Ugly

 It was the ugliest thing he had ever seen. That’s what he told her, anyway, right after she proudly presented him with her latest drawing of our new puppy. Surely he had seen uglier things, like the pleather pants our 60-year-old neighbor wore while gardening, or the hairless cat that wandered our street at night. Even if the statement were true, he shouldn’t have said it. Doesn’t he know how impressionable young children are?

            My sister always tells me that positive reinforcement is the best way to get children to be everything you want them to be. For example, if your son is tone-deaf but you decide to tell him every day that he has a beautiful voice, then one day he’ll sing like Pavorati. Or if your daughter is really dumb but you repeatedly tell her that one day she could be the next Einstein, she will literally become the next Einstein. Ok, not literally. That’s impossible. But she WILL be really smart. Then again, my sister’s kids are still both tone deaf AND pretty dumb, so I’m not convinced that the whole theory of positive reinforcement is all it’s cracked up to be.

            Anyway, I’m getting off track. The point is that he shouldn’t have told her it was the ugliest thing he had ever seen, because now it’s late at night and I’m tired and I still have to give the dog a bath and make lunches for tomorrow and clean the kitchen and do the laundry and call my mom and pay the bills and go pick up some milk all before tomorrow, but I can’t because I have to calm a sobbing 5-year-old that refuses to let me out of her arms while she wails about the fact that she drew an ugly picture.

            I want to tell her to get over it. I want to say that sometimes the people that are supposed to love us say mean things. I want to communicate that no matter how good you want to be at something, or how hard you try to stay on top of your own life, or how kind or talented or passionate you are, someone will always be there to criticize you. I want to tell her, but I know I don’t need to. Soon enough she will grow up and go to school and she will fall in love and she will get heartbroken and she will succeed and she will fail and she will be criticized and she will criticize others. She’ll learn soon enough that life is just a big, complicated mess that eventually we have to decide to create our own meaning out of.