The Songs of Summer

So, we are now in the throes of midsummer. The mercury is high, the humidity is higher, and my patience is on a hair trigger.
When I look at the calendar, I realize that these are the dog days of summer. We, as parents are over the novelty of spending time with our dear little angels, and our dear little angels are over the novelty of not having school. We are getting on each other's nerves. As I speak to other moms, I realize there are a few methods of summer torture shared by young children everywhere:
"It's not fair." My dad had a million puns to offer up in response to this ubiquitous whine. Most frequent was: "if you want fare, take the bus," which as a child, I found agonizingly annoying. It is still pretty irritating when I think about it. Oh, hell I hate that complaint. Everything is essentially fair in the long run. Sure, one may be permitted to watch TV now while the other one must clean his room, but eventually, these things all even out. Why can't my kids get it? "I asked you to clean your room, and you didn't do it, so I took all the toys from the floor and am keeping them for 3 days." What about that is unfair? What grand injustice could that represent?
"Can I...?" This seems to be the only phrase that my children know. Before I can even mutter "good morning," before I can even pour that first, desperately needed cup of coffee, I have been asked "can I?" 137 times. "Can I watch TV?" "Can I play on the computer?" "Can I have cookies for breakfast?" "Can I be finished with breakfast even though all I ate was half a cookie?" "Can I play alone?" "Can E play with me?" "Can I? Can I? Can I?" My interior response is invariably something along the lines of "Can I duct tape your mouth shut?"
"I'm bored." How can a child of mine be bored? There is a playmate whining the same thing in the room next door. There is a park outside, there is a closet full of toys, there is a library's worth of books to look at. My sister and I used to play spy games, chase games, bike games, ball games, made-up fantastical adventures outside. Whether we were at home or at my grandmother's house, we played imagination games outside. Children seem to have lost this capacity. They literally collapse to the ground and droopily wave their limbs about like ancient Roman patricians, beckoning, "entertain me minstrel, for I could not possibly amuse myself."
God forbid I ask them to do something for me. If I announce a mandatory trip to the grocery, the protest that immediately erupts is something like oppressed that of Iranian voters. A spectator would think that I asked them to hike up Mt Everest in shorts, without a sherpa or oxygen. The complaining. The whine drone, "whyyyyyyyyyy doooooooooo weeeeeeeeee haaaaaaaaaaave tooooooooo goooooooooo?" (Because you are going to want to eat some time in the next 24 hours, no?) "wwwwwwwwwwwwhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhy caaaaaaaaaaaaaan't weeeeeeeeee waaaaaaaaaaait in thhhhhhhhhhe caaaaaaaaaaar?" (Because if you sit in the car in this heat for 15 seconds you will melt like the Nazis in Indiana Jones.) "Whhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhy is it ssssooooooooooo boooooooooooring?" (Because they didn't install a Wii in the produce section for your royal highnesses.) Worse than the grocery, of course, is asking them to clean some portion of the house. Forced-labor diamond miners in Africa have a life of luxury compared to my kids, if you ask them. The groaning, the gagging, the abject misery of picking up one's own toys is deafening. The agony of stooping to pick up yet another action figure is paralyzing. Their tale is tragic.
Whine. Bicker. Fight. Whine. Bicker. Fight. WhineBickerFight. This is the the natural rhythm of mid-summer. I find it difficult to wake up each morning with a fresh attitude towards those darlings because twelve hours is not enough time for me to reset my mood. So every day, I feel a little crankier. A little less patient.
By the way, E says he feels like I've been sitting at the computer writing this for 120 hours. He says I'm never getting up. Can he plllllllllleaaaaaaaaase watch TV now?
Can I have my FREAKING XANAX YET?!? I'm going to have to email a Dr. in Mexico or something aren't I?