The Rules In This House

I can't recall when I first offered you money not to do something. I believe it was in the mid-1970s at a Friendly's Restaurant north of Boston. You had consumed a bowl of chicken vegetable soup, a Clamwich, and a side order of onion rings when you announced you wanted a Jim Dandy Sundae (four scoops of ice cream, hot fudge sauce, bananas, and assorted toppings). Repulsed, I suggested you order a Banana Royale (three scoops of ice cream) or, better yet, give a moment's thought to those less fortunate than yourself. You refused.

The hardest part of parenting is accepting that your child is not, and may never be, the person you are. When I was growing up in rural Ohio in the 1950s, I was not a greedy, self-obsessed, intolerant boy inclined to mimic the mannerisms, speech patterns, and facial tics of my elders. It would not have occurred to me, at the age of twelve, to snatch and toss a teacher's wig into a Dumpster. I had neither been caught shoplifting nor been found rearranging the letters on a synagogue message board to read: "Oy masturbation."

So I suppose my impulse at Friendly's that rainy afternoon was the result of years of disappointment and frustration coupled with panic that you would grow fatter. I noted that a Jim Dandy cost $2.65 (to give you some idea of your gluttony and my desperation, its inflation-adjusted price today would be $14.80) and offered you $1.32 not to order one. You countered that you would "go hungry" for $1.33 and we vacated our booth (though not before I had obtained exact change at the register and you held the coins in your fist).

On the ride home, I mulled over our relationship which, since the day you were circumcised, had been one long, downhill slide. I had recently begun to treasure the first two years of your life, when you could not speak. The ensuing decade had been a steadily escalating series of calls from counselors, coaches, and teachers.

What kind of a boy spends Sunday afternoon sharpening the edge of a birthday card from his uncle in order to slice through a neighbor's garden hose? Why would you entreat your cousin to swallow marbles, a frog, or wood? As you approached adolescence, I feared for your older siblings and dreamt one night that the rear window of the family station wagon would someday read: "Swarthmore," "Dartmouth," "Rikers."

Over the years, you and I developed a private pact which might be termed bribery. I preferred to see it as a sanity-saving measure that, no matter how costly, was a bargain compared to the alternative. I paid you 50 cents for every hour of TV you did not watch (up to a maximum of 20 hours, and, as your bedtime grew later, 22 hours per day). I shelled out 15 dollars each week you failed to expose yourself in the library, schoolbus, or other public setting (with a three-dollar retainer for not doing so to Daphne Coulthard).

I paid you nine dollars a week for not devouring the entire contents of the cake house each afternoon and for not leaving crushed, crumbled Fudgetown cookies in the back seat of the car. I parted with an additional four dollars to ensure you kept your feet off the coffee table, television, bedroom walls, and sister. You were remunerated handsomely for not scattering your laundry throughout the house and for not neglecting to use Q-tips, toothpaste, hand soap, shampoo, deodorant, and toilet paper.

You have received cash for not whinnying like a horse or barking like a seal during dinner or while in church. You have also benefitted monetarily from not gesticulating wildly, hurling objects, and howling in a crazed way when confronted with homework.

In the late 1970s, I was earning a handsome $85,000 salary, 40 percent of which was spent on you. This despite the fact that you were unable to gain admittance to an expensive private school, had no costly equestrian or nautical hobbies, and seldom left the house. Which has been its own monetary drain over the decades as I have paid you not to paint, graffiti, or otherwise deface, flood, or set fire to your room.

You have also received funds not to join the KKK, the Shining Path, or Al-Qaeda. You have been compensated not to have a sex change, not to wed a man in Massachusetts or Hawaii, not to marry Daphne Coulthard, not to drive your mother's car off a cliff or into a swamp, into a pedestrian, or through the bow window of the living room. You have taken large sums not to abuse cocaine, methamphetamines, neuroenhancers, chewing tobacco, NyQil, or heroin.

Notwithstanding enormous payments to lower the volume of your stereo, to not construct a skateboard ramp using your dresser and wardrobe, and to refrain from using said ramp, we hear ominous rumblings from above, particularly during meal times. As you are presently 47 and we below live on a fixed income, I ask you once again to honor our agreement and to respect the rules in this house.