David Spates "Therefore I Am" Published May 21, 2002

I'm going to the bathroom
to get some tomato paste

Why is there a can of tomato paste in the bathtub? If I had discovered a can of tomato paste in the tub 14 months ago, it would have launched an extensive investigation.

A can of tomato paste simply doesn't jump down from the kitchen cupboard, amble down by the living room couch, roll down the hall, hang a right into the master bedroom, take a left into the bathroom and scale the bathtub wall until finally coming to rest near the drain. Someone had to put it there, and put it there for a reason. Why would anyone do that? What possible reason would someone say to himself, "You know, this can of tomato paste should really be in the bathtub. Having it here in the cupboard makes no sense whatsoever."

A mystery like that could have left me dumbfounded and preoccupied for months. Surely the guilty party would deny it - and besides, anyone crazy enough to move a can of tomato paste from the cupboard to the bathtub is inherently an unreliable source of information.
However, in our house, with a 1-year-old toddling to and fro, there is no mystery.

As a matter of fact, the cupboard is probably the LAST place I'd expect to find a can of tomato paste. If you want to make spaghetti sauce around these parts, the wise chef begins in the bathtub. Or Anna's toy box. Or perhaps under the bench in the foyer. You might also try peering in the clothes hamper.

There is no adequate preparation for it. You can read all of the baby books in the library. You can attend every pre-birth parenting class the hospital has to offer. You can discuss ad nauseam with your friends, family and colleagues the ins and outs of child rearing. You can do all of those things, and still the issue of where to find the tomato paste when you really need it will never come up. It's one of those things we rookie parents have to experience for ourselves.

The other day I found the calculator in the dishwasher. I have a suspect in mind for that one. A few days before that, the DVD remote control turned up in a diaper bag. A brilliant serial criminal is at work, me thinks. Her goal? To drive her parents to the brink of insanity.

I've learned quickly that parents of very young children shouldn't ever bother getting used to anything. By the time I'm able to discern and recognize a behavioral routine, that routine is out the window. Just when I think I've got her figured out and can predict her every move, she throws me a curveball, which takes the form of tomato paste in the bathtub, or, most recently, the discovery that she can walk backward. She doesn't bother to see what's behind her when she does it, so any number of potential disasters await.

That might be what caused her black eye. It's the first visible injury she's sustained, and it's a beaut. I didn't actually see her do it, but I suspect she tripped and whacked her left eye on the metal bed frame. Now she looks like she's gone a couple of rounds with Lennox Lewis. She's fine, but she looks rough.

Here's something else we rookie parents do -- when our toddler has any kind of visible injury, we feel the need to explain the circumstances to complete strangers. Otherwise we fear that someone will call the child-abuse hotline.

I caught myself explaining to the bank teller how Anna sustained her shiner. The lady nodded and smiled. She could care less, and the last thing in the world she was thinking about was calling the child welfare office. Why was I explaining her black eye all week? I'm a rookie, and it shows.

Anna's shiner has had an upside for me, though. I'm now able to instantaneously distinguish parents from non-parents. When non-parents see her black eye, they take a good long look and immediately say things like, "Ouch! What happened? Is she OK? Poor little girl! That has to hurt!" They obviously don't have experience with this sort of thing.

Veteran parents just grin. They know the deal. "Been there, done that, bought the snow globe."

They know kids her age fall down -- fall down A LOT. Back when their kids had their first black eyes, they pestered their bank tellers with unnecessary explanations, too.

The good news is that we rookies aren't green for long. We earn our stripes, and the best part is that soon it'll be our turn to grin at the next batch of rookie parents.
Until that day, however, I'm content to eat spaghetti at a restaurant.

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David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@chartertn.net.