MIA for 2 Weeks

I know that there have been some people trying to contact me over the last few weeks. I should have made this more obvious: I was attending two weddings over the last two weeks in completely different cities than the one I currently reside in, and thus I was not in town for those two weeks. I just returned this evening to my home (computer) and have listened to the phone messages (16, a new record) and read my backlog of emails (5 nonspam, wonderful).

Obviously I am terrible at communicating with people via any other sort of means than face-to-face conversation, especially the telephone. And I am also a class triple-A introvert. My choice of career is ironic.

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I see that Ian is back in Montreal.

A Kid Who Makes One Reconsider Having Kids

Toronto was a massive tropical mess. The sun is stronger with even this slight difference in latitude. The air was laden with so much moisture that the humidex was 37 degrees nearly the whole time I was there. In addition, it was so hot in the morning that I couldn't run longer than half the usual time. (But I did get to see cute animals scurrying about.)

There were good things, like having seafood and more seafood. There was also seeing the cousins and more cousins of cousins. Then there was the terrible things, like filling up on so much water that I felt like one of those controversial fountains. But the thing that I could not understand was the behaviour of that certain ~3 year old baby...

The baby was cute enough. (Cousin of cousin of cousin, I suppose.) He spoke about three languages, all of them chinese, at the same time. Even his mum had a hard time understanding him. His favourite television program must be Thomas the Tank Engine because he had his own Thomas inflatable mattress.

But he had almost no discipline. The mother would restrain him when he hit her or slapped her around, but there was little to no follow-up after restraint, nor any corrective behaviour, so that the kid would just keep doing the bad behaviour. He would also start crying if he was restrained too long or denied anything he wanted. Then the restraint would stop or the adults would give in. In addition, he would slap around my female relatives, but not the male ones.

The boy made a great start when he arrived, as his nose suddenly bled three times in a row, and right onto the rug that Rebecca had just finished scrubbing a few hours prior to the mess. She then commented that the last time he had visited, he had peed on the floor as well. For some reason, one of the adults thought it might be a good idea to stick a piece of chinese green into the nose to stop the bleeding, but thank goodness the kid refused this unorthodox treatment.

But that is not the only thing the kid refused. He also refused to relinquish things that kids aren't supposed to play with, such as the inflatable mattress motor, and he refused to be told to stop beating up the people around him.

I was spared the whiny torment and torture of the boy by interacting as nonchalantly as possible, because I couldn't stand another moment when the mother would allow him yet again to fling a chopstick around. (That didn't mean I was heartless - I still helped him up and down stairs and make sure he didn't run into a pole or something.)

Eddie and Rebecca both work with young children his age, and they had suggested to the parents to leave the kid with them for 3 weeks and they'd straighten him out. (I'm sure everyone deep down inside really hoped the parents would say yes.)