Beautiful Black Holes

This is a black hole, courtesy of Hubble.

Did you see that movie Interstellar? Me neither, but I hear it had some freakin huge black holes in it. Now I'm just a husband, father and space geek so I know next to nothing about black holes, singularities or other spacial phenomena (do, doooo, do, do, do). What I've been told by people massively more intelligent than me, people like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Carl Sagan, Bill Nye, Stephen Hawking, and Brian Cox, is black holes consume everything and anything nearby, then (potentially) spit out matter and energy at tremendous speed. 

This is a representation of a child, who is somewhat like me. Courtesy of Gary Larson.

Now I have kids, I can say quite firmly that they are terrestrial versions of black holes. If you've ever been around a small child at play, meal times, doing nothing at all, you'll understand this. Have you ever seen a young child with a toy? If you don't remember then you haven't, because at some point that toy will have been streaking towards your head at close to the speed of light. If not your head then it will have made a beeline for the nearest most fragile object, or more likely your genitals.

I think parents have a common misconception about children and toys, we all assume kids want the next best toy (at least in the developed world). We fill their rooms with all different kinds of plastic crap which ends up being consumed very briefly by the child, then violently hurled somewhere or at something or someone before being forgotten. Our response is, stupidly, to buy even more crap because it's generally easier than shifting furniture to get at that tiny car your kid threw under it! Thus we feed the little black holes even greater quantities of matter to consume.

As a parent we can sometimes worry in a "we need to talk about Kevin" kind of way because we find dismembered toy parts all over your house. Kids are creative so a Barbie head in the bed, Godfather style, while your child stares and giggles at you from the doorway is actually a likely occurrence. My own daughter has taken to drawing pictures of people on fire, and playing games where her toys are burning. I know why she's doing it, there was a fire in the building which terrified her, but it still unsettles me each time she does it.

Don't forget the cannolis....

Other times we end up cursing the toys or the kids who left the toys lying about because inevitably we've stepped on the pointiest part of them which is of course lying in a prime position to impale your foot. We live in a small flat so at least there are no stairs to tumble down, adding to the agony of our now throbbing foot. The toys we step on will usually break so that's more food for the little singularities. Unless it's Lego which as we all know is nearly indestructible, and can practically lop your foot off if stepped on at just the right angle leaving you to spend the next few minutes cleaning up blood from your fresh wound.

If we're honest with ourselves, we generally hate a lot of the toys our kids have. We worry they don't set a good example for our kids, like Barbie, Monster High Dolls, or the Walter White Breaking Bad doll found next to the kids section of Toys'R'Us. We worry they're made too cheaply to last more than a few moments in the clutches of the intense vortex that is our child. Then there's the aggravation they'll cause us. When I was a kid electronics were small, but not tiny like they are now. My Lego fire truck had two little flashing LED's but it didn't whoop or blare at me, I had to make the noise and I did, very enthusiastically. Toys with electronics were generally pretty clunky things, not to mention expensive. Now though, EVERYTHING has something that beeps, bloops, honks, blares shitty music, or damn near blinds you with flashing lights. Rape whistle make less noise than some of the toys my kids have. They love them, but I want to sacrifice them to ancient Gods in an elaborate pagan ritual involving volcanoes, a scantily clad maiden (played by my wife), the feasting on the flesh of my enemies (very Paleo) and lots and lots of heavy implements for bashing the crap out of the toys. Before I can do any of that though, the batteries in the damn things die because it's been used for all of 10 minutes, and my children wail at me to "fix it Daddy, make it go" and I have to find that one TINY screwdriver that'll open the toy's battery compartment, wherein I find the dessicated remains of an ancient generic brand battery which is covered in more dust than an Egyptian Mummy and turns out to be twice as deadly as one of their curses. Mild chemical burns treated, I can attempt to replace the batteries only to discover the cheap ones that have just taken minutes off my life after I inhaled whatever that powdery crap is on them, have corroded the connections past the point of use. The toy is dead. My children are in pieces, clutching at my legs "why won't it go?! You said you'd fix it!! Ai no Senor!!". And another of the few hairs left clutching tenaciously to the top of my head, like a drunk holding onto his brown bag liquor, turns grey. But the inner pagan ritual guy is dancing a jig, probably naked if I'm honest.

Despite all this, we or in my case my wife, still buy our kids toys. My wife only buys toys secondhand so they're much cheaper but still in pretty good nick. I don't like the clutter we have in our house because of the toys. I don't like that the kids hardly use any of them (I do like that instead they choose to play games together or just sit and draw. I'm quite proud of that actually). I do like that they have the choice of using them, to feed their imaginations, to build stories around or just while away an hour or two in mindless fun. My kids need that, they deserve it and I'm grateful they have it. Play is a fundamental part of childhood, essential to children's development. Toys help. So I'm happy to keep feeding my wee black holes, because the results can be beautiful, even when I'm lying on the ground groaning after some cheap plastic geegaw has violently impacted my Johnson.