Art of Distraction

Nydas Okiro

Over The Waves by Setsuko Matsushima

I have waited ALL FUCKING YEAR TO POST THIS

Santa is coming tonight.

And none of us are getting ANYTHING CUZ WE’RE ALL A BUNCH OF DISGUSTING PERVERTS

But that’s fine.

I bought myself the Loki costume in Minecraft, so its a Merry fucking Christmas for me!

a bunch of things that I know are going to sound really corny (which honestly I think is half the cultural problem - the idea that non-coercive parenting is touchy-feely, ineffectual or just kind of cringe - but that could be a whole other post)

the main thing was that they always explained things to me. if I wanted something I couldn't have, they explained why (from 'we can't afford that', 'it's bad for you', 'it's dangerous', all the way up to 'it's made by a big company that treats its workers badly, and we don't want to give them money'). If I threw a tantrum, they either waited it out until I got tired and bored or they redirected what we were doing ('we have to be patient and wait in line. if we don't wait in line, we can't go into the theatre. we can't wait in line if you scream and upset people. okay then, we're going home.')

beyond that, they always spoke to me like a full person. they asked my opinion on things and took it seriously, and asked me why as much as I asked them. apparently I had a phase as a toddler where I always wanted to be the first one on the swings / down the slide, and would throw almighty fits about it, until my mum took me aside one day and said 'why do you want to be first? are you worried the slide will get used up?' I laughed like it was the funniest thing I'd ever heard, and never kicked up a fuss about taking turns after that.

on the granular level, they focused on positives over negatives. My mum would draw little good behaviour charts for me, featuring e.g. me walking a long winding path through the woods with my soft toys. the path would be made up of, say, 30 stones, and every day that I was well behaved I'd earn a sticker on one of them. when I reached the end of the path, I got to pick a treat. something like a new plastic animal for my collection, or a day trip to the aquarium.

I do remember them sitting me down once and asking me to come up with what I thought would be an appropriate punishment if I ever did something really bad. I think my first suggestion was something like 'no TV', which was a real nice try because we didn't have a TV at the time. I don't remember what I finally decided on, it might have been 'no dessert for a week'. We wrote it down together and I signed my name, and they sealed it in an important looking envelope which they put in my dad's filing cabinet (for important documents). This would be unsealed if I ever did something Really Bad. the eventuality never came up, but the act of participating in the exercise kept me mostly on the straight and narrow. It's funny, the conceptual punishment itself wasn't even that bad. It was the seriousnes of the adult commitment I'd made to Behaving Well that did the trick.

“Either someone’s playing ‘Only Time’ back-to-back, or ‘Only Time’ is a lot longer than I remember.”

Her eyes went huge. We lingered over our tea (a thing we normally wouldn’t do in a crowded eatery, but we had a mystery to solve) and soon confirmed that, yes, somebody was looping Enya. No one else in the cafe seemed to have caught on, but we were some of the younger people present anyway. The staff were all going about their business. Nobody was looking around with fearful millennial knowingness but us. By the sixth-ish repetition, we were in silent hysterics, biting our fists, whispering “GODDAMMIT” to each other, drawing weird glances from adjacent tables.

My sister got up to use the bathroom. Left alone with the seventh repetition of ‘Only Time’, I left my stuff at our table, got back in line, and ordered a pastry to go. As the barista rang me up, I said:

“Hey, sorry, weird question, but I have to know. Are you guys pulling a Salt and Pepper Diner right now?”

Her face transitioned from ‘polite customer service mask’ to ‘sly but delighted’ in .2 seconds. “We’ve been waiting to see if anybody would notice. Nobody’s been reacting at all!”

“Is there a prize for being the first?” I promise I was joking, but she lit up and said,

“Yes, oh my god! Do you want a cookie??”