Deimos and Phobos

There's really no objective criteria against which you can judge whether or not you've been a good parent. All you really have to go on is your own moral compass, the example set by people you respect and, generally speaking, doing exactly the opposite of whatever it was your parents did to fuck you up so comprehensively.

I'm sure all of our parents were certain they were doing the right thing by us, to the absolute best of their ability, just as I feel today with my own kids. There were important lessons to be learned about responsibility, moderation and the damaging effects of wire hangers, delivered in what they absolutely believed were in the most loving and practically effective of terms.* I see cutesy someecards and other meme-type things on Facebook stating variations on the theme of "if I talked to my parents the way kids talk to theirs today, I wouldn't be here to post this meme thing." And then three more images featuring a scowling cat, George Takei giving a Vulcan hand sign and something denouncing the scourge of Mondays, all of which taken together form an unassailable Nexus Of Wisdom, the like of which we could not have known if it weren't for the internet and its uncanny ability to pull the nugget-ized truth from our heads without us having to take the time to draw, type or even think it independently for ourselves.

Someday my sons will be 38 years old and they will finally have the perspective and grace to consider my efforts honestly and conclude, just as I have now, that parents generally have no idea what they're doing and it's kind of a miracle that anyone survives the first few weeks past birth.

I accept that my kids will most likely be unappreciative and bitter. It will be my fault their college career double majoring in Sociology and Bikram Yoga didn't somehow materialize into a six-figure career at one of the better multinational homeopathic healing and joint flexibility corporations or that there's no real market for them to monetize their uncanny virtuosity on the cajón box drum.

But one does what one can. I'll embarrass them by insisting we talk about sex** so they don't accidentally grow up to be rapists. And I'll make sure they know that if they blow up a public event of any kind, they really shouldn't feel like they can look to me to try to help them out with public expressions of unsupportable horseshit contradicted by 100% of the facts including an unprecedented cornucopia of video evidence.

But I've already given up, in a sense. Not because I don't believe in them, but because it's the only possible way for a parent to stay sane in the face of so many variables and the Atlas-like burden of worry. Even if you do everything right, there are no guarantees. You can do your best, get them through college and into an exciting field, like astrophysics or mechanical engineering, with gainful employment in a serious and stable sector like government research and development and they're still going to fuck around and draw a giant dick on Mars.

That said, there are clearly levels of acceptable delinquency. I plan on staying engaged long enough for the resentment to really stick if that increases the chances they're more likely to be caught misbehaving in a strictly professional--and less mass-murdery--capacity.

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*Sometimes via projectile.

**In the medical and healthy-growth sense, I mean. Not in the casual way one does with one's peers where you swap stories and compare sores.