Organising Your Kids

Organising Your Kids ©

By Michael Casey

Well its Easter hols 2017, one daughter is about to enter Purdah, she’s hitting the books prior to her GCSEs which are the big exams kids take at 16 here in England. She was worried about her Physics as they did a big test and she came home saying she thought she failed, she explained she did not revise. We had spoken before about sacrificing a subject so long as she got the top grades in the subjects she really liked and needed. So I wasn’t bothered, I am not Chinese after all, though she is half Shanghai Chinese. She came home with the school report today and she got an A.

The younger daughter is a comedian, that’s why I say she’ll be the next Julie Walters, the mad Irish lady in some films you see may have seen. She is also very smart, it’s my seeds as I say to my wife, though she says it’s the Shanghai in her not the Kerry Irish background.

Then I say somebody said they’d like to breed with me when I was working at the hotel all those years ago, because our daughters are so pretty too. My final comment is that Japanese and Chinese and even Korean billionairesses would love to have my children. My wife just goes away laughing and goes back to chopping fish heads off on her chopping board.

So you can picture the scene in our house, me the lone male, even the male cat I picked from a cat litter photo turned out to be a female. So Totoro is our bilingual cat, and she does what she likes. In a family you need to organise the family, or rather attempt to.  Can you tidy up is met with I’m studying, I’m too busy to put my own cup and plate in the sink and as for wiping our coffee table, not a chance. Then they debate it for 20 mins, when 50 seconds would have done the job.

Yes we have a small table just like in Japanese homes, we are a Shanghai family after all. As for me I stand and eat in the kitchen leaving a trail of breadcrumbs everywhere, something for Totoro to eat, and if I am accused of making a mess I just blame the cat. Just in case anybody in the family is reading this, I am speaking artistically, would I every leave crumbs and blame the cat, not me, not moi, never.

Children have this ability to untidy anything, it’s as if it’s a bomb, an untidy bomb. Samantha in Bewitched, and I can remember when it first came out on tv when I was in Primary school, I can even remember who the kid was who told me to watch it, I think I was in class 10, maybe 6 years old. I just opened that memory from nowhere, Total Recall for rubbish ask me what I had for breakfast I don’t have a clue. Does this mean I write Nostalgia? Anyways Samantha could wriggle her nose and tidy up things, kids are just the opposite, it’s as if Samantha has had her nose broken by a thug, and everything is in reverse, all is untidy.

I can reveal now that the years are past that I spent years coming in on the nightshift and tidying up before I could get my night shift started. You all know who you are, you all owe me a pint of Stella Artois, though I did get the angel picture on the wall when I left the company after 21years.

One trainer we had said she got fed up of her daughter’s strops and door slamming, so she really did take her bedroom door off the hinges. There are ways of asking and then there is telling, and finally there are forceful ways of making kids do the chores. Hiding the chocolate is the nuclear option, and it works rather well, even the cat can be controlled. Totoro will come running at the sound of plastic wrapping paper being opened as she thinks she’ll get some chicken, and as she is a writer’s cat the sound of scrunched up paper makes her wild, as she will fetch it like a dog does.

Hiding the remote used to be a way of controlling the kids but with SkyQ if they press the Q it makes the remote beep so they can find it. Though as you all no doubt experience Utube is more their thing than tv, not unless it’s the K family. So instead the other nuclear option is switching off the broadband, this gets any child’s attention. They will stand and sit and roll over like a performing animal in a circus. Kids will scatter to the four winds to bring the washing in or take the washing out or vacuum their room, or even do the washing up. Chores teach kids the value of work, and keep the house tidy, otherwise it would become like an archaeological dig. Especially if mum goes to work, it is not a hotel after all.

Speaking of hotels I always remind them of my time at CPNEC, if something needed doing you do it, you do not walk over or past it. I was Employee of the Year, a very close runner up, a lot of the guests thought I was the General Manager, I was too fat for a uniform so I wore a kind of suit of my own, and I was 20 years older that the reception crew. Then as I was standing around the front desk when I was not cleaning rooms with Vicky, or doing security patrols for the security crew, or even working in the laundry, or doing reception or switchboard duties, so I must be the General Manager, this was me in my absolute prime.

Now those days are gone, when I lie down I get pain, arthritis and the bypass scars come out to play. So that’s my motive in getting the girls to do their fair share of chores, it is character building as is hotel working. Everybody should work in a hotel for at least 6 months, it’s very hard work but again such fun too.

A story I wrote called “I’m glad to be fertilizer” drew on these experiences. So I have something in common with Donald Trump, he will never live it down, Michael Casey and me have something in common, somebody fetch me that bottle of vodka Putin sent me, just throw away the cork.  

Chores have to be done, they need to be done, but after they are done the chocolate can be eaten. That’s if they can find where you hid it, and that’s if I can remember where I hid it, I also show my kids the photo of the stone building, a one room shack where my mum was born and raised, where she lived with her parents and siblings, 9 people in a small shack. No bathroom, just pick your spot and a blade of grass to wipe your ass.

If we look back to 1920s Kerry Ireland and the Cromane peninsula or look back to Shanghai in the 1950s we can see just how far we have come, so what’s a few chores compared to that?