Free Raising Cubby by John Elder Robison Page B

ten kids, I could open a coal mine. If I had twenty, I could have a clothing factory too.” That was what I told him, but it never came true. It was very hard to get useful work from Cubby. He was friendly, and even superficially cooperative, but when it came to hard labor, he was always someplace else.
    In fact, when he got older, he became a lot like Tom Sawyer in his ability to get other kids to do his work for him. Since I had been careful never to read him Mark Twain, so as not to give him ideas, that seemed to be a natural-born trait. I was proud to see it in action, except when I wanted him working for me.
    Despite all the problems, I made it clear that I was pretty satisfied with my purchase. As well I should be, for what he cost. “Youwere two hundred dollars,” I would say in my most serious voice. “Plus tax. The best kid in the store, and the second most expensive! The most expensive kid was three hundred seventy-five dollars, but he came with a third eye, and I did not see the sense in paying for that extra eye. A two-eyed kid was good enough for me. They use three-eyed kids in mining and industry, but they look funny in a community like this.”
    Cubby always liked the notion of being the best in the store. It’s nice to be the best of something. Only problem was, his mother persisted in offering him alternate origin stories. Eventually, she actually convinced him that he grew inside her, and he ended up believing that and not my own colorful account, which was really a shame.
    I think it was the pictures that made the difference. After all my talk about believing what you see in print, as opposed to salesman’s bullshit, his mother turned that around on me and won him over with photos from
National Geographic
and the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
. I could not trump that, because there were no Kid Store photos available. If only I’d had the Internet and Photoshop back then! The only thing that could have trumped my story then would have been a pregnant Mom, and Cubby ended up an only child, so I’d have won, hands down.
    Without photos, my creative explanation was defeated. The inherent believability of the Kid Store alone was not enough. Realizing I had lost, I felt a bit sad. In fact, that experience led me to question the meaning of “right answers.” When you have a kid, and he asks where he came from, what’s the correct response? Is it the most entertaining story? Or is it just the dry, boring facts? After much reflection, I decided that the world is what we make it to be, and that the best answer for a little kid is the one that gets him thinking. That was what I tried to do.
    There was a time when Cubby derided my imaginative explanations, but now that he is grown I can see that they had an effect;I made him think, and questioning the conventional wisdom is never a bad thing. Someday, when he has a kid of his own, I would not be surprised if he offers even more imaginative answers when faced with the Origin Question.
    The Third Generation will be something to see.

As Cubby grew from babyhood into kidhood, he was like a plant that grows six inches overnight, changing before my very eyes. Talking was probably the biggest milestone, even bigger than learning to walk. As soon as he could talk, it was as if he’d spent the first year and a half of his life in a state of extreme deprivation and had to make up for lost time. Until then, I thought we’d taken pretty good care of him. We certainly felt like we’d catered to his every whim. However, when he started talking, he made it clear how wrong we were.
    First came the one-word demands, like
Drink
! Such demands could come at any time with no warning, even when he’d been fed and watered on a regular schedule. Then we progressed to two-word statements, which did not presage anything more appealing. One of his favorites was
Poopy diaper
! Everything was said as an exclamation, and if not satisfied immediately, a meltdown ensued.
    At the same time,