The Point

The trifecta

Sod storytelling. Last night’s bedtime chat with Kraken Junior included her question, “What’s the point of me?”. Then she asked what was the point of I, The Kraken, and of Conjugal Kraken. I spluttered out that the point of us is to love each other but you know what? I could have gone one fuck of a lot further. Much further. But then KJ would have had nightmares and scratched out her eyes. Here’s what I wanted to say but, in a rare fit of diplomacy, didn’t...

The point of Kraken Junior:

To provide our local pharmacist with an early retirement to Antibes; to put my bras on her head; to make me hysterical with exhaustion; to marvel at the size of her turds; to squash bogies under my fingernails; to make me wonder what the fuck I am doing; to squander our savings on Tinkerbell costumes; to make me holler “eat your frigging mash!”; to ask me what water is; to weep with laughter at yellow cars; to scream with fear when I cut her toenails; to shout “bloody marvellous!” when she enjoys her food; to call the planet Uranus Uvuranius; to repeatedly try to bite my nose; to grill me about my periods; to limp theatrically and hysterically for hours after grazing her knee; to taste paint; to obsess over bubbles; to poke the cat; to call Hello Kitty, Kitty Hello; to shout for quiet when she’s concentrating; to go profoundly deaf when the telly’s on; to get sand on her teeth; to make us gigglingly happy.

The point of I, The Kraken:

To wonder what the fuck I am doing; to fold tiny clothes; to religiously shout “I’ve only got one pair of bloody hands!”; to be terminally confused; to never take a shit on my own; to clutter up the local psych unit; to ingest fistfuls of mentally stabilising medication; to provide our local pharmacist with an early retirement to Antibes; to read aloud The Gruffalo 361.3 times; to pretend to enjoy tea parties; to pick peas off the kitchen floor; to mutter “for fuck’s sake” under my breath and, occasionally, aloud; to drink rum exactly three minutes after bedtime, often from the bottle; to panic at rashes; to despise the beach; to hate other children; to explain why I’m screaming at other drivers; to worry about KJ becoming a whore/ junkie/ Tory; to hide on the doorstep; to ask “have you lost you bloody mind?”; to rage at the colour pink; to know that I’ll never fail to use contraception again; to become hooked on snotty cuddles.

The point of Conjugal Kraken

To stop our cave from forming its own chaos-based black hole; to teach KJ to count; to separate KJ and I during particularly hysterical periods; to keep KJ supplied with Cocoa Pops; to forget what a boys' night out feels like; to simultaneously watch cricket, build a marble run and mop up snot; to spot my imminent mental collapse long before I do; to shower with a small face pressed against the glass; to have no time to cut his toenails; to have his pate and his high forehead meet in the middle; to partake of a large slump at three minutes past bedtime; to moderate the mash-eating battles; to have greater patience than the rest of us put together; to agree that other kids are hideous; to be the administrative centre of the kraken universe; to suck his teeth with fury; to count the grey hairs on his chest; to have KJ stare at his knackersack; to weep with laughter at Viz; to have obsessively documented every episode of Disney’s Imagination Movers; to explode with pride.

Yup, on second thoughts perhaps I gave KJ the right answer in the first place.