My kid is special and so are you

magical mundanity

Bobby Fischer, the brilliant chess player, as an amazing child.

When the violinist Joshua Bell was four-years-old, his mother walked into his room and found that he had stretched rubber bands over the handles of his dresser, tuned them, and was recreating a tune he’d recently overheard her playing on the piano.

Now, of course, Joshua Bell is arguably the best violinist on the planet. This is an anecdote from the early life of a once-in-a-generation talent. But I think about that anecdote a lot. Because I’ve got a two-year-old now and several times a day, as he’s doing a puzzle or narrating his favorite stuffed animal’s emotional life (lamb stays here — lamb is angry), I find myself thinking oh wow, he’s so smart. And sure, he is probably quite smart. But he’s not tuning the dressers.

Anyway, that’s become one of my favorite phrases — because this is a thing other people say about my kid all the time. He’s so smart. And I always just nod along and say, “sure he is, but he’s not tuning the dressers.” Because when other people look at your two-year-old and say he’s so smart, they don’t mean that they caught him doing calculus in the bathroom, they mean I want to say something nice about your kid and I want it to be more meaningful than ‘he’s so cute.'

I’ve been thinking about tuning the dressers a lot because A.) we’re touring pre-schools now¹ and B.) last week, there was this David Sedaris essay predicated on the notion that most parents of single children honestly believe that their kid actually is tuning the dressers.

And I’d love to say something nice here, but that essay was just a bummer. I like David Sedaris in a casual sort of way. The same way I like Taylor Swift or Wes Anderson. Sedaris’ writing is accessible, it’s occasionally insightful and it’s never lazy. But this piece … it was lazy. The primary arguments are packaged in sentences like “if our schools are a mess it’s in large part due to these parents who think their kids are special.”²

After that, you’d expect that he’d bang on about participation trophies. Instead he takes the I used to walk uphill to school both ways in the snow line of argument, saying that his mother would have beat him if he was caught acting up in class. Again, lazy.³

But whatever, enough about David Sedaris. You don’t actually give a shit about him. I want to talk about why my kid is amazing. For the most part, when we, as parents describe our kid as "amazing,” we aren’t suggesting that our kid is tuning the dressers. What we’re saying is this: it is amazing that, only thirteen months ago, my kid was essentially a screaming shit-machine and now he has enough emotional intelligence to explain the inner lives of his stuffed animals. We mean the process of life is amazing when viewed within screaming distance. Infuriating sometimes, yes, but mostly amazing.⁴

It’s amazing to see a human being become acquainted with the world. The way parenthood rewires your brain is amazing. All of this is amazing. None of it, I suppose is exceptional. And look, if your kid really is a genius, you’re going to know it. You’re going to walk in one day and see that he’s tuned the dressers.

I wonder, what did Joshua Bell’s mother think when she walked in and saw what her four-year-old had done? Did she freak out? I would, at least a little bit. That’s so much responsibility — to have a genius on your hands. You’ve got to fly off to Europe for violin lessons once-a-month and buy your kid tuxedos for his performances. And ugh, just imagine how often you’d have to go into New York City.

I’m a bit grateful that my kid isn’t tuning the dressers. Because I don’t know how to raise a genius. I’d be constantly stressed about screwing it up. I can teach my kid to share and not to scream inside, I don’t know if I could teach him advanced musical theory. And, well, this simple thing is a better life. Monster truck rallies and pumpkin patches and kid-friendly bars. It’s not much and I know it won’t be like this for long but it makes me happy. Like, really-truly happy. It’s like, maybe, just maybe, the mundanity a little bit special.

1. Yes, I am aware of the fact that we’re touring preschools is a bit ridiculous. But we live in L.A. — there are like ten pre-schools within three miles so I suppose we’ve got to look at them. And I don’t mind. It’s just that, well, one preschool is generally as good as another.

2. also, though, this is a fucking hilariously grouchy clause to open a sentence — if our schools are a mess it’s in large part due to …. the fact that school lunches are more chemicals than food … teachers on TikTok … violent video games and rock music.

3. the super-awkward thing here was that Sedaris went on to say ““I think that if you don’t want to slap or spank your child, that’s fine—your decision. But that other people should be completely allowed to.” And that’s awkward for me. Because, I’ve never considered it before, but I honestly don’t know what I’d do if David Sedaris slapped my kid. I really have no idea. Probably, I’d just pick up my kid and walk away. But there’s also a non-zero chance that the slap would trigger some mammalian instinct in me and I’d accidentally beat the living hell out of the most famous essayist alive.

4. And I’m sorry, but we’re back to David Sedaris again because there’s another thing. He has a bit in this essay where a mother in Bel Air is spoiling her child and, by extension, holding up the school bus. And it’s like, yeah, of course a mother in Bel Air is spoiling her kid. She lives in Bel Air.