Background Check

The toughest part of being a parent is not your own kids – it’s dealing with the parents of your kids’ friends.

The term “play-date” grates on my sensibility. The notion that play time must be scheduled like a dentist appointment drives me crazy and speaks to one of the ills of contemporary America.

When I was a kid, way back in the wild 1960’s, we gathered in the street or on someone’s front lawn, with our bikes and gear for whatever sport was in season at the time, and we played. None of us had an electronic nanny. No supervision or structure, and just as many pedophiles and perverts prowled then as now; we were taught to use common sense, like, don’t talk to strangers and avoid weird looking people who might offer you candy from a van with tinted windows.

Now it takes two phone calls, an e-mail, a text and a Skype conversation to confirm there will be adult supervision at the play-date. It goes like this:

Yes, yes, Mrs. So and So, your precious and precocious child will never be out of our sight. We will not feed her any wheat or dairy products, or fruit juice laced with high fructose corn syrup. We have been fingerprinted and TB tested. What’s that, our property and casualty insurance? Up to date – we can e-mail you a copy of the policy if you like.  Our family vehicle is less than ten years old and has new brakes and tires. If we leave the city limits you will receive a text message. We just checked and can assure you that our daughter does not have head lice. Clean as a whistle. We should inform you, however, that our daughter is not adept at math, though we don’t believe this deficiency is contagious; your gifted and talented child, light of the universe, diamond in your eye, future Ivy League scholar, will not be adversely affected by intimate commerce with our very ordinary child. Yes, of course we have parental controls on our cable box. Books? Yes, we have books, print and Kindle versions. What? A Bible? Well, yes we do, but mainly as a work of fiction rather than an artifact of faith. Is this a problem? If you don’t proselytize we won’t, either. Ha, ha, just kidding. What do you say? Have we got a play-date? What’s that? Pets? We have a very healthy beta fish named Zeus. No, no dogs, cats, hamsters, iguanas, guinea pigs, pythons, chinchillas or exotic birds. We’re really very boring and frightfully normal. You’re more than welcome to inspect our medicine cabinet and look beneath our beds. What other assurances can we give you, Mrs. So and So? We never try to weasel out of jury duty. We voted in the past five elections. Solid citizens – decent, honest, lower middle-class folks, that’s us. Your exceptional child will be safe and cherished, as if she were at home.

I miss the old days. The world was just as perilous, but it felt safer, more predictable, authentic, and less neurotic. Our parents pushed us out of the house, out of their hair, and told us not to come back until dinnertime. They trusted we would survive, and we did.