. . . on tantrums
THERE IS pressure on from certain quarters to put my two-and-a-half-year-old twin girls out to work. And while a certain person is not exactly advocating sending them up chimneys or down mines, she reckons I should be wasting no time in turning them into money-spinning child models. “There’s a recession on. You could make enough to put them through college. Look at those curls,” is how a certain person puts it.
Most parents and especially devoted aunts and uncles will understand when I say that my children are the most gorgeous looking children in the entire world. And that’s a fact, by the way, not idle conjecture. Still, it all seems a bit ethically suspect. At least that’s what I tell a certain person when she starts saying how I’m losing money hand over fist every month I don’t make the call to Childmodelsrus.
The real reason for my reticence is that I don't think any director or photographer would want to work with them. Not twice, anyway. My most beautiful children are – how can I put this without getting myself into trouble with their future selves – far too sensitivefor an early modelling career. And by sensitive I mean unpredictable, irrational, loud and occasionally prone to the kind of snarling usually only seen on the faces of small, wild animals.
I’ve heard the word biddable used about some children. I’ve even seen these kinds of children queuing patiently outside theatres with anticipatory smiles on their faces, as though queuing was the most fun thing ever invented. I reckon directors of TV campaigns would be lining up to work with these kinds of children. In contrast, when they are having a moment my pair are about as biddable as a box of butterflies.
Even before I had children I figured that it must be pretty horrible trying to control an uncontrollable small child while people looked on. I could imagine how your natural instinct would be to put your hand over the child’s mouth to stop them screaming, but that you had to resist because some do-gooding members of the public wouldn’t view gagging as appropriate. My compassion towards such parents came easily, especially when I was pregnant. I had an innate sense that my twins were going to be Biddable with a capital B. I could afford a bit of compassion because I was going to be one of the lucky ones. I could feel it in my amniotic waters.
As I wrestled with one of my children on the floor of a theatre foyer recently, I realised my Biddable children dream was just another of nature’s cruel jokes. My child was in the middle of a never-ending scream, a scream more effective to teenage ears than the most well crafted safe-sex ads. Meanwhile, an earnest woman was talking and asking for a bit of “focus” before the show, while she explained about fire exits. The woman continued her pre-show talk, stopping every now and then to pause as though waiting for the screaming to stop, as though the screaming was not a toddler gone wild, but somebody’s mobile phone, which manners dictated would soon be turned off. If I could have turned the girl off I would have, but these pesky kids don’t work like that.
We were at the fantastic Baboró international children’s festival in Galway. It was our second show and our second outright rebellion of the weekend. I had worried that the children were too young for proper culture – that is, any culture not involving a certain pig and her family – and for the first two shows it appeared I was right. That was until we fetched up at a show called Nubes in the Town Hall Theatre. They queued patiently – there may have been chocolate buttons involved – and then sat in their seats as they watched this magical Magritte-inspired dance extravaganza.
Not that they were entirely mute. One of them did a running commentary of everything they saw, which at one point had the woman in front of us turning around and shushing her. It takes a certain kind of person to shush a two-year-old. If I was in charge there’d be a law against shushing anyone under, say, five. The punishment for the shusher would be an hour with a tantrum-throwing toddler. I’ve a couple I can spare.
Later, at lunch, an American tourist validated a certain person’s theory that despite their occasional meltdowns I could be making money from these small people. “Oh my gawd,” she said. “So cute. Look at those curls. Can I take a picture?”
The American woman said she had something for them and after she got her shots of random Irish twins to take back home, she dug deep in her handbag for, I presumed, chocolate or a lollipop. She then made a huge deal of producing an American one cent coin for each of them. “It’s American money,” she explained, delighted with herself. I suppose she wasn’t to know my budding models don’t get out of bed for anything less than 10 cent. I’ve put it towards the college fund. The college bus-fare fund.