…temper and Pikachu
“But dad, this is like the last pre-release for more than, uhm, a year and a half, and and and I’ve been waiting forever.” 
“That’s what’s called motivation.”
Like the perennial actor joke…”Yeah, but what’s my motivation?”
Noah does not dare invoke fairness or the lack of it. Senses that I am one comment away from a nuclear meltdown followed by an apocalyptic explosion which would trigger tsunamis, eruptions, locusts and other plagues.
All on his head.
We’re walking back from his friend’s, after a Sunday afternoon play date. Gave me a couple of hours where I was able to break off, stumble to a café and sit and brood, unable to read (tired eyes), unable to smile (tired face), unable to think (you get the drift).
Since just after Christmas, nights have been mostly sleepless or featured severely troubled sleep.
At first it was because we changed Noah’s room by buying a loft bed, per his request. Being six feet in the air was cool during the day but it freaked him out at night.
He woke at 2h30 a.m… unable to go back to sleep. Took three weeks before he chose to go back to his old bed and before we were able to do the switch.
Then, he started getting severe stomach acidity every night circa 2h30 a.m.
I scrambled to find help… aloe gel to be swallowed before meals, probiotics after meals, soda crackers by the bed to munch if he wakes…
Nothing seemed to work….until he got a cold and a bad fat cough which of course was most evident at…
… 2h30 a.m.
I could not possibly sleep while he coughed violently in uncontrollable body busting whoops. Of course, I again went on a mission…cough syrups, phlegm busters etc.
Out of exhaustion, a few nights ago I took him into my bed…figured if he coughed up a lung at least I would be able to catch it without having to get out of bed. Miraculously he fell asleep in five minutes and woke at 7 am. Never coughed once.
The night after he again coughed coughed coughed to tears, in his room. Then, in my bed, three minutes and he feel asleep without one cough until 8a.m. He tossed and turned and slept to the rhythm of gaseous emissions and snores.
I stared at the ceiling.
“You know, dad, it’s not my fault I cough like at night. I would love not to cough. I hate coughing ”
I make every effort to remain civil. We’re in public.
“So it’s coughing that wakes you?”
“Yeah.”
“And then it’s coughing that makes it impossible to go back to sleep.”
“Yeah.” He’s not sure where this is going. Gets into that wary debating mode he’s had to develop to survive me.
“Then how come when you come in my bed, you fall asleep instantly and never cough again until breakfast.”
“Because I fall asleep.” There is an ‘oops’ sound to his voice. He’s been had and he knows it.
“So you don’t stay awake because you cough, you cough because you stay awake. Solution, go to sleep. In your bed, not mine.”
“But, dad…”
“No ‘but dads’…”
My tone has risen. The passersby stare.
Parents will look at other parents like they were criminals when they’re ‘having issues’ with their kids even though they’ve all done the same and will do so again. I want so badly to stick my tongue at them, yell, moon them, go primitive, whatever gets them out of my face.
Instead I lower my tone to that growl that only Noah can hear and that I can always deny in court.
“When you wake because you’re coughing, you drink water, suck a cough drop, stay in your bed and eventually, you’ll go to sleep.”
“What if I can’t?”
“Well, you can forget the Pokemon pre-release tournament next Sunday.”
“But, dad…”
“Grrrrrrrrrr…..”
Silence.
We walk a block…two….three…four…..soon we’ll be home. I feel like the ultimate bitch.
No guilt.
I’ve got to sleep. Survival. Like in a plane where they tell you to put an oxygen mask on yourself before your kid. If you faint he’s done for. Parent first in a plane…
…parent first in my bed. Or else, I will be like today…..Poster Parent for Bad Temper.
…five blocks….six, still not a peep from Noah.
I prepare myself mentally for the upcoming Nocturnal Battle