Introducing the Three Stooges Program for Raising Healthy Kids
By J.L. Asmundsson
In today’s starkly divided America, there’s little that we agree on except that kids these days are mollycoddled in unhealthy ways. Day after day they lie there, scrolling through Chinese propaganda on their devices while their shelves groan with participation trophies.
So what’s the solution? For the political right, it’s strict discipline and harsh punishment to try to deter inappropriate behavior. For the left, the answer is equally radical and untenable: Treat people decently and try to enjoy life.
But what if there were a way to bridge these incompatible world views? Good news, folks: The ‘Raising Kids the Three Stooges Way’ program is here to help. This new approach to child-rearing melds harsh corporal punishment with laugh-out-loud comedic gold to help foster crucial growth.
Consider this sad scenario: In a Park Slope living room, little Suzy stands in front of her music stand, sawing away at ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ on her Suzuki violin. Papa is in his arm chair sipping Earl Grey tea and reading The New York Review of Books when suddenly Suzy snags his toupee on the end of her violin bow. And then what? Papa recovers his rug and titters ineffectually. What lesson has Suzy learned? How can someone so smart have such a terrible hairpiece? Perhaps she can write about it in a small-moment writing exercise in math class at PS 321, but that’s the end of it.
This is where ‘Raising Kids the Three Stooges Way’ comes in.
What if, instead of an utterly forgettable moment for Suzy, her mother had seized the occasion to loudly shriek ‘Tarantula!’ upon walking into the room and catching sight of the toupee shimmying back and forth on the end of Suzy’s fiddle bow. Mom could swat at it with a broom, hooking the toupee with an elastic band that she had somehow swept up from the floor, so that it zoomed directly at her as if attacking. She could then frantically battle the toupee until she knocked it to the floor, drew a revolver from her apron pocket and shot it five times. That would be memorable! Oh, the stories on Nextdoor! ‘Did anyone hear gunshots?’ Um, er, trigger warning.
Where the Stooges program really comes to life, though, is in the broader, public arena of school. Before, parent-teacher conferences were a dull slog up three flights of institutional green stairs to check another sign-in sheet. There are still six names ahead of you. But now, curriculum day starts with Papa dipping his eyeglasses into a bowl of ink—don’t ask—and donning them thinking they are sunglasses. The ink prints what looks like a burglar’s mask onto his face. He notices odd looks when he goes to pick up the CSA. Then in another mixup, Papa grabs a canvas bag which contains two live skunks instead of his produce. What’s more, a worker at the farm stand has, during the long languid afternoons in the park, used a magic marker to draw a large ‘$’ onto that particular bag.
Papa marches into school with the squirming bag slung over his shoulder. Also, by the way, he’s wearing a French striped shirt that he is particularly proud of. Suzy, meanwhile, is up on stage in the auditorium with the school orchestra, playing a somewhat down-tempo rendition of the J.W. Pepper arrangement of ‘Yakety Sax’—the Benny Hill theme music.
‘Hey!’ exclaims Officer Sharon as a weirdo in Hamburglar costume strides past her desk. As Papa turns to see what’s happening, he awkwardly lands a foot on an electric scooter that someone has parked in the corridor. Stumbling, his free hand clutches the handlebars—specifically, the throttle. The scooter rapidly accelerates, carrying Papa through the open doors of the auditorium and down the aisle to crash into the stage. The bag of skunks flies up onto the riser and the animals nose out as members of the orchestra shriek and flee.
Papa is not badly hurt by the crash, though his toupee has flown through the air, landing on the end of Suzy’s bow, again. Suzy’s mom, in the front row of the audience, screams, but Papa has seen this movie before. Thinking that Mom might reach for her revolver, he swats at her hand. Her arm, however, swings in an arc from the elbow such that her fist clunks Papa on the top of his head, making a woodblock sound. Here’s the thing, though. With the bandstand otherwise cleared and the skunks clambering into the piano, little Suzy calmly stands, an island in the general panic.
Other parents may mortify their teenaged offspring by such acts as clearing a throat or speaking to someone, but little Suzy is now made of sterner stuff. Thanks to the ‘Raising Kids the Three Stooges Way’ program, she has been forever inoculated against normal embarrassment and shame. She carefully places her violin and bow on her seat, smacks her forehead and drags a hand down her face, first one and then the other in rapid succession. ‘Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!’ she says. ‘Woob, woob, woob, woob, woob.’
ABOUT THE ARTIST
J.L. Asmundsson is a writer who lives in Brooklyn.
Image generated on Magic Studio
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