The battle of the bathroom, June 2010

This hour's going down in the family annals. After a Saturday night in six year's time it'll be Tiger's defence against the Old Bill, when she's up on charges of disorderly conduct, theft, criminal damage, joy-riding, public intoxication, and GBH. This will be the defining moment. So I'll make my statement now and open up a fighting fund to pay the lawyers.

This is also an example of gross parenting fail, so make sure you learn from Grit's disastrous approach to handling small pre-teen type people. Just learn from it, and do the proper thing, which is: Exit the bathroom, pour yourself a large glass of Lagavulin and watch old episodes of Corrie. That is the proper parenting response to what I am about to narrate.

Readers of this blog probably know that Tiger is a special sort of hyper sensitive child, affected emotionally by air temperature, molecules, atoms, and basically all sights, sounds, smells, tastes and textures that the world has to offer. She also carries a 400lb barrel of Semtex in her forehead. It's connected to a very short fuse. The fuse can be lit at any moment by a wide variety of materials, such as the colour green, a wobbly 2B pencil line, the arrangement of soil, and the sight of mama with a comb.

Now at first, all goes badly. I should know this, and retreat. But no. I think I can help make things better.

It is hair washing night for Tiger. After the last skirmish with the hair I suggested that Tiger might now take responsibility for combing her own hair. After all, she has made double figures and I never sold her for medical experiments.

But that is too big a responsibility, and she will not do it. She will not do it, even though she won't allow me to do that combing business, either. And not her sisters, not daddy, not anyone. Not anyone dressed a horse, or pretending to be a horse, either. We already tried it. And she will not get the problem we all have, that she is walking about with the equivalent of an enormous hairy pan scrubber fastened to the back of her head, a lump which is basically made of matted felted hair. And does that look neglectful to you?

So a week goes by and I bite my knuckles, then a fortnight, and I can take it no longer. It is hair washing night for Tiger.

And that's when the howling starts. I mean howling, like screaming that you are being tortured by the sight of water. At which point I suggest conditioner might help and the howling grows to epic proportions because conditioner always goes in her eyes and always blinds her and always is made of hydrochloric acid and always is made especially by mama deliberately for the intent of blinding, poisoning and otherwise disfiguring a perfectly healthy set of eyeballs.

So I remain as calm as I can and I coax the embodiment of Howl under the shower and apply the miracle super strength detangling hydrochloric acid and suggest she now finger combs the pan scrubber. Then I quickly depart because my eardrums have burst.

When I return ten minutes later, she is out the shower. Or rather the shower is out and all over the bathroom floor, and a howling Tiger with a pan scrubber larded with conditioner is howling fit to bust. It takes some effort to get her back in the shower, not even to comb her hair, but to rinse out the conditioner of Satan from her hair and try finger combing the dreaded locks.

Then things become hysterical. And I maybe do nothing more than scream back into the howl, demonstrate my zero parental abilities and snap back my fingers which are itching to engage in a spot of child brutality and wield a pair of scissors, say, five inches up from the ends.

Now I can think about it and know it was a totally unattractive demonstration of sub humanity, all with the howling snot and screaming from the pair of us, both operating without frontal lobes but with plenty of high emotion, that I'm surprised you didn't call the police, just in case you suspected murder, arson, kidnapping and horse whipping.

It is also possibly the worst bathtime I ever experienced in my life. I came out of it wanting to tear up that contract I wrote in blood ten years ago. I wanted to rip it to pieces because I never even knew that I signed it. And this thing I have to do called parent? That's an unwanted burden someone gave me, and they can have it right back, thanks.

The parent side of me tells me to shut the crap up, and pray that I took every opportunity when she was little to hold her tight, and tell her that I loved her, more than anything in the whole world. Because in these days of warfare I fear there'll be few opportunities to make her hear me say those words, and more, to believe me.