Human Sponges

Index

12.Aug.2002

"How many times do I have to tell you to hold on for a second?"

These words were spoken with all the exasperation my three year-old could muster. That’s right, the miniature tape recorder that I grew in my womb is now functioning quite well. Panasonic or Sony couldn't have created a better model.

It never ceases to amaze me when I hear adult words, worries and wisdom pour out the mouths of my babes. I've been thankful that neither my husband nor I swear because by now my kindergartener would probably be spending a great deal of time in the Principle's office for colorful language.

My five year old surprised me the other day by voicing her concerns about getting a job and finding some money. She wasn’t worried about her Daddy finding a job; she was worried about finding a job for herself.

When did finding a job and worrying about money become a priority for the Blues Clues crowd? I don’t remember having worries like that as a child. Of course, my Dad didn’t work for Boeing, he worked for Vitamilk Dairy and he was never out of work. And therein lies the rub; we’ve been talking too much in front of our tiny human sponges.

Make no mistake, they are sponges, soaking up everything surrounding them, whether you think they are or not. At some point they will spew forth some bit of lunacy or wisdom that originated from you and you’ll either want to curl into the fetal position in embarrassment or you’ll grin from ear to ear. Hopefully it will be the latter. I’ve experienced both. With four sponges around me it was only a matter of time until they took something in and spit it back out at an inopportune moment.

It’s not the embarrassing comments that are bothering me right now though; it’s the other ones, the more adult worries coming out of their little mouths. It was never my intention to steal their childhoods by giving them adult concerns. A five year old shouldn’t be thinking about getting a job, or worrying about how she’s going to buy a house. At five years of age her only concerns should be learning to ride her bike without training wheels and how to get out of eating the broccoli on her plate. Finances shouldn’t enter into her world. Unfortunately, for too many children, they have.

There are a lot of us out there; parents who have been laid off or have lost their jobs for whatever reason. The Labor Department just published its report and said that the jobless rate has dropped two-tenths of a percentage point. How many families are there in a percentage point? I’m glad that two-tenths of a percentage point worth of families now have an income. We don’t happen to fall into that category. We’re one of the over thirty thousand Boeing layoffs that are still without jobs.

You can just imagine the conversations around thousands of dinner tables at night about how to pay the mortgage, how to figure out where to come up with the money to buy groceries and pay for health insurance. Or how to fund another printer cartridge because one of your human sponges used the printer to print out fifty-seven copies of their favorite characters from Disney.com and you need to print out more resumes’ to send out to more companies like the ones you’ve already applied to.

Normally you would have simply gone to the store to purchase another cartridge. Not so now. Every penny spent is agonized over because there are so few pennies to spend. And whether you mean to do it or not, your children are going to hear about your financial woes and either say something to you or, even better, walk up to complete strangers and tell them their Daddy isn’t working and we might lose our house and have no place to live. “Could we come live with you Mister?” Nothing made me prouder than when my five-year-old did that at the grocery store last week.

If only our little ones were truly like real sponges. If they were, I’d pick them up, squeeze out the adult worries they’ve absorbed and all their embarrassing comments. Then, and only then, would I take them out into public. Of course first I’d fill them up with other things to say, like, “Would you adopt me Mr. Gates?”

Index

Email Me At