"Soft Play"

some fiction

Soft Play

It was perhaps the first really sunny weekend morning of the spring.

As it was still early in the day there was only myself, my tot, and another fellow about my age with his own tot, standing around at the tot playground. The other father – I never got his name – was not as well-turned-out as myself in the question of dress. I say this not to boast, as there have been plenty of times when I have staggered half-dead into the tot playground in long shorts and slide sandals, but in the interest of strict accuracy and faithfulness to detail.

First his tot began to amble, and then mine, sizing up the plush furniture littering the ground – a train half-submerged in spongey asphalt, a slide emerging from the side of a mock-Tudor cottage, that sort of thing – before beginning to play in earnest. For a long time we did not speak. Then, as neither of our children required milk or a sun hat or encouragement, we adopted attitudes of profound physical leisure.

At some point during the proceedings we found ourselves in agreement on the question of whether children were too soft these days. Children generally, that is. Neither of us thought that our children were too soft. They were certainly in danger of becoming soft, if neither of us were careful, but we were both of us careful men.

You would not have been able to tell just by looking at him, in his soft clothes, but I can appreciate that one does not always dress to reflect one’s strongly-held personal values first thing in the morning, not with a tot in the house.

Both of us agreed that children were too soft these days, although neither of us cared to blame the children for their condition.

“If your kid would like to shove my kid,” I said, just a little grandly, “he is perfectly welcome to do so. I myself was shoved frequently as a child, and gave just as good as I got, too. A little shoving is beneficial, I think, in childhood.”

“Oh, certainly,” he said, “although of course not too much shoving. There is such a thing as too much shoving,” although you could tell that his heart wasn’t in it. He was only saying that to make sure he didn’t cross the line first. His face had that keen look men sometimes get when they suspect they are being offered license.

The tots continued to dangle harmlessly above us.

“Oh, of course,” I agreed, “not too much. I would not shove my own child, for example. My shoves are too imposing, my demeanor too formidable. It would not be apropos. But for one little child to shove another little child – like so” – I gave myself leave to demonstrate what I meant – “almost harmlessly – on a bed of wood chips, you know, it is a good introduction to the laws of force and momentum and cause and effect, and so on. Someone ought to be shoving children. Not their parents. But someone.”

“By all means,” he said, and his expression was magnified by sincerity and eagerness, once he began to grasp the wisdom in my speech. Once people realize I am a sensible man with good ideas, they become eager to comply. “By all means. And in turn, if your small child would care to shove my small child. If, for example he grew tired of waiting his turn at the top of the slide, I would be more than happy to permit it.”

“He ought not to kick him, though,” he said, frowning thoughtfully, after a moment’s further contemplation. “I think we can both agree they ought not to kick at one another.”

“There is a case to be made against kicking,” I said, “to be sure.”

“It’s not that I object to it, on principle,” he said. “Only it might be harder to explain to his mothers than a little shove. Their outlook on kicking is far harsher than my own, the tot’s mothers.”

“It is not always easy to explain things to a child’s mothers,” I agreed. “They are remarkably understanding in some ways, mothers, and surprisingly close-minded in others.” Or is it closed-minded?

As is so often the case in public these days, the conversation now turned to the subject of just how many mothers our tots had.

I must say I dislike this sort of thing. As it happens my own tot can boast of six, but I don’t like to boast. I would prize him just as highly if he had only three or even two. I would still permit him to drink from my best golden cup at luncheon, and eat from my own golden plate after I have finished eating from it. And were he motherless I would still work assiduously to secure a good position for him in an honest and upright household. I would spare no expense in the search.

At a certain point in the conversation, I really couldn’t say when, we had begun to attract an audience. There with other fathers, and other tots, climbing the rope-webbing on the artificial spiderweb along the perimeter of the tot park, and sunning themselves along the picnic tables, and climbing the wrong way up the slide, which was against the rules.

At this point I ought to say that I was no longer sitting down. I had become – I will not say agitated – I felt dynamic. I felt my internal condition would be best represented by a dynamic posture.

I did not accuse him of lying. In all my years of fathering I had never yet met someone with more mothers to his credit than myself, but there is a first time for everything; I merely expressed genuine surprise that I had not encountered this family before, with a seven-mother team, although we must have moved in some of the same circles, to say nothing of the other shapes. I expressed genuine surprise, but I did not offer him a formal challenge. You can ask any of the other fathers within earshot and they will tell you the same thing. The challenge came from him, not me.

Of course once the challenge had been issued, I was perfectly within my rights to offer a mother’s field promotion to one of the bystanders. It’s always a risk, but this sort of thing happens from time to time, and I personally know of at least two families where things worked out perfectly well, and the impromptu mother became a well-received member of the team, as part of a seamless garment.

There was a candidate present I thought had distinguished himself – in mien, and so on, you know, his mien was good – standing off to the side. I believed he would make a good mother. It was not merely that I needed one at the moment. It was not a decision borne out of desperation. I am a man of the world. I told him so straight off.

“Hello,” I said. “I am a man of the world. I need you to make a decision with me immediately, please.”

I laid out the offer in the clearest of terms. No one could say I wasn’t clear. I painted a realistic picture of what he could expect from me and the tot’s other mothers. It was neither rosy nor pessimistic, although I think the offer a good one.

But he waffled at first. I was disappointed. Not disappointed enough to sway me from my choice, but disappointed nevertheless.

“I need you to decide right now if you will be one of my tot’s mothers,” I told him. “He’s a perfectly good son. None of his other mothers have had any complaints about his temperament or his upbringing. It’s a perfectly legitimate offer. This guy’s got me outnumbered seven to six and you have an opportunity here to balance the scales.”

