Projected Returns of Egg White Cast
I use mineral sunscreen and moderation isn’t really my thing, so there is a Michael Jackson situation when we hit the great outdoors. My wife calls me her geisha, which is more than a little racist and ironic considering my sons and I tan beautifully as proper Malaysians should, while the one person in the household with a dominant binary European gene that requires skin to be either pasty white or bright red, no other option, actually needs an extra layer of protection yet ridicules those who value the human body’s largest organ.
Yes I am willing to look like I just wrapped up a super degrading gangbang to protect the long-term health of my skin. I also wear a shirt in the neighborhood pool, forgoing the momentary satisfaction of creating cognitive dissonance when people see a dad bod that is not a dad bod. This sacrifice is but one of a steady stream of decisions we make daily based on the tradeoff between present and future.
When you get married and especially when you have kids, it becomes clearer where you operate on this continuum relative to others, namely your partner. I lean heavily toward taking on discomfort and work in the short term for a presumably larger payoff later. My wife gravitates toward the other end — nothing crazy and probably around the average in our First World bubble — but myopic in my loving, not condescending eyes.
You know those nebulous studies lazy editors love to dress up as news stories. Studies show people are happier in Finland. Please ponder that conclusion and not the methodology of the studies. Well, studies have shown my way of focusing on the long run is better. I read it somewhere, I swear.
Examples of the asymmetric pain and gain are obvious: pushing through the painful first few minutes after the alarm clock to exercise, saving and investing, meal prep versus fast food, procrastination ending with a suboptimal outcome, organizing rather than hiding messes in Monica closets, succumbing to dumb addictive Instagram hits instead of doing anything better (which is to say, anything).
One morning this week I felt the difference acutely. The 3-year-old prematurely opened a new Spidey version of Yahtzee Jr. and was placing the stickers on random pieces instead of the dice. Losing those stickers would render the game unplayable. I was born 23 years before the first iPhone and remain an instruction manual guy. I read them to maximize the utility derived from a product.
Spidey Yahtzee was about to be reduced to a 30-second sticker activity and then have its pieces scattered into the abyss of orphaned, mismatched and forgotten toys. I don’t like toys. They are a mini venture capital predicament that entails buying a hundred in hopes one of them will take off. And usually that singular success is a stick found by a public garbage can.
So I forced a Yahtzee reset, salvaging the stickers and making the children reapply all 30 properly to the five dice and sit quietly while I deciphered the confusing rules. Then they had a good time playing the game, even showing flashes of understanding. We could potentially enjoy this many more times if I didn’t find it as dreadfully boring as watching paint — not even watching paint dry, watching paint in a static state.
You could argue now I’m the one being shortsighted because that boredom is a down payment for more stimulating games, cognitive development and a stronger bond with my kids in the future. Those are lame goals though.
In the middle of the Yahtzee crisis, I had to tend to another one at the kitchen counter. I hardboiled 10 pasture-raised eggs the night before, and my wife was peeling two. It wasn’t my finest work in terms of peel-ability, which allegedly has to do with boiling duration and cold water plunge but seems entirely random to me. My wife was struggling, separation anxiety between shell and egg white leaving a deformed breakfast protein and wasteful scraps.
This is where a little patience and tedium endurance are needed for a superior result. You have to take the time upfront to nestle underneath the translucent membrane and press up on enough entry points to keep the shell together while removing it. Otherwise more time will be spent performing minor surgery to save the egg.
There are less trivial decisions to be made in every parent’s quest not to f up their kids or at least only to a degree that is plausibly reversible. Discipline is a big one. By that I mean strategically deploying consequences and fear of reproach to build muscle memory of good behavior well before children fully comprehend the reasoning.
My wife and I are yin and yang on this topic, so you could call us productive complements like Jordan and Pippen or a case of the Chinese authoritarian battling the white liberal in a zero-sum conflict. I readily conceded there would be no spanking, and I don’t even yell so much as scold with exasperation. But the children do fear me in a way they don’t their mother.
Her default response to bad behavior is to talk about kindness and good choices. After about five more transgressions in 10 minutes, she is prone to snapping and rightfully so. I am all for explaining the why behind the what, but some kids need more pushback and edge too. Not everyone should be coached the same way.
My older one is tenderhearted yet a narcissistic a-hole whose quick wit hides being a slow learner. He inherited this from me, so I am better equipped to deal with him. There has to be more push and pull, sometimes nurturing, sometimes being hard on him, a blend of carrot and stick.
Or else he will grow into a monster. He has that first-child-main-character energy. He still randomly brings up completely out of context how he scored two goals two months ago. Here was the first one:
You can hear how cheesy overjoyed I am in the background and see how I wrote a thousand words just to trick you into watching this video. I can be a warm, safe place for my kids and also do the unpleasant work of calling them out and disciplining. It will improve what they get out of life over time, like any other kind of training.
I was the willing enforcer of sleep training because it’s probably harder for mothers to endure their babies crying it out. It was hard for me too, but they adapted quickly and the returns of better sleep for everyone compounded.
We are not doing as well investing effort in other areas including independence, schoolwork, chores and self-reliant play. I am actually more to blame for this than my wife despite my preaching. Nowhere is the gap between aspirational me and me bigger than in parenting. Hey I’m happy to follow her lead and apply an extra layer.