Socializing with toddlers? Fuhgeddaboudit!

from Atlanta Intown - February 2015

by Rough Draft Atlanta: Atlanta Intown, Reporter Newspapers

CITY LIGHTS

If you’ve ever had a kid or two in diapers you probably blocked most of this out, but I’m going to jog your memory a bit here. Our days started in the dark –an hour so infinitely late it was early, because sleeping in a chair next to a crib only works for so long no matter how tired you are. That was the hour that occasionally afforded us the luxury of taking a shower, uninterrupted other than realizing we were still wearing socks. We’d prepare the bottles for the day – so, so many pieces. Excessive coffee intake elevated us to the status of a jittery sleepwalker. Good times.

Like a modern day Marlboro Man we’d carry a Wet Ones travel-pack in our shirt pocket. So when we accidentally sat in applesauce we’d think, “Oh good, it’s only applesauce. I’ve got Wet Ones.” Otherwise we used our sleeves for unmentionable tasks and promptly stuffed those memories way deep down inside the little birdhouses in our souls. Days were laundry lists of tedious obligations (including a lot of actual laundry) and the finish line was the sight of your beautiful, sleeping offspring. That was it.

For about 22 seconds a day, we wondered what our friends were up to. We ventured to think of a plausible reason that might actually get us out to socialize in the not to distant future. Then to snap us out of fantasyland a 2-year-old with a decent throwing arm would nail us in the side of the head with a Bob the Builder DVD. The reality was we no longer had a social life unless we counted Saturday morning music class for toddlers. And really that would be more pathetic than just admitting we have no social life anymore.

It’s natural for friends to give ample space to their newly parental counterparts, but I think most overshoot the buffer zone. I get the Buzzfeed updates in my Facebook page (because I‘m super hip), and I take issue with the recurring theme of “annoying friends with kids” accompanied by a picture of a young woman and an, “Oh. Ma. Gawww….” expression. We know we suck but we cannot help it. The best song we heard today was the theme from Super Why. Some slack must be cut Buzzfeed, it must be! And friends need to still be friends, whether they share the bliss of parenthood or not.

All things considered, I was pretty lucky. In addition to having family nearby, I had Mike Benzie down the street. He’d stop by our house a couple nights a week to say hello. We were essentially housebound, but Mike would show up to share a pizza or watch a game or just play with the kids. When Elliott was 3 and Mike was 38, they each confirmed that the other was one of their best friends. And that was awesome.

I’d estimate that Mike accounted for roughly 64 percent of our social life from 2010-2012. It was a lifeline to the outside world, one we could theoretically rejoin someday so it was worth keeping tabs on. Now that Mike and his wife Elissa have two kids under the age of 2, it kills me that I cannot return the awesome. We moved five miles away and while we’re out of diapers and cribs and sleeping in chairs, the 5- and 7-year-old set come with a list of demands all their own.

But maybe you can help. Assess thyself—can you be like Mike? Do you have a friend with a young child or two? Do you have clothing that can be spit up on? Maybe you don’t have children of your own but you adore them in limited time frames. There are some young families that need adopting and you must go to them. For the deprived, it is like droplets of social gold.

Tim Sullivan grew up in a large family in the Northeast and now lives with his small family in Oakhurst. He can be reached at tim@sullivanfinerugs.com.