June 20, 2008

In 1971, Standford University conducted a social expriment where they took a group of students to a prison. The assigned half to be guards and half to be prisoners and let them loose to see what would happen. Despite starting off with bright, intelligent students, the expriment quickly became dangerous as both prisoners and guards adapted to their expected roles and began to act accordingly. As a matter of fact, the experiment had to be cancelled early and many of the particpants sought psychological help. The ordeal was known as the Stanford prison experiment.

This brings me to today. I've come to the conclusion that one day it will be revealed that parenting is simply a social experiment of an extremely large magnitude orchistrated by a handful of global despots. The two situations aren't terribly dissimilar. Take two individuals- an unborn child and a perfectly normal 24-year-old male. Both have expectations of what it should be like, being a son and parent, respectively. Timmy even has his prison gruel (see picture). Before long, both conform to the social norms for those roles and in the end, sometimes, both need psychological help.

Today is a hectic day. The house needs to be ready and cleaned so it won't stink and be moldy when we get back from our 3-month hiatus. Everything needs to be packed for Norway and all our stuff we're packing for the states needs to be set aside. On top of this, we've got a pretty tight schedule. The plane takes off shortly before 10pm and Savannah gets off work at 5. Add in a 3-hour drive to the airport in potentially heavy traffic and you're not left with much room for error.

Further, all our reservations for the flight, car and hotel were made back in December, so I'm certain something will go wrong. I'm not so much worried about the flight- I've got a confirmation printout that I can bring to the airport with me. The hotel might be a problem, but if worse come to worst, we can sleep in the car. The car is the one I think is going to fall through. Although I reserved a car for us, the rental car company doesn't charge you until you pick it up, meaning it's entirely possible they won't have a car for us. All things considered, I don't think the actual running part is going to be the stressful portion of the weekend.

Now as it pertains to the experiment. On any other day, Timmy will be content to play on the floor, in his walker or otherwise occupy himself for long enough portions of the day that I could get everything done. Today, however, when I need him to be self-entertained the most, he has no interest in anything that doesn't involve being carried around by Daddy. I consider this the equivalent of introducing a constant flow of adrenhaline into the systems of the participants in the prison experiment. Sort of a stress multiplier. Just to see what happens.