Last Friday, Smartmom and Hepcat went to see “God of Carnage,” the Broadway hit by Yasmina Reza about two Cobble Hill couples that meet to discuss a playground fight between their sons.
The play has been translated and Brooklynized with references to the Cobble Hill Playground and a Smith Street Korean market that sells inexpensive Dutch tulips.
And yet there’s something universal about parents getting together to discuss and defend the behavior of their children.
Who hasn’t been in that situation? When the Oh So Feisty One was in kindergarten, she got hit by an icy snowball thrown by a classmate in the PS 321 playground. The school nurse called to say that OSFO would probably need stitches on her chin. Smartmom raced over to the school and took a bloody OSFO to the doctor. Smartmom was furious with the aggressive young boy who had caused OSFO so much pain; she fumed the whole car service ride to the doctor’s office.
She did, however, manage to soothe OSFO in between fumes.
Turns out, OSFO didn’t need stitches, just a big Band Aid. Phew. That night, Smartmom called the mother of the boy who threw the ice. She told her in excruciating detail what her boy had done and how her girl had suffered.
But the boy’s mom didn’t seem to care all that much. Sure, she sounded concerned and clearly she was glad to hear that OSFO was OK. But there were no profuse apologies. No talk of disciplinary action.
Smartmom was miffed. That mom’s kid nearly caused OSFO to have stitches, and the mom didn’t make that big a deal about it. Smartmom wanted shock and awe (or at least, “Awww”). She wanted the Big Apology. She wanted remorse with a capital R.
Smartmom was slow to forgive — both the boy and the mom. But OSFO moved on quickly.
“He has impulse-control issues,” OSFO told her. “That’s all.”
Apparently, playwright Reza actually experienced a situation like the one portrayed in the play, in which a boy gets hit by another boy and loses two front teeth. Random playground violence, major dental work and stellar actors playing over-determined contemporary parents makes for a lot of laughs, physical comedy and over-the-top comedic hostility.
At first, the couples are oh so polite. They drink espresso, they enjoy the hostess’s clafouti, and browse the fancy art books stacked on a stylish coffee table.
But then things get nasty. Very nasty. It’s a constantly shifting battle, a nasty square dance. The husbands gang up on the wives and visa versa.
Ultimately, the couples begin to attack one another and the fault lines in each marriage are exposed. The conversation devolves into an adult playground fight and the grown ups are nearly consumed by the volatility of their hostility and rage.
What the actors expose on the stage is what lies beneath the surface sheen of hyper-correct parenting and child perfectionism. And what’s underneath: insecurity, fear and anger. These days, parents try to do the parenting thing to perfection because it’s something they can control. But can they really control everything?
Smartmom now sees that icy snowball situation in a new way. Why did she even bother to call that boy’s mom? In the olden days of the 1970s, kids had to solve their playground problems by themselves. Back then, a playground fight wasn’t viewed as some kind of referendum on the kid‘s parents. It was a playground fight. C’est tout!
In these times of parental over-involvement, even an innocent playground fight becomes one more excuse to over-manage the kids and spout platitudes about parenting and appropriate behavior. But the truth is, you can’t shield your kid from the reality of a playground fight or the possibility of a minor injury.
Smartmom enjoyed “God of Carnage,” and it made her think about OSFO’s chin in a new way. Now she’s glad she didn’t pick a big fight with the mother of that ice thrower all those years ago.
One less person to avoid on Seventh Avenue that’s for sure.
