessori school next year. I'm not sure how at this point, but we're going to.

Friday (today), was his last day of school before summer break. We are having a long weekend, then he visits the Montessori school on Tuesday. The Goddess just wanted to let him miss the very last day.

I try to sleep in, which means I'm wide awake at 6:00 A.M. It's my day off. I cuddle in bed with the Monkey. The Goddess gets the older kids off to school. We talk about plans for the day and for the weekend. It's nice to relax.

The Goddess gets a call at about 10:30. It's the school. There's been a fight.

At first, I'm really angry. His last fucking day. Why couldn't he just go one more day without getting into a fight?

My anger is dissipated when I realize that I wasn't watching the babies close enough and the Monkey has managed to open a very large drawer full of office supplies (a drawer he has heretofore ignored), dumped them all out, and covered a lot them in spilt chocolate milk. He and the Ape are sitting in the midst of the destruction, playing with push pins.

Dad of the Year there, folks.

It takes about thirty minutes to clean up.

The Goddess texts me. The counselor had given the account. A boy pushed him into his locker. He pushed the boy back. The boy started choking him. He hit the boy in the head with his iPad. The boy's friend jumped in and they pushed him down the stairs. One of the eleven-year-old's friends stepped in a broke it up. She was taking him to get a milkshake now.

Then I'm angry all over again, but with a different focus. Where were the fucking teachers? This happened at a locker and there were no teachers around? He gets pushed down stairs and no one is there to even witness it?

I hate this school. It's where poor kids go and no one gives a shit how they do or what happens to them.

They get home. He's quiet, drinking his milkshake. After a few minutes, he goes to his room.

It's a hard life for an eleven-year-old boy. Sometimes it's hard because your brain stops working and your body does things you don't understand. Sometimes it's hard because it takes every bit of your power to just not fucking cry after someone humiliates you at school. And sometimes you get pushed down a flight of stairs.

He's okay now. He wasn't seriously injured.

I've never been this happy to see summer arrive.

A Crystallizing Moment

I don't really believe in God or fate or karma or anything like that. And I usually get pretty annoyed when people speak of the "Universe" personally, as in, "The Universe knew I needed this today."

But sometimes it does seem the Universe is speaking, if we would only listen. Maybe it always is and life just sometimes opens up in ways that make it speak louder.

This weekend was one of those times in my life.

I had a couple of gigs with my band, the Terribly Fat. They went exceptionally well. We have a new guitarist and he's only done a few shows, so it was cool to see him start to get more comfortable in his role. We had good crowds Friday and Saturday, too. Saturday's show was a hometown event at the bar where the band got its start years ago. We hadn't played there in a year, so it was a big deal for us. Lots of old and new friends were there and the Goddess took the kids to Granny S so that we could have a night out together. We even gave the palace a good cleaning, because we were expecting a friend from out of town to stay with us, though she wasn't able to come to the show.

Things went really well and it was good to see the Goddess out like that, reprising her role as my wild girlfriend instead of just "mommy." Drinks were had. Much revelry was made.

Things went really well. Until they didn't.

It's a "developing situation" as they say on the news, so I will refrain from my usual practice of rehashing all the details. The short version is that there was some sort of discussion between the Goddess and some other women which ended with a male friend of mine publicly insulting the Goddess.

People talk about "crystallizing moments." This was one for me.

A few things became extremely clear in a flash. There were suddenly some "bright lines" for me where before it had only been vague abstraction.

The first thing that became clear for me in that instant was that there would never be a time when I am okay with someone insulting my wife.

Now, that seems pretty obvious. But I'd never had that brought into such focus for me.

The Goddess felt pretty miserable for many hours afterward, even crying inconsolably for a couple of hours. At least one (maybe two) other women stuck up for the guy about what had happened leading up to that moment.

But here's the thing: there is no "side of the story" you could possibly share that ends with, "And then he insulted your wife," where I would go, "Oh, okay. That's fine then."

My friend never apologized. To me, that's unthinkable. Or rather, it's unthinkable if you want to remain my friend. Instead, he's sought to justify his actions to others, trying to paint the Goddess as the bad person in this exchange. He just doesn't get it.

In my mind, any decent human being would apologize for what he said, then explain what led to it. That never even occurred to this guy.

The second thing that became instantly clear to me was that there is nothing more important to me than my family.

Again, this is something that I've known for a long time, but it became so perfectly obvious in an instant.

I realized with concrete fullness that there is nothing I will put ahead of my family: not my career, not money, not playing in a band, and not another's friendship. In a single moment, I realized I would give up anything for them.

My friendship with this man evaporated just that quickly. It was instantly not just less important, but less than worthless, even odious to me. I was sickened by the idea that I had been friends with someone like him.

Thankfully, that situation doesn't present itself very often. The Goddess is involved with her own interests, I am with mine, the kids with theirs, and we make it work. It really took someone outside our circle to force this issue in my mind.

Things are a mess right now. There is "drama" and turmoil between several friends and former friends. The outcome is up in the air and there will probably be some additional fallout.

But we picked up the kids from Granny S and came back to Crackerbox Palace on Sunday evening. The eleven-year-old asked the Goddess to cut his hair and then changed into a Spider-Man costume. The seven-year-old played Minecraft. Monkey and Ape ate apples and crackers and Dum-Dums before playing with trains and blocks in the dining room and living area. At one point the Monkey sat and fed me from a can of mixed nuts. In the space of about one hour, our recently-spotless home was transformed into lightly-controlled chaos.

But I wouldn't exchange it for the world.

