Terry Marotta:
Serfs To Go on Strike at Midnight

I say we grown-ups go on strike. Let’s call a job action.

After all, we work hard every day, raising the kids, wiping the jelly smears off the TV screen. And do we get justly compensated? Do we even get thanked?

We do not. We’re the family serfs, tending to its humblest chores—working on the stubborn stains, unclogging the pipes, taking apart the vacuum cleaner to remove a lost civilization of tiny action figures.

Meanwhile, note how our kids spend their time: they watch TV, dabble at a little homework, take a field trip to the fridge.

Most of us are too busy to even get to a movie ‘til it’s been around so long even the kid at the video store can’t quite recall it. Kids are the ones who see all the movies. They play this game where you start by naming two actors and a film the first one played in, then try to get to a film the second one played in by linking up co-stars along the way. Thus you name a film your first actor was in with another actor, name a film that actor was in with another actor, and so on, ‘til you get to an actor who starred in a film with the second person of your original pair.

It can take 30 movies to do this and total recall of who was in all 30 and most kids do it easy. Why? Again, leisure time and plenty of it, honey.

They get to go grazing through a day, picking up one thing for a while, then putting it down in favor of another. We have to do things ‘till they’re done: Wash all the dishes. Pay all the taxes. Change the entire baby, because where would the world be if you just took the old diaper off and never put the new one on? We see things through, in other words.

So let’s find out how the non-grownups like running the world for a while—because we are empty husks, my brothers and sisters. Somebody ate the fruit and threw away the peel. And I for one am losing my joy.

Walk a mile in my shoes here and tell me if you wouldn’t be losing yours too:

When my kids come downstairs mornings I have a nice breakfast all ready. But one says she’ll get something at school and another sits down with a fistful of cookies and pulls a super-caffeinated drink out of his backpack, a  thing forbidden in this house. Then they jump up and try running out the door half-dressed—without socks in the middle of winter. Without real shoes sometimes. Often without jackets!  

This happened on a recent morning grey with a chilly drizzle. I was cutting up fruit and toasting bagels. I went to the washer to throw in a load of clothes, but a kid 48 hours before had never taken his load out, and there it lay, ten pounds of wet denim, damply coiled.

Next I was pulling yogurt and cottage cheese from the fridge "Eat!" I said to the kids, as they clattered and/or dawdled down the stairs. "Can’t" said one. "Gonna be late." "Don’t like bagels," said another, wiping stray traces of chocolate from his mouth.

Then "Where are your socks?" I demanded.

"It’s warm out!"

"Who sold you Jolt?"

"It’s not illegal, Mum."

And finally in a raised voice: "WILL YOU SIT DOWN AND EAT YOUR JACKET?!"

I knew it when I heard myself then: the time had come and I’m putting out the word: the strike is set to start at midnight.

 Write Terry at tmarotta@comcast.net or PO Box 270, Winchester, Mass., 01890.