Father's Little Dividend part1

There is poison in the fang of the serpent, in the mouth of the fly and in the sting of a scorpion; but the wicked man is saturated with it.
Chanakya
Indian strategist and writer,
350 BCE - 275 BCE

As a small child, when my parents would take me for walks, I was fascinated by the tragically flattened bodies of the road kill creatures: birds, squirrels, snakes and frogs. I felt sad for all of them that had lost their race with cars and trucks interrupting their natural world, but most of all I felt badly for the poor snakes that having no legs could never be quick enough. I suppose this was a foreshadowing of my lifelong fascination with comparative anatomy, noticing how the flat bits were alike and how they were different.

Feeling sympathy for the garter snakes in the yard, it hugely amused my parents that I would catch them, and put them in a galvanized steel pail kept in the garage for yard work. And when I had a bunch of them, I would get my parents to take me by the hand, and walk the snakes in the bucket across the street, dumping them out in the grass on the other side so they wouldn't get flattened by traffic on the street. Poor snakes, of course none of them really wanted to be caught by a child, and some of them probably had no desire to cross the road, and may very well have gotten flattened trying to get back, but I meant well. I learned not to be afraid of things that wriggle or slither, and to have a quick, gentle touch.

As an adult I have no fear of spiders, or rodents or reptiles, or predators; I do not have the 'Disney-esque' notion of 'good' animals in nature, and 'bad' animals. Nature is simply nature. It is a view that makes camping much less complicated. A few nights ago a bat, a 'flying mouse', found its way into the house for example, and instead of harming it, I ushered it back outside with the admonition to go eat more mosquitoes, many more mosquitoes. We could always use fewer mosquitoes.

My parents were less amused at my compassion for garden creatures when I realized at a tender age that while I was unafraid of snakes, it was a handy way to rid myself of crabby old ladies hired to be my babysitter. A few garter snakes stuffed in her purse; a little frog dropped in her soft drink, bye bye crabby old lady, and hello parents home early. Father being a stock broker found it important to attend a variety of social events like cocktail parties, and there were a few occasions where the answer to a fleeing baby sitter was to dress me up, threaten me within an inch of my life to be on my best behavior (checking no snakes were accompanying me), and to drag me along to very grown up events.

I was rigorously schooled, on threat of a serious spanking, to answer any conversation by an adult with the words "My mommy says children are to be seen and not heard", which I repeated as often as necessary, usually with a big, innocent smile for punctuation. I learned that you could wander around drinking a Shirley Temple, and old bald men smoking smelly cigars would sit you on their knee and think you were adorable, all the while talking in front of you as if you had the IQ of furniture if you just kept smiling. Old men and even some women will talk about things in front of a child they would never talk about in front of other adults. Old men tended to think all children are stupid, and that girl children were even less intelligent than boy children, in my experience. I didn't discourage that impression; I just enjoyed that a mop of red curls tied back with shiny ribbon, big blue eyes and freckles were disarming. Like many children, I figured out at an early age how to identify when adults were talking secretively, and that was the fun time to listen.

Not even my parents, who had some idea of what they were dealing with, expected that on the drive home from these events, their little precocious darling would spout out information picked up over the course of the evening about price earning ratios, IPOs, reverse stock splits, mergers and changes in boards of directors. Or short selling. Short selling was always very interesting. Dad had always encouraged me to ask questions, and always patiently explained; but even he hadn't really expected that I was paying the kind of attention to his answers that would translate into understanding other adults' conversations. Really good evenings out after ditching the sitter resulted in dad cutting loose on the drive home with a big string of euphoric expletives after one of my little recitations of things I'd heard, given that swearing was fairly strictly avoided at home.

When my dad took to referring to me a 'father's little dividend' as a term of endearment, he wasn't referring to the old Spencer Tracy / Liz Taylor movie. He was referring to real money, our little private joke. To his credit, he never, ever directed me to listen to anyone or for anything. I doubt my parents ever knew enough of what to expect from me to even consider that possibility; I tended to be full of the unexpected. My parents certainly never planned on my little babysitter removal events at all, they were always a total consternation. I doubt all of what I heard was useful, but some of it certainly was helpful, sometimes very helpful, and very profitable.

My parents took a lot of flack for spoiling me and being over-indulgent, but I discovered that wasn't all bad so long as I displayed precocious manners and was on my best behavior. Usually even the sternest grown ups could be won over, with a little effort. Most of them thought my feeling sorry for little garden snakes was sweet. A few old crabs were convinced that any child who would deliberately get rid of a babysitter the way I did must be some kind of incipient monster. I always figured those must be the people my mother meant when she said that there were people who didn't like and didn't trust you if you were too smart, so it was best not to show off, not to let them know what you were thinking. Best to smile, and move away from them.

I spent much more time with adults than I did with children; I suppose that had distinct effect on how I observed them. Very few adults really observe children very carefully, but children, being dependent on adults become very keen observers of them, of necessity, as are many animals. Even when they don't understand words, they understand subtleties of body language and tone of voice, and expression.