Wherein I Explain My Recent Absence and Update Readers on Goings-On

I'm a failure as a blogger.

Blogger tells me that my last published post was in early March.

I have let my faithful readership — both of you —  down.

I'd like to say that it is because something terribly exciting has happened. I would really like to say that my band was signed to a record contract worth half a million and we begin touring regionally and thanks, readers, it's been fun these past few months, but I'm off to a life of liquor, groupies, and rock-and-roll.

Nope. I've just been busy. With like, life.

I've started to post something several times. I have two drafts half-begun. I'm hoping this isn't the third. This week was Mothers' Day, and while I did write a rather lengthy post about the Goddess on Facebook, I didn't manage to blog about mothers and how wonderful they are and how much I miss mine and close off the blog with some poignantly-timed reminiscence that would leave you with a catch in your throat and glistening eyes.

Because fuck mothers.

Just kidding.

It has been an eventful period, honestly. I've been gigging a lot recently and have a tour coming up with my band, the Terribly Fat.

Our domestic life has had its ups and downs. One interruption has been the Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign.

I've been doing a (very) little bit of volunteering with the campaign, but one of the things I told the state campaign director was that I could host a staffer in my home. He is a very pleasant young man, straight from college, energetic, and enthusiastic about his candidate. While the Goddess was welcoming, I can tell it has caused her no small amount of distress having a stranger in our home. He usually is out the door before 8:00 or 9:00 in the morning and doesn't return until sometime after midnight. If I catch him, I usually pour bourbon down his throat and force him to talk about democratic socialism until he pleads for sleep.

I did get to drive a big black SUV in the motorcade for the campaign when Bernie came to our state. I would bore you with a long story about it, but I will simply say that I looked and felt like a Secret Service agent. A Secret Service agent with dad bod.

The biggest factor in our home life for the last several months has been our financial situation and the Goddess' job search. She's applied for several dozen jobs, interviewed for about half a dozen, and even been offered a few. The catch 22 of the job hunt has been finding something whose salary covers more than just the daycare we need for her to work. (Case in point: she was offered an office job at a state agency starting at $18,000 before taxes. Daycare costs for us total about $16,000 per year.)

So, it was with great joy and exultation that the news was received last week that the Goddess had been offered a gig teaching music (the field for which she is certified). It has an actual salary with benefits like insurance and sick leave and all those things you hear about on TV. It's quite glamorous.

We've been all a-titter with talk of our plans once she starts the new job: paying our water and gas bill in the same month, state inspection stickers for the cars, and dinner at Shoney's on special occasions!

It is rather remarkable how much psychological pressure has been lifted in the home because of this. We haven't gotten the first paycheck, but it already feels like we have more money, just because we're pretty sure we can keep the utilities from being shut off.

Of course, our residents are blissfully unaware of these pressures and so they are continuing their lives much as before.  Which is to say, they continue acting like total assholes.

Again, just kidding.

Only less so this time.

The Ape is the sweetest one of the bunch. He's fat and happy most of the time, except when teething or being dropped on his head. This guy and accidents . . . man. He was staying with Granny and pitched himself face-first from a high chair. Then on Mother's Day, while everyone was trying to get out the door for a family visit, the Goddess told the older kids to watch their brothers so she could go pee. They didn't, of course (see paragraph above re: assholes) and he managed to climb a step, just to fall again on his head. I'm guessing the Ivy League is out of the picture for him now, but I still think he's good for a two-year community college program or the trades. A few more drops though and the highlight of his day may be talking to the mailman.

The Monkey is in full toddler mode. The Goddess says he's like a bad boyfriend: he makes a complete wreck of your life but still expects heavy affection and wants you to make him snacks. Oh, and he shits his pants, which I'm gonna tell you is getting really old. But he also is our talker and his near-human utterances make me smile all the time. He "reads" Goodnight Moon and since it has become his favorite, insists on going out to the porch every night to say "goodnight" to the moon. (I know: that makes some of your ovaries hurt, doesn't it?) He is also obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine, which I personally despise. I have taught him, however, to say, "Thomas is bourgeois." He wishes me goodbye every day and tells me to have a good day at work, and when I leave or come home he'll say, "Gimme a kiss."

The seven-year-old is all about singing and gymnastics. Unfortunately, she is less about taking a bath without having a complete emotional breakdown. Also, she will occasionally melt down if her shoes don't "feel the same" or if her friend Alexis doesn't get to spend the whole weekend at our house. (Aside: we regularly have an additional 1-3 children in our home, sometimes overnight. Their main project seems to be destroying anything we love.) But she also loves to be read bedtime stories, which is really cool, and writes eerily prescient song lyrics for a first grader.

The eleven-year-old is all about his YouTube channel and making videos. Some of them are kind of fantastic (in my unbiased opinion), such as his Doctor Who and Spider Man fan films. He really has some groovy editing skills. But then he also does these films of him playing video games which is apparently a whole thing but also what the fuck? I tried explaining that this was really, really boring, but he isn't having it. He's the one I'm most concerned about because he has basically completely disconnected from school. There is almost nothing there that holds any interest for him and if we thought we could, we would pull him out and teach him at home. And he's hitting that middle school phase where he is less talkative, less engaged with us. Yet he is super sweet with his brothers and regularly plays with them and "teaches" them things. For example, he has worked hard to teach the Monkey to say, "What the fuck?!" which seems like a worthy project for any older brother.

All this rambling to say, here's where the fam is today and I hope to be posting more regularly.

If only life will quit interrupting.