Full Circle Digital Magazine September 2013 | Page 48

G R A N T

C L A R K E

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H U M O U R

3rd time’s a Charm?
by Grant Clarke Illustration Joy Rose-Innes

humour

If I had one Rand for every time TLJ or I have shouted “Sizzles don’t ...!” only to have the words die in our mouth as she does exactly what we were about to tell her not to do, I would have new couches and a flat screen TV too.

The thing about stuff that you do often is that, no matter whether you are good at it or not, you get cocky. You think to yourself: “Hey, I’ve done this before, I know how this is going to play out!” And then your third child turns out to be Sizzles. I have already written an article about how our three girls are so very different, but after recent events, I find myself compelled to examine this hypothesis once again, especially with Sizzles in mind. Sizzles is no ordinary child. TLJ says that given 50% of her bloodline, we could hardly expect her to be normal. I’m not sure exactly where TLJ’s bloodline comes from but her Dad did do that Human Genome Project thing with National Geographic a while back where you send them your spit and they tell you where you are from. I’m not sure that’s worth a hundred dollars, but anyway. His spit said that their roots were in Eastern Europe somewhere. I can quite easily believe this because Sizzles does have a bit of a Cold War secret police feel about her. As a nearly three year old, Sizzles is unnecessarily larger than life. She runs faster than she needs to, she stuffs more food in her mouth than she needs to, faster than she needs to, she burps louder than she needs to, snores louder than she needs to, and generally throws herself off things more often than she needs to. I’m not sure if lemmings have Eastern European blood in them too, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that was the case. I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking “Ag please man, all nearly three year olds are like that!” My response is simple: do you have your plastic surgeon on speed dial?

In the last eight weeks, Sizzles has been to her plastic surgeon twice, for two separate incidents both requiring stitches in her face. On my last visit the very genial surgeon showed me the new flat screen TV and leather couches in his reception and thanked me for my patronage, and having a daughter like Sizzles. No sooner were we getting used to our daughter with a scar on her forehead and a missing front tooth than she decided to take a dive off our bed, I presume thinking that she could bounce, and connected the window ledge with her left eye causing significant swelling and a sizeable black eye. I don’t know any cage fighters personally but I have a fairly good idea of what they probably look like when they come out of the ring. It is getting really hard to take her out in public because we always have to explain her appearance, and I know people are starting to think about calling social services. The irony is that it’s TLJ and I that need rescuing, not Sizzles. The thing is this. If Sizzles were just accident prone then that would be fine. The Moose is a bit accident prone and as parents you learn to work around that. We generally wrap her in bubble wrap and give her a helmet before letting her out the house, problem solved. But the problem with Sizzles is that she is the exact opposite of accident prone. She defies grievous bodily harm on a daily basis. The fact that she has only been to the plastic surgeon twice is a testament to her astounding ability to thumb her nose at mortality and to cause her parents premature ageing several times a day. If I had one Rand for every time TLJ or I have shouted “Sizzles don’t ...!” only to have the words die in our mouth as she does exactly what we were about to tell her not to do, I would have new couches and a flat screen TV too.

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FULL CIRCLE DIGITAL MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 2013