Hours Of My Life I Will Never Get Back Again

There are few things in life I hate as much as talking to my young kids on the phone.

You have a young baby at home. You’re at work. You get a call from your wife and you have a perfectly lovely 10 minute conversation and then she says “bwach bwach wants to talk to you!” And then you hear what is apparently your baby gnawing and slobbering on and trying to eat your phone, even though that really doesn’t have much of a sound at all. And you’re forced to jolt yourself into your sing-songy “how is baby doing today” voice even though you don't have your baby to look at so you don't get to see the kid smile when you do it, so you have to force it and, while forcing it, you imagine the baby is just staring into space listening to the television while you’re making a fool of yourself on the phone and you just get really fucking self-conscious and you start looking around seeing if anyone can hear you making the ridiculous sounds you are making, and I really hope you don’t work in a cubicle.

And so a year or two passes, and your kid is two and can actually talk some and so you call home from your parents’ house, because you’re spending the night because your mom is going into surgery or something, and you talk to your wife and have a perfectly lovely 10 minute conversation with her, but during it you hear your toddler making noise in the background, demanding to be picked up, which works to silence the kid, and later you hear your toddler chattering at your wife and grabbing at the phone and you’re hearing “no, momma is talking” and then, later “you can talk to daddy in a minute” and then, after a minute, your wife says “cha cha cha wants to talk to you.”

And you talk and ask questions and you say .. what? You have no idea what to say. “How are you” doesn’t work. They have no idea what that means. “What did you do today?” Maybe. But even if you came up with something, it wouldn’t matter, because your toddler is going to be stone cold silent. Not a word. And you’ve seen this before while you were at home, with your own mother trying to talk to her grandkids on the phone from miles and miles away and the kids just sit staring at the phone, rapt at attention for a minute or two, mystified, but then drop the phone and are off to the races with practically no notice, and you have to scramble over to the phone and pick it up and cut off your mother who is still talking to them and it’s just embarrassing and you know that that is you now. You're the idiot talking to no one.

And then the kid is four and your wife calls from the car on the way home after picking them up from preschool and the kid whines “but I want to talk to daa-deee” (daa-deee is your name; two a’s; three e’s) and so, after a perfectly lovely 5 minute conversation with your wife, she hands the cell phone back and … they drop it during the exchange… and your wife pulls the car over, and you figure you have to stay on the line. So they pick the phone back up, and then your kid wants to press the buttons while they talk to you (which your wife legitimately can’t control, as she’s driving) and the kid invariably hangs up, but that makes them cry so your wife calls you back again to make them happy again and you try to talk to them and …

... see, if you don't have kids, you probably aren’t aware of this, but children have an inter-child pact that requires that, once they get on the phones with their fathers, they are only allowed to use the specific words that their mothers say to them. In addition to those words, they can use the words “daa-deee” and the word “I.” That’s it. (I think Milton Bradley actually markets the game as “Taboo for Preschool.”)

So your wife says “tell daddy what you did at school today.” And your kid says, to your wife, “like what.” And your wife says “about the pictures you drew” and you can hear what your wife is saying, so then your kid says “daa-deee, I drew pictures at school today.” See, “drew,” “pictures,” “at,” “school,” and “today” were all words first uttered by your wife. This will continue for 5 more minutes, as you get to hear your wife spoon feed your child words to say to you. Which would be ok, if your wife hadn’t already told you all of these things before she handed the phone back to your kid in the first place.

OK, once in a while they’ll say something funny or cute. Like, once a year. The other hours are hours you’ll never get back again. So just don’t get your kids in the habit of talking to you on the phone. Or, if it’s too late, just don’t pay any attention.

For example, I’ve written this entire passage while my 1-year old and 4-year old have been talking to me on the phone. I have so much more free time now. You gotta try this.