What Jake Doesn't Know Can't Hurt Him

Jake is 2, and while I have tried many times to traumatize him, he seems to just roll with it and be happy. I’ve determined that he’s incorruptible, and his short-term trauma memory plays to my favor.  Still though, I’ve had to make sacrifices and reign it in a bit. I’ve cut back my cursing around him by 10 percent, but as he can’t read, I express it in other ways (See Figure 1).

He also mistakes my deviance with playing when I do this: 

And this:

And this:

Jake understands tone. He knows when I’m serious and when I’m not. Should I say with a smile and giggling voice, “I’m gonna gobble your feet!”, and pretend to eat them, he laughs because he knows I’m being silly. But when he takes off toward the street and my heart free falls, and I yell, “Get back here!”, he knows I’m sincere and mad. Jake believes everything I say in a serious tone because why would he imagine his father lying to him? I took note of this early.

Sometimes, all I want is to eat string cheese. I love the way it peels into perfect sizes. It always hits the spot as a snack before dinner. I don’t like sharing it because it won’t hit the spot then. And who shares string cheese? Jake interrupted my spot-hitting recently:

“Jakey eat it?”

“No.”

“Jakey eat it the stwing cheese?”

I sighed and tried to reason. “Come on. It’s only this big.”

“Jakey eat it?”

“You can’t,” I said sternly. “It will kill you.”

Amy glared at me until my insides hurt. But next time I ate string cheese, he asked for some, so clearly he wasn’t scarred.

When Jake graduated to people food, he was eager to try everything (Still is). He watched me use Tabasco Sauce back then and asked for some.

“Oh no,” I said. “It’s too spicy.”

“Too picee.”

“Right.”

Soon, he’d be begging to try our food even after he was fed when it was our turn to sit down to dinner. He wanted Amy’s pasta one night, and she said the sauce was too spicy, and he understood and quit the begging. And so we continued the harmless white lie, telling Jake our food was too spicy, so he’d leave us the hell alone while we ate. Again, I took note. What neither Amy nor Jake knew was that the wheels were spinning in my head, and I had hatched a master plan.

Since every single freedom I enjoyed prior to April 18, 2008 has vaporized, I needed something in order to hang on. For my survival, I decided to give myself creative license as a father. A lot of it. Which meant I could just make shit up. Consequently, now everything is too spicy.

We took a walk in Libertyville as they worked on our car, and I just didn’t want to stop at another Goddamn park.

“Go to park?” Jake asked.

“No,” I said. “The park is too spicy.”

“Come on,” Amy said to me.

“The park is too spicy!” I demanded.

I didn’t want Jake to play with my Palm Pre.

“Jakey hold it?”

“No. It’s too spicy.”

Nor did I want to get up from my lying down position to play music.

“Jakey listen to Yaydee Gaga, Bad Wohmance?”

“I don’t want to listen to Lady Gaga. Too spicy.”

Now Jake just curls his lips and turns away from me. He totally knows I’m bullshitting him.

I’m comfortable with all this. What am I supposed to do, tell him the truth? Parenting wouldn’t be any fun.