Tips for Tots

Life is more or less the same now as it was 180 million years ago: it’s still a primordial power struggle, even if colored by modern euphemism. The life of a child is still wonderful for a few years after birth and still unravels slowly, more and more unendurable as annoyances pelt it from all sides. It’s just an ineluctable fact of life, as true in my time as it will be in yours. The only difference is that the annoyances in my time were usually perpetrated by anal-retentive morganucodons and painfully-slow sauropods, whereas today human beings and fax machines tend to be the culprits. Ever since Sir Ebenezer Fonsworth thawed me from my glacial sleep two years ago, and subsequently gave me my own pseudonym and advice column, I’ve received bushels of letters from young readers wanting to know how to properly deal with all the annoying people that will pop up throughout their lives. In the interest of sharing the benefit of my ancient wisdom, I offer the following guidelines.

If your parents are as sports-obsessed as most people in the United States, chances are when you’re about five at the latest you’ll be in some kind of high-pressure, competitive league athletic event, screamed at to “hustle” by a teammate’s dad moonlighting as your coach, as well as by all other teammates’ dads. Show them the meaning of hustle by running them down at thirty miles per hour and then clawing their eyes out.

After you have a few tournaments under your belt, your parents will probably enroll you in school since it’s required by law. In some senses school is just another place where dads yell “hustle” while you’re already working your ass off, but it’s also a place where you learn skills necessary to earn money to buy home electronics equipment in the future. Teachers will teach you these skills. Some of these teachers will be selfless, caring individuals who honestly hope to give you the tools you’ll need to build a fruitful life, while the other 99.9% will be in it for the job security; the contrived, self-gratifying authority scenario; and the chance to convince people who enjoy life that they’re failures. When you encounter one of these teachers, show him he’s a failure by whipping him into submission with your ten-foot tail.

If you’ve ever watched one of those movies that targets the youth demographic, you’ll agree that the three things teenagers desire most are a driver’s license, a bitching house party while their folks are visiting a dying relative, and rivers of beer. Actually, the thing they want most is sex, but they can’t have that until they have one of the first three, so the latter short-term proxy goals are usually emphasized. The goal that requires the most sacrifice is the obtaining-a-license one, because you’ve got to take driving instruction with a guy who tells you ridiculously unbelievable stories about how he used to make straight-As, and convinces you to run into the sandwich shop to get him steak and cheese grinders in exchange for less driving time (which paradoxically means he gets both an errand boy and less work for the same money). Believe me, a corned driving instructor hoagie with extra Swiss goes really well with Sun Chips and a large Dr. Pepper.

After high school, and if you found high school difficult you might as well rip yourself to shreds right now, you’ll go to college along with 50% of the people your age. The first person you’ll encounter at college will probably be your R.A. There are all types of R.A.s- poets, athletes, scientists, debaters- but they all have the same defining trait: worthlessness. When I was young and had to deal with this type, whom I called a “Rarrrrr," I would generally tear his head off with my powerful jaws. I urge you to do the same.

The second person you meet at college will probably try to recruit you for a scary Jesus cult. Besides the facts that the people in these Jesus cults tend to dress alike, quote the bible, and frown when you swear, they more importantly do not drink (which leads one to wonder how they take communion three times a day). And even more importantly, if you do drink, as most beings since the Triassic period have done, they’ll think you’re semi-retarded, even if you possess the ability to school them on the more arcane differences between cycade- and conifer-eating prey. When you meet these persons, show them who’s semi-retarded by hunting them down like they were Lusitanosauruses feeding on seed fern fronds.

By graduation or attrition, you’ll make it out of college, and then you’ll probably move into a neighborhood where people give birth on streets that smell like cancer. This is where, if you haven’t done so already, you will learn an unbelievably large amount about unimagined aspects of sociology. The apartment you rent will most likely be owned by someone who realizes you couldn’t possibly afford an attorney to sue for neglect. He’ll be right, but what he won’t realize is that you can afford to slap his head off his shoulders with your clawed hand.

As you begin work, get lines of credit, and acquire grocery store discount cards, you will become part of a target market that’s easily fooled by unoriginal advertising gimmicks. In practical terms, this means telemarketers will start calling you, and while other people you know will come and go, the telemarketers will be in touch for the rest of your life. Three words: stalk and devour.

Up until this point, you’ve probably had a few insane girlfriends (assuming you’re a heterosexual male like me), so why not shack up with an insane wife? After all, all your friends are doing it. Once you’ve resigned yourself to this path, it’ll be time to project wonderful characteristics onto the next person you meet in a line somewhere. Once you’re married, you’ll realize that this virtual stranger is even more insane than you thought, like she has a nervous breakdown if you wear a shirt twice or open the window! And guess what else! Once you’ve gnawed her face off, she’ll be a lot less annoying!

After a few years of urban hell, it’ll be time to move out to the suburbs where you can finally own your own trees and spend Sundays in solitary bliss on your riding mower. More than likely this means you’ll have to deal with a real-estate agent. Like all salespeople, real estate agents are the smarmiest people you’ll ever meet in your God-blessed life. And like all cardiodons, salespeople don’t have the powerful jaws or claws you do, so they’re practically asking to be ripped to shreds.

Once you’re married and living in a house with more than one bedroom, for all intents and purposes you’ll be contractually bound to have children. If you choose not to, your friends with children will think you have something against them and will stop calling you to join them at T.G.I. Friday’s for the three-tiered appetizer towers. However, once you give in, you’ll realize you were better off comatose in the middle of a glacier. At this juncture, you should remind yourself that there’s no law of the subtropical forest that says you can’t crush your kids’ skulls under your mighty reptilian tread.

When you reach middle age, it’ll be time for your mid-life crisis, which if you’re not a hill dweller, you know is the time when you either have an affair with a glamorous secretary who represents freedom and goodness, or buy a BMW. If you opt for the latter, you’ll have to deal with a car salesman. See my previous advice on salespeople.

After your kid’s gone to college, she’ll probably marry someone. And that someone will be related to people you loathe but are required to keep on your Christmas card list. Don’t worry- you only have to see these people once every couple of years; so be calm, and if you get angry with them, count slowly to a thousand in your head. If you're stilly angry, bite off their appendages; they deserve it.

When you get so that you can no longer take care of yourself, your children will have you placed in a nursing home because they live too far away to care for you. After all, they chose to move to a remote, hard-to-reach-by-normal-transport foreign country or Alaskan/Montanan wasteland, curiously the farthest distance from you financially and physically feasible. Some nights you’ll rouse from a deep sleep to find yourself twirling magnificently in the Swiss meadow from a long-forgotten moving picture. Other nights you’ll wake with a start, positive there’s an ogre creeping about that’s trying to steal your pills. In said scenario, you should jump on the ogre, pin him under a ton of megalosaurus muscle, and drink his delicious brain through his gouged-out eye socket.

After a few years in this wretched place, you’ll wake up one night to find the now familiar ogre clothed in a black cloak and carrying a giant sickle. And then you’ll recognize him from those Ingmar Bergman movies you used to take girls to so that they’d think you had ideas. And what’s weird is that instead of the somber chess-player you’d always imagined, Death will be a Borscht belt comedian reciting several iterations of a spiel involving a farmer and his daughter, stuff you’d thought was old maybe eighty years ago. When his bit begins winding down, interrupt him and ask if he’s ever heard the one about the quick-tempered carnivorous dinosaur. Wait until his bony brow is furrowed in puzzlement, and then floss your teeth with the whole of his meatless body.