My bystander waffled further.

“What you have here,” I said, “is an absolutely goddamn unprecedented opportunity to balance the scales, to say nothing of entering into the beautiful and sacred condition of motherhood without incurring the slightest personal expense.”

He would not say either yes or no. It maddened me. A beautiful spring day, a practically unheard-of chance to get in on almost the ground floor of a perfectly good readymade child, to be first among a team of equals, of six already really highly qualified mothers, and he dithered! “Do I, or do I not,” I said, “have your consent to make a mother of you?” Without waiting for his answer this time, swiftly I knelt and began making the necessary preparations.

“This shirt is an UNTUCKit,” my bystander began to scream. “This shirt cannot be tucked. It’s designed to be worn untucked.”

In my experience men will say this when they believe someone is about to tuck their shirt in for them without their consent, regardless of whether or not it is actually true. And of course an UNTUCKit shirt can be worn tucked, despite being designed for a more casual untucked look. It is made of performance fabric; performance fabric can survive a little adult roughhousing without snagging or pulling. (To say nothing of the corrosive nature of our relationship with technology. I hope you will at least agree that it is corrosive?)

“For God’s sake don’t tuck it in,” he cried. “Uncle, uncle, I’ll do it.” After he stopped resisting me things got a lot easier.

After I had (perfectly legitimately) re-leveled the playing field, the original father, I mean the fellow who was first alone with me in the playground as we began to discuss softness, began to accuse all of the rest of us of being big game hunters.

“You’re all big game hunters,” he said, pointing lavishly. “Wretched dentists who go on annual big game hunting trips. Oh! Oh! I’ve seen your pictures on Facebook, posing over dead Cape buffalos, grinning your biggest birthday smiles. You grip and grin! You grip and grin over dead gazelles and ibexes and rhinoceroses, and no one in the world hates you enough except for me.”

At this point I was of course filming him, and he was of course filming me. So neither of us gained by it. But I was filming merry hell out of him, I can tell you. I needed both my hands to grapple him, but of course I have a number of mechanisms – a number of ingenious implements and apparatuses – I have other ways of recording people, is what I mean, then simply the devices I hold in my two hands.

He looked like — and I don’t mind saying so — the sort of man who attracted a not inconsiderable following on social media — none of the obvious ones — talking about the importance of memorizing poetry and fixing your attention span by reading certain books with scarcely any covers to speak of. Do you know the kind of books I mean? I scarcely know myself. Where the cover is just a single color with a title on it, and maybe a small tasteful symbol — occultic perhaps, or Masonic — and nothing else. You can make a lot of money doing that sort of thing.

“Do you make a lot of money doing that sort of thing?” I asked, for I know he could hear my thoughts. He was eavesdropping on them quite conspicuously.

I couldn’t hear his first reply through the blood, so I made a courtesy sweep of his mouth so it was free of obstructions and urged him sweetly to try again. A beautiful head of hair, he had. Not quite wavy, but full. I would call it chestnut, but then again part of me didn’t dare to presume the color.

“Not as much as you might think,” he said.

I didn’t like the note of feebleness in his voice — to be perfectly honest I felt he was playing it up, because I hadn’t properly injured him. I found it somewhat difficult to hear him, over the chime of the ice cream trucks, of which there were far too many, circling the action.

None of the other fathers present thought I had gone too far. One or two of them had put up their yellow cards, but aside from the complainers I was looking at a sea of green, with only a few abstentions. For the most part everyone seemed to agree that I was within my rights.

Unfortunately my opponent had neglected to cultivate mass over the years. He ought to have cultivated mass. I fired my stabilizer muscles, and pushed my body to victory.

“I’ll bet you leave your dog in the car on a cool and cloudy day while you run errands,” I said. “I’ll bet you don’t even crack the windows. I’ll bet you don’t even realize that the inside of a car gets extremely hot extremely quickly, even on a cold day? Something to do with the dashboard, I believe. The light can get in, but the heat can’t get out. I think the radio transforms the waves of the sun – something to do with short waves, and long waves. Glass is permeable to radiation but not to light, or vice versa. I’ll bet you don’t even realize how much the poor thing suffers.”

“Children like being cold,” he said. “It’s good for them, getting cold and being cold. They like it.”

“You’re dodging my question,” I said.

“I merely thought of it,” he said, “because of how blue your tot’s hands have grown, playing in the water fountain like that. I don’t think he minds it.”

But I was one mother up on him now, and knew better than to take my eyes off of him to double-check.

At this point my little tot took the hand of the other man’s little tot, and they began walking slowly in circles around us, like ponies in a ring. It was a very formal, sensible, electric sort of procession. I was proud of them both.

“No biting,” the man in the blue hat said. I suppose the other fellows had elected him some sort of referee. He was standing just off of the center yard line in a sort of referee’s stance, if you know what I mean. Wide-legged and belt-forward. He had an air of authority that I didn’t like to argue with.

“I wasn’t biting,” I said.

“No kissing,” the man in the blue hat said a few minutes later.

“I wasn’t kissing,” I said.

My opponent took advantage of the distraction and began to slash at me with an imaginary sword, missing some of my most vital and interesting organs by inches.

“That’s cheating,” I cried. “Swords are cheating.” The man in the blue hat said nothing, the coward. He was blowing bubbles for some of the other fathers.

After that I believe that my enemy was only pretending to be dead in order that I would leave him alone. But that sort of trick never works on me. I expected better from him, and told him so in between kicks.

I couldn’t have told you whether I was kissing or biting him, myself. It may even have been the other way round. At this point of course all the children were gone; I couldn’t begin to guess where they may have got to.

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