Some friends of ours, a lovely married couple from Hong Kong, are undergoing the laborous and exhausting process of leaving Japan. Concluding 8 years of missionary service in Japan, they are tying up loose ends while being parents to their 2 infants. Packing up is hard, but packing up in Japan is infinitely more complicated, so I was surprised when my offer to help in anyway with moving was responded with a request to babysit instead.
I worked for 6 months at a children's school nearby my college when I was 18. My approach to day care was very much influenced by my father's approach to raising my brother and I. "Oh, you want to eat the whole tub of ice cream? I'll get you the spoon. In bed? Okay, let's get you a bib." And then I would insist on eating it next to my sleeping mother and drip ice cream all over her pillow. I even talked him out of taking me to the doctor for a week of daily vaccinations (Kuwaiti medicine-don't ask) when I was seven. So when the children I was in charge of serving strictly measured servings of carrots to requested the bag of marshmallows they spied in a partially open cupboard, I was more than happy to break open the bag and oblige.
But I picked up another habit, this from both my parents, a tendency to manipulate by making up scary stories. My parents told me there was a genie (djinn in Arabic) who lived in the crack between two pieces of carpet. At night, the crack would glow red with fire and the genie would come out and confiscate the toys I didn't put away. This wasn't Aladdin's genie but the menacing Islamic variety, and I clearly remember tearfully apologizing to a kidnapped Poppel for my carelessness. And being careful not to piss off the genie further by stepping on his carpet crack.
Whenever I had recess duty, the boys playing outside would kick the ball over the fence and into a rich neighbor's back yard. Shame-faced, I would have to walk over, ring the doorbell, apologize profusely and get told off everytime this happened. Because it was such an ordeal to get the ball back, the boys enjoyed this tremendously and wouldn't waste any time kicking the retrieved ball right back over the fence again. When I took away the ball, they started throwing thier shoes and anything within reach over the fence, laughing their little heads off. After a few days of this, I came back from the neighbor's looking as terrified as I could manage and told them in a whisper that we needed to have a meeting. I explained that the woman next door identified herself as a witch, and told me she is very good with fingerprints. She warned me that from now on, any items thrown over the fence will be examined by her for the offender's little fingerprints. And then she will use her magic to steal the offender's fingerprints and identity, so that when their parents come to collect them, there will be nothing to distinguish them from the other little boys. So their parents won't recognize them but instead go home sad and empty handed, wondering what became of their son. And then the boys will have to live at school forever or something like that.
Anyway, it was very effective. Too good to be true. Nothing went over the fence after that. And they begged me for more stories about the witch next door (and believe me, after my numerous encounters with the woman next door, it didn't require much imagination to think of her as a witch!) The fun lasted until there was a meeting with my supervisors where I was told that the boys were too worked up to go to sleep at night and the parents were questioning the source of their vampire stories. To say my supervisors were unhappy was an understatement, and looking back I marvel at my inability then to see why they were concerned. I was defensive because, after all, this was how I was raised and if the kids were having fun and behaving, then why not?
So tommorow, little Ken and Hitomi will be dropped off. They speak Cantonese and understand some Japanese. Our apartment is currently a moldy radio shack littered with books, bottles and all kinds of wrappers. We have no idea how we are going to entertain them. All we have going for us is a bag of cheerios and Casey's "helicopter" rides. Maybe it is a good thing we can't tell stories in their language because Casey's imagination is much darker and I suspect his "parenting" approach isn't too far off from mine.
