BY BIKRAM VOHRA
Our children have children. That means we are grandparents three times over. And grandparents have only one role. To get even with their children for past slights, indiscretions and sleepless nights. We camouflage it all in foamy love but it is delightfully wicked. The way to go about this is to wreck the rigid routine that the children have established for your grandchildren. There is a delicious joy in this and it makes being a grandparent so worthwhile. All, you grandpas and grandmas out there, don’t get bullied, grandkids are for spoiling, it is the law of nature.
Your children have also made it much easier to outflank them because of all this new parenting stuff that is going on and how every minute has to be accounted for. The day is spliced into half hour segments and a schedule is made and it has to be adhered to like you were at boot camp. In our times they just flung us into the deep end and said, swim. Now, they are so into monitoring everything and interpreting each action and they tell us what to do, as if some aliens brought them up, no, no, hold her head like this, not like that. Then, every now and then, they have to take the grandkids to visit the us. Let me tell you this, sugar is our best ally.
Dad, did you just give her a second cookie?
No. Bland-faced lie, look at the joy on her face. Worth it.
Yes, you did, now she’ll have a sugar high and she won’t sleep and why are you doing this?
Because I am a grandfather and grandfathers do that and there is another cookie coming when you leave the room.
Like giving a two year old baby a sip from your glass?
That, too. It was only one little sip and it was good, single malt stuff.
Mum, dad is sharing his drink I cannot believe this and you gave her cotton candy in the morning, you know what that’ll do to her teeth, no one gives children cotton candy any more.
Yes, they do.
These young parents read all these fancy books on bringing up children and watch DVDs and they forget that breaking the routine is the best routine of all.
Ssssshhh, it is 8.30, baby’s sleep time. Silence everyone. What if she slept at 9 o’clock, what if she slept at 9.30, would it make much of a difference, come on, let’s go for broke, make it 10 o’clock…nothing will happen.
Dad, did you just give her another cookie!!!!
Who, me, never.