The Wit's Guide to Childhood
Or, forgotten boredom
You would much rather read about childhood than children, my research suggests. I’ve put Children on this newsletter’s weekly Quote Vote three times and the poor dears have always lost. But once I rephrased it as Childhood, it won by a landslide. My lesson: Children, like hell, are other people, whereas the idea of childhood remains our own.
“When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them. They show us the state of our decay.”
— Brian Aldiss
It’s wonderful to reminisce about the sun-dappled days of childhood and damn annoying when some snot-nosed brat interrupts those reminisces. That’s a short explanation for how Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote a foundational treatise on childhood while sending five of his kids directly to the orphanage.
“I love children, especially when they cry, for then someone takes them away.”
— Nancy Mitford
To say you’ve had an unhappy childhood seems a flippant summation of a huge number of hours. Was it that bad, really? When asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, Oscar Levant said, “An orphan.” The playwright Moss Hart suggested that the actor will be an unhappy child because he haven’t yet figured out that his “secret goal is attainable — to be himself and yet be somebody else, and in the very act of doing so, to be loved and admired.” And Philip Larkin cleanly wrote off his childhood as “a forgotten boredom.”
“A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts.”
— Colette
The average five-year-old has likely been photographed more times in her life than the average 80-year-old. (How much can we shrink that interval? Does the average two-year-old appear in more photos than the average 40-year-old, given the iPhone came out when that adult was already 25?) All those pictures, presumably saved for infinity in the cloud, will certainly make childhood remain artificially vivid in a way we olds can’t imagine.
“What I know of my childhood is built from photographs, like a smartly edited documentary. I montage the black-and-white images of my early life into a sort of story, not with a plot or a sense of belonging or pleasure.”
— A.A. Gill
When it comes to wit, childhood is our single greatest source of eggcorns. These wrong turns of phrase — calling an acorn an eggcorn because oaks grow out of them, they are egg shaped, and they have a cornish top — make a sort of naive sense and thus illuminate a child’s view of the world. Anything’s popsicle when you have reason without wisdom, so why wouldn’t we call hand sanitizer hanitizer? Why wouldn’t a fussy baby be fusstrated, Plum? Why wouldn’t adults apply B.O.-derant to their underarms, Teddy? But these neologisms can turn treacly quickly, and then it’s just kids saying the darndest things. My all-time winner, from a kid who was likely read too much Beatrix Potter, came around the campfire: There is nothing like a roasted mousepillow, even if it means the rodents have nowhere to lay their heads that night.
“There are three terrible ages of childhood—1 to 10, 10 to 20, and 20 to 30.”
— Cleveland Amory
Stay grumbly!
If you upgrade your subscription to paid today, I’ll send you the first six months of Riposte Cards as pictured above — beautiful original artworks suitable for sending, framing, or fixing a wobbly table. And then six more!
This month’s Card is by Eugenia Viti, a regular contributor to The New Yorker and the author of Be Pregnant: An Illustrated Companion for Moms-to-Be. It’s a clever riff on a true line:
“If you are foolish enough to be contented, don’t show it but grumble with the rest.”
— Jerome K. Jerome
Here’s absolutely everything else you need to know about Ms. Viti, and remember that all of this will be on the test:
What's your go-to item in a well-stocked stationery store?
Precise V7 fine rolling pens. I love to draw with these even though they aren't really drawing pens, they have secret powers.
Where do you go for inspiration and/or information?
Inspiration comes often from a conversation or seeing something funny. Like those giant water bottles we saw all of a sudden early this year. It's fun to find patterns in things, but it can really come from anywhere. Information, I like to take deep dives into books with one theme in mind, like the book Breath by James Nestor. I think it does the brain good to get into deep thinking when so often our modern world pushes us quick “Likes” (which I also am into).
Is there one joke, witticism, or aphorism you live by?
My high school AP English teacher asked us the first week of senior year. My quote was, “You gotta live like you’re on vacation” by the band KISS (from the song “Lick it Up”). I remember her saying something along the lines of that being a dangerous idea, but I still appreciate the sentiment.
What's the best thing to put on toast?
This one is really where the truth comes out. There’s so many delicious and amazing things to put on toast and currently I’m very hungry and almost 7 months pregnant so it's a bit of a difficult question. I think that if I take this question seriously, what is really the best thing? Obviously butter.
What work are you most proud of, and how can people support it?
I'm very proud of my book, Be Pregnant: An Illustrated Companion for Moms-to-Be ! Please support by purchasing a copy.
Quote Vote
“A food is not necessarily essential just because your child hates it.”
— Katharine Whitehorn
All this talk of marshmallows has me hankering for the exact opposite. Which is of course beef jerky. Anyway, let’s eat:
Time held GWQ No. 214 green and dying, though it sang in its chains like the sea. We had to study that poem for a week in Grade 13 English, and it was worth it. Thanks, Mr. Waldron! Thanks also to Tristan for the mouse pillows and Blake for reminding me of eggcorns. You gotta read my book Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting like you’re on vacation. Every tap of the ❤️ plants another eggcorn.