On the Training of Children: Part One

There's absolutely no point in not making a new year's resolution. I tried it last year, and all year I felt that something was missing. I mean, you've got to have a standard to not meet, don't you. You've got to have something to fail at, miserably, ridiculously, totally.

The year before last I was going to Get Fit. This was pointless. Meaningless. A chasing after the wind, if you will. I made a point of not even exercising once, just to show how patently unachievable this goal was. And it was a point well made, I feel. Nevertheless, I tripled my chocolate consumption, just to hammer it home.

Last year, as already noted, I failed to make any meaningful contribution to the concept of New Year's Resolutions (hereafter NYRs, which may also abbreviate Nasty Yeasts Regurgitated, and Not Your Roger, but is not to be confused with NEARS, which stands for Nearly Every Annual Ritual Sucks).

But this year, taking the advice of my very wise and understanding friend, Crusty, I have pledged that I will drink 1 litre of water every day. This has nothing to do with Crusty's name. That is a mere coincidence.

Also, as I do every year, I have sprung cleaned the back room (it was the dining room last year, but this was doomed to fail from the beginning), in which I have set up little craft stations (according to the age and disposition of each offspring) and timetabled and programmed said offspring to keep their station tidy, as well as to sit pleasantly each day after school to attend to their homework. I plan to have them so well trained that I will not have to do any cleaning up after them AT ALL this year (not that I did last year either, but neither did they, so it got very squishy all round).

I have been patrolling Zone 1 (aka the back room) by night and by day, armed only with a vacuum cleaner and a terse expression. Back and forth, I have patrolled, forth and back. No-one yet dares place their little pink toe across the threshold into Zone 1. I hope to have trained them into such form that, by the time school goes back, the children will be able to detect the sound of a pencil shaving falling anywhere within a three-mile radius of The Zone. On hearing that mutinous sound, my little soldiers will bound through the air, stretch their little arms out and clasp that nasty little shaving to their breast, crying "Mummy! Mummy! I've got it!" "Noooo!" the others will cry. "How can we now ever join in the glory of this battle?" Despair will etch their dear little faces. "Never fear, my little ones," I will comfort them, "Be diligent, my darlings. Keep watch! One day, many weeks from now, another pencil shaving may fall toward this immaculate expanse of flooring, and you may catch it!" "Do you think so, Mummy?" they will cry. "Is there any hope?" "Yes, my precious ones," I will say. "Yes, there is."