…sidetrack

LaGoon Utah, 2008. This ride was closed for repair while we were there. They were filling the cars repeatedly with employees to test it and see if it was ready to open to the public. Talk about hazard pay!!!

Journal,
I look forward to a momentary break in the craziness of life, something like the sidetrack on the roller coaster—the calm straight section of the ride that grants a momentary pause in the ups and downs. This diverts the rider’s mind from the nasty vertical spin.
After the gut wrenching chaos, the switch over to the sidetrack can stabilize things and once again all can be well with the world… at least until the next slide. T

I’d like to think that the answer to, "Why me?" is not always "Why not you?" I like to think that I am involved in this constant upheaval of parenting because I’m so good at it, but the bottom line is that you don’t have to be "good" to be a parent nowadays, you just have to be willing to attempt it.

Journal,
Confuse and confound is a successful parenting tactic. I distract the two-year old during the immunization visit and confuse him when at four, I attempt to answer his myriad of questions.

At six he is easily redirected when he wakes from a nightmare. At ten, I can still mystify him when I bombard him with intricate and valid excuses to his querulous “why-nots?”

Why is it then, that I sit back baffled as the teenager demonstrates how well he has mastered any and all of these sidetracking techniques?

If you can’t be good at it, at least be good at the deluding yourself that you are good at it. I am good at being a parent, if being a parent means being a professional manipulator—the side tracker or the spinner…

I'm the best!