Every parent who has ever sought earnestly to show children the great exciting world will know what it is to become inadvertently the most tedious person in the group.
I started to bore them when we were still on the train.
“Look, girls,” I yelped, as we trundled through New Jersey. “There in the distance! That’s Manhattan!”
Of course the moment I said it the train passed a block of ugly warehouses, and the view was cut off. Out the window, all the girls saw were slabs of rusting metal and puddles of brackish water.
“That’s Manhattan?” one said in dismay.
“No, no, not that, it’s – there!” But they had already turned back to their dolls, which were talking about going to the ball with the prince.
Some time later, the three of us stood beneath the marble facade of New York City Hall as traffic roared and hordes of tourists around us jabbered in every language but English.
“Pretty neat, eh?” I said, gesturing around. “This is where the Mayor of New York—“
“Look!” interrupted the seven-year-old. “A feather!” She crouched down and was reaching for a bit of discarded pigeon fluff when I yanked her back. “But I need it! I’m going to start a feather collection.”
“Not with that, yuck,” I said. “Now, girls, this will be fun. We’re going to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge!”
“Why?” asked the eight-year-old.
“Why, because we can! Did you know the Brooklyn Bridge was built almost 140 years ago? It used to be the longest suspension bridge in the world!”
I could feel the futility of the exercise already, but what can you do? It’s the fate of parents forever to discourse about the history of things and for children to – perhaps – take in the barest bit of their blather.
Wherever there are national landmarks, you will see us pointing, speculating, and lecturing as our young charges stare about. Not for nothing did the adults in the Charlie Brown comic strip say “blah blah blah” over the heads of the more interesting conversation of children. I’ll be lucky if the girls remember the name of this structure.
“Ice cold wata! one dolla!” We heard the cry before we saw a tired-looking young woman with one arm hooked around the railing and a cooler filled with bottles at her feet.
Now here was something interesting! “Ice cold wata, one dolla,” one daughter whispered to the other, and they giggled. “Ice cold wata, one dolla,” the other whispered back. All the way to the middle of the bridge – where the girls carelessly glanced once around — and back, no one tired of this exhilarating phrase.
We walked. We bought cheap sunglasses from a sidewalk vendor. We gazed solemnly at the pit where the World Trade Center used to be. We headed towards Broadway and bought cold treats from an ice cream truck.
We were walking south towards the Staten Island Ferry when Trinity Church hove into view. Lehman Brothers was melting faster than the girls’ ice creams that day, which meant more touristy milling-about than usual at the entrance to Wall Street. For the last time, I revved up for a memorable Teaching Moment. “Now, girlies, you know The Wall Street Journal, right?”
They smiled up at me gamely. “Well,” I began, “You are standing on the Wall Street, where the paper gets its name! This is theoretically the center of American finance. It’s the home of the New York Stock Exchange…“ The children were listening, but I could feel the zest leaking out of paragraphs yet unuttered – and knew there would be no more boring disquisitions from me that day.
Yet on the way home that night, like countless parents before me, I couldn’t resist the urge to tie up our excursion with a little educational bow.
“So darlings,” I asked them, “Of all the things we saw today – the stone lions at the library, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, the yellow taxis, Little Italy, everything — what one thing will you always remember from our trip to New York?”
“The sno-cone,” said the eight-year-old.
The seven-year-old nodded. “Me too. My ice cream had so many sprinkles you couldn’t see any white, only rainbow!”
There was a pause as I absorbed my defeat. Then one of them asked, “What about you, Mummy, what will you remember?”
I grinned at them. I’d learned my lesson. “Ice cold wata! One dolla!”
Examiner columnist Meghan Cox Gurdon is a former foreign correspondent and a regular contributor to the books pages of The Wall Street Journal. Her Examiner column appears on Thursdays.
