The Bad Guy.

My main takeaway from being a single parent is that you’re always the bad guy. Even when you’re the good guy, you’re still the bad guy.

You’re always the one nagging on about brushing teeth and trying to reason with them when they want to wear shorts and sandals in winter. You’re the one that has to make sure they eat their 5-a-day, stick to whatever routine you’ve strategized, and the one who says no when grandad offers them ice cream at 7pm on a Tuesday for no apparent reason. You’re the one who buys them everything, but 90% of those purchases are boring necessities – beds, PJs, underwear, toothbrushes, desks to do their homework on, food to shove in their mouths. It’s all so basic. Even when I go all extra and buy a ginormous a stuffed unicorn to make me feel like an excellent single parent, the gesture sort of gets lost as part of the room décor furnishings. As if it’s part of the basic contract plan.

Everyone else, on the other hand, gets to buy them cool toys (which then you have to be the bad guy to tell them they can’t play with it in the house, cos why on earth would anyone buy acrylic paint for my kid, when I have nice and light-coloured furniture?!). Playdoh, amongst many other creative and/or crafty type things are an outdoor activity in my house. Better yet, let those activities be activities she does at pre-school.

You know, there are those parents who do a bunch of crafts with their kids inside their house, and they let their kids have sandpits and chalk and bath crayons. Yeah, I’m not it. I am third generation of unbearably unchill domestic goddesses, thanks to my grandmother. To call us neat, would be like describing Lewis Hamilton as a good driver. The thought of having to clean up messy play off of my beautiful oak dining table is making me come out in hives. A dried-up Weetabix on said dining table can ruin my day. What is even made of? I swear you can build an indestructible house from the stuff. Should we be questioning what kind of blockage it may be creating in our digestive systems?

And so, people get to buy those cool looking things, and I get to be the bad guy that stops her playing with those things (indoors). Relatives get to be the good guy with “why don’t you let her stay up a bit later”, and I get to be the asshole who shuts those excellent ideas down. Because they are here for a few hours and I’m going to have to deal with it every day. Not just the out of sync bedtime, but the inevitable requests of staying up later every day- “hey you let me do it when so and so was here!”.

And this is just the small and innocent stuff. I’m dreading the teenage years when I’m a bad guy cos I won’t allow her to go out with some dude named ‘Spider’ or let her go off to some party in some warehouse, where the dress code is head-to-toe leather- or worse- ‘dress to impress’. I’ll be the only one who’s ‘not angry but is very disappointed’ about some shit she pulled or an exam she failed. I’m gonna be the one who eventually tells her Santa isn’t real and that even though she’s been eating all those carrots over the year, not only will she not be able to see in the dark, she’s also likely to need glasses- genetics, innit. I’m going to be the one breaking bad news and forgetting to do her volcano school project and the one who embarrasses her in front of her friends. Though I’m not-so-secretly totally looking forward to that part.

And all of this sucks for her too. She’s not able to leverage, bring her case to another adult and hope the appeal is successful. Though it has to be said, she does have my dad wrapped around her little 4-year-old finger and uses him as the heartstrings weak-link in her litigation strategy to be allocated more snacks. She once threw in a fake tear and the man was caught sneaking raisins like he was part of a partisan movement.

I had a bit of a breakdown about this whole Bad Guy thing at the end of last year. I felt like I’m up against The House. But also know myself well enough to know I’m never going to turn myself into the ‘super chill, do what you want’ sort of mum. With no solution in sight, I just resigned to the fact I’m going to have to be The Bad Guy. It is, what it is.

Then when my kid got to the Christmas tree on Christmas morning, she insisted on opening the gifts from mummy first, “cos you’re the best, Mama. Santa’s can wait”.

I guess good guys really do finish last.