SKIFFY PARENTS: A Survivor's Tale
By Patrick Stewart Knowles, aged Nearly Two
I could tell that I'd lucked out when Dad got back from the registrars and told Mum the middle name he'd picked. "We can tell people we're 'I, Claudius' fans," she suggested. Yeah, right. Like anyone will believe that. It could have been worse, 'William Shatner Knowles' would have been a nightmare. From there on it only got worse.
At the tender age of six weeks I found myself at the Star Trek Exhibiton. Should Dad get to read this, here's a hint - sitting in Captain Kirk's chair was your ambition, not mine. My ambition was to visit the Baywatch set. Imagine the feed you could get out of one of those! But the folks just wandered about gawping at stuff they said dated from the sixties. I've heard all about the sixties and I didn't see any dinosaurs anywhere.
Their choice of bedtime stories leaves a lot to be desired as well. Imagine that you get to spend every night in this big cage (when you're only three feet tall a cot looks really big) and every night a giant comes and tells you stories about dead people stealing bodies. I know The Reality Dysfunction got great reviews but by the time that bastard had finished volume two I didn't want a night light, I wanted a bloody flamethrower!
The quality of Christmas and Birthday presents has been underwhelming too. I don't know if all parents are like this but mine have absolutely no sense of what's in and what's not. They seem to have completely failed to notice that this year's fashionable infant leisure accessories (toys, to you) are the Tellytubbies. So what do I get for Christmas ? A Starfleet uniform and the Star Wars Special Edition videos. "But they've got state-of-the-art computer generated effects," says Mum. So have the tellytubbies! Have you seen the dancing bear? Brilliant! As for the uniform - I can't begin to describe the embarrassment at the playgroup. Even Colin, a boy so dated he thinks Buzz Lightyear is cool, was laughing at me. The only one to offer any sympathy was Goldenflower. Her parents are Hippies so she has some idea of the hell they can put you through.
There is hope, however. Goldenflower has suggested that one day we could run away to be accountants and read lots of Austen and Dickens. That'll show them. I can't wait until I'm a teenager and I can rebel.
