Calendar of Qualms

We need to talk about Puppy. Here I was, so worried he would inherit my overbite, I wasn’t paying any attention to my anxiety genes, which he has evidently inherited in abundance. Poor kid… he is just one taut ball of worry. Luckily, he’s got a mom who knows exactly what he’s going through. Unluckily, none of the coping methods I have developed over the years seems to resonate with a six-year-old. So what we have here is a Cassandra-like situation: I know the remedy, but to Puppy, I’m just sputtering gobbledygook.

I need to find a new way of communicating with him. One tactic from the Liberal Urban Parenting Handbook suggests that I imbue a stuffed animal or doll with Puppy’s anxieties but, instead of sticking pins in it when his anxieties run amok, we are to “talk some sense” into it. While this may be sound advice, it seems a slippery slope to Dr. Leo Marvin’s family of puppets in the movie What About Bob? The approach seems childish to me, even for a six-year-old. I honestly think it would be more effective to stick pins in it.

For about a year—roughly when I was in the fifth grade—I suffered from a bizarre depression I still can’t explain. Its onset was sudden,[1] and its effects so consuming, it might make sense as a manifestation of abrupt hormonal changes—except that the eventual cure belies that explanation. After a year of tortured evenings spent at the mercy of merciless demons that descended on me the moment I was left alone, my grandmother figured out what was tormenting me and offered this advice:

If you’re worried about something, wait until the last minute to worry about it. That way, you can schedule your worries, assigning priority based on imminence.

(I might have added that last bit later.)

Et voila, c’est tout. I was cured.[2] That very night I gained the upper hand over my demons. It was quite possibly the best night’s sleep I had ever had.

I want to give Puppy that same peace. I passed my grandmother’s advice on to him (with perhaps a touch too much fanfare), but it didn’t take. Maybe it needs to come from a gray-haired lady. Maybe it was her Mississippi drawl. Regardless, Puppy still frets. But I’m not giving up on the cure! Here’s my vision: an anxiety calendar posted in the kitchen for maximum visibility. It would work like this:

You seem worried, Puppy. What’s up?

I’m nervous about the new swim class. What if the teacher is mean? What if the kids are mean? What if I can’t learn how to swim? What if…?

Wait—hold up. (Consult the Calendar of Qualms.) The new class starts in four days; you aren’t slated to worry about it until after school on Tuesday. Today you’re meant to worry about buying lunch in the cafeteria for the first time. You can worry about that when the little hand is on the eleven and the big hand is on the twelve, okay?

What am I supposed to worry about now?

May I suggest Trump and the future of democracy?

There’s a line from the movie Three Kings that sticks with me. It isn’t particularly profound—I’m a little embarrassed to quote it—but I can’t shake its aptness:

The way it works is, you do the thing you’re scared shitless of, and you get the courage after you do it, not before you do it.

—Archie Gates, played by George Clooney.

It’s a dumb ass way to work (as observed by the character to whom Clooney imparts this scrap of wisdom) but imagine if I could convince the Puppy of it: Worry about the stuff that makes you nervous after you do it. Maybe, with the Calendar of Qualms, I can slowly push out the worry-window until after the fact.

Are you thinking I should totally write a parenting book? Bingo.

[1] In my memory, the depression was triggered by my parents’ failure to offer to cut my meat for me at dinner one night.

[2] As I recall it, the cure was just that immediate. As quickly as the depression was triggered, my grandmother’s advice snuffed it out. Please note, there was one long year between the two events. I’m being flippant about it here, but it was hell—for all parties involved.

 [ABAI1]Consider striking this paragraph.