Tuesday, October 7, 2014

The Four Horsemen of the Kidpocalypse


On the heels of the Mount Rushmore of Gross, and in keeping with the quartet theme, you can take one look at your kids and easily make a transition to...

The Four Horsemen of the Kidpocalypse.

As you know, the media can take a neutral, nothing sort of thing and blow it out of proportion in a good way by placing it on a Mount Rushmore. To do the same in a bad way, they simply add the suffix -pocalypse to it, and soon we have words like "Snowpocalypse or Sharknadopocalypse." Thanks, media, for that. Really. We're grateful. However, the media never seems to take the deeper dive and get into the Four Horsemen of the Sharknadopocalypse, and that just embodies lazy journalism.

New Rule: Anyone with a child may declare a full-blown kidpocalypse in his or her house. But in so doing, they must provide evidence of Four actual Horsemen of Said Kidpocalypse or risk losing all remaining credibility with whoever deals out credibility these days.

So here are the Four Horsemen of the Kidpocalypse...yours of course will vary:
 
They seem like harmless creatures.
http://bearsenglishpage2011-2012.wikispaces.com/Four+Horsemen

1. Conquest - Any time we get the oldest on the bus on time with her lunchbox and a minimum of tears directly resulting from a hair situation, we have conquered. When we sit down at a restaurant after a 30-45 minute wait where all five of us have openly questioned whether the buzzer thingie actually works, we have conquered. (Who cares what happens in the restaurant after that,) Any time we go to the photography studio for Christmas pictures and don't have to apologize to anybody for "that scene" or for bloodying the all-white background, we have conquered. Conquest is usually riding a white horse, hopping with a stick between its legs.

2. War - Toss a dead flip phone from 2005 between two of your kids and have them contact their oldest living female relative. (At least they try to reach a living relative.) Hand one of your kids the buzzer thingie at the restaurant and explain to him or her the importance of watching it, while the other two look on, curious and hurt. Ten minutes later, try to negotiate a time-share between the kids. Five minutes after that, take the thing back because it hasn't lit up or buzzed in 15 minutes, so it must be one of Grandma's old boring rotary telephones or sewing needles. Or it's broken. Inform your kids there is only enough chocolate milk left for one glass. Hide the iPad cord. Place your children's car seats within arm's length of each other. Inform your oldest that she must go to CCD while her brothers get to stay in their pajamas and watch cartoons (this is the original Holy War.) All of these things invite War, which is often depicted riding a red horse, which is ridiculous. If my child tries to color a horse red in school, his teacher tells him "no" and has him start over. Red Horse sounds better suited as a beer name than as a symbol of impending doom.

3. Famine - Cook anything for your kids that isn't cotton candy or Fruit by the Foot-based. Famine ensues. Famine arrives on a black horse, the veritable "dark horse" in the Kidpocalypse, the unheard of force that causes the end of days...kids principled enough to starve themselves to death in protest over the absence of cotton candy, as an example. In this case, I would think famine should arrive on either a pink or blue horse. Like My Little Ponies.

4. Death - Admittedly, it's a little jarring when your kids start understanding death, then using it very matter-of-factly in sentences like, "Daddy, did your grandma die?" and "Nana's kitty is DEAD." And you feel a bit more mortal when they understand a little more and ask, "Daddy, when are you going to die? How old will I be when you die?" It's chilling.

Death, then, arrives on a pale horse, but the ancient texts (Wikipedia) don't indicate what color, just pale. Not helpful. Perhaps a whiter shade of pale? From beyond the pale? Whatever.

As always, yours may vary. Many interpretations of the Kidpocalypse include pestilence, for example, which kids often bring home from school or Day Care. Then the family spends the next four months passing pestilence back and forth. (Make sure you get your Pestilence shots this fall.)

But enough of this. Nobody's dying here, just like the world is not ending when there is a lot of snow. And your world doesn't end when you have kids (don't answer that), so let's dial back the drama by refraining from attaching -pocalypse to everything. There is no Kidpocalypse or Snowpocalypse or Sharknadopocalypse.

But when there's only one cookie left in the bag? It's sheer Kidmageddon. 















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