Fredrik Backman - Things My Son Needs to Know about the World

Son,

This book is dedicated to your grandmother, because she taught me to love words.

And to you,

for all those other reasons.

To my son:

I want to apologize.

For everything Im going to do over the next eighteen or so years. For everything Ill miss. Everything I wont understand. All the notes about parent-teacher conferences you wont want to show me.

For all the times Ill embarrass you. All the camps and field trips Ill volunteer myself to. All the girlfriends or boyfriends youll never want to bring home for dinner.

For doing my mom-was-wrong-and-dad-was-right dance around other people.

For that time when your school invites all the parents to a softball tournament and I take it a bit too seriously. For calling your math teacher a frikkin flathead! For trying to high-five your friends.

For buying a minivan.

For wearing shorts.

For being late the first time youre invited to a real birthday party. For being pissed when there are lines for the rides at the amusement park. For calling the assistant in the skateboard shop man. For not understanding that you would rather do gymnastics than play soccer. For all the times I forget to lock the bathroom doorwhat is seen cant be unseen.

For the holidays. The cowboy hat. The REAL MEN WEIGH OVER 200 POUNDS T-shirt. The speech at your high school graduation party.

For all the times I get a bit drunk and start telling the joke about the two Irishmen in a boat again. I really, really want to apologize for all those things.

But when youre the most angry at me, I want you to try to remember that, to me, youll always be the tiny one-year-old boy standing naked in the hallway with a toothless grin and a cuddly lion clutched to your chest.

Whenever Im difficult. Whenever Im embarrassing. Unreasonable. Unfair. I want you to think back to that day.

That day when you refused to tell me where the hell youd hidden my damn car keys. And I want you to remember that it was you who started it.

Your Dad

S o. Im the one whos your dad. I know youve started to understand that now. Up until now, youve really just sailed through life and let the rest of us do all the hard work. But as far as Ive been told, youre now one and a half, and thats the age when you can start learning things. Tricks. That kind of stuff. Im very positive about that, let me tell you right now.

Because I want you to understand that this whole parenthood thing isnt as easy as it looks. Theres a hell of a lot to keep track of. Diaper bags. Car seats. Nursery rhymes. Extra socks. Poop. Above all, poop. Theres a lot of poop to keep track of. Its nothing personal. You can ask any parent with small children. That whole first year, jeez, your entire life revolves around poop.

The presence of poop. The absence of poop. The discovery of poop. The aromatic sensation of poop. The waiting for poop. Seriously, I cant express how much of your life will be spent waiting for poop once you have children.

Shall we go? Okay! Has it happened yet? Huh? What did you say? It hasnt? Damn it. Okayokayokay. Stay calm, no need to panic. What time is it? Should we wait for it? Or do we go now and hope we make it there before it? Lets risk it! Okay! Not okay? What if it happens on the way? Youre right. Okay. Quiet, so I can think! Okay, but what if we wait here and then nothing happens, then what do we do? Risk it and go anyway? And then if it happens on the way and were like, God. Damn. Sonofa BIKE! If wed just left straightaway instead of arguing about it, we wouldve made it there before the poop!!!

You get it? Thats what its like all the time once youve reproduced. Your entire life revolves around the logistics of poop. You start having discussions about it with strangers, all matter-of-factly. The consistency, the color, the departure schedule. Poop on your fingers. Poop on your clothes. Poop that gets stuck in the cracks between the tiles on the bathroom floor. You start talking about the metaphysical experience of poop. Breaking it down to the academic level. When those Swiss physicists appeared in the media a couple of years ago talking about their groundbreaking research and the discovery of a previously unknown particle that could travel faster than the speed of light, and the entire world was wondering what this new particle might consist of, all parents with small children looked at one another in unison and just said: Poop. I bet anything its poop.

And the worst thing isnt even the poop itself. The worst is the moments of not knowing. When you see those small twitches on your babys face and say, Was that? It looked like she but maybe she was making a grimace? Maybe she just farted? Oh God, we have three more hours to go of this airplane ride, please tell me it was just a fart! And then you have to wait those five seconds. Theyre the longest five seconds in the history of the universe, I can guarantee you that. There are ten thousand eternities and a life-affirming French drama between each of them. And then, finally, as though it were one of those scenes in The Matrix where time itself slows down, the scent reaches your nostrils. And its like being hit in the face with a sack of wet concrete. The walk to the airplane bathroom after that, its like when the warring slaves marched out to battle the lions in the Colosseum. I swear, when you come back out afterward you feel like those warriors must have felt when they returned to Rome after beating the barbarians, but on the way in you are known by only one name: Gladiator.

When youre older, Ill tell you about the very first poop. The ancient, eternal, original poop. The one all babies poop at some point during the twenty-four hours after birth. Its completely black. Like evil itself had pooped. No joke.

Changing that diaper was my Vietnam.

And sure, you might be wondering why Im bringing this up now. But I just want you to know how everything in life hangs together. Poop is part of the world, you see. And right now, when issues around the environment and sustainable development are so important, you need to understand the part that poop plays in the grand scheme of things. The importance poop has had for modern technology.

Because, you know, the world hasnt always been like this. There was a time before everything was electronics and computers. Can you believe that when I was young, if you watched a film and couldnt remember an actors name, there was no way for you to find out! You had to wait until the next day and then go to the library to look it up. I know. Sick. Or you would have to call a friend to ask, but then get your head around this: if you did that, you might have to hang up after ten rings and say, Nah, hes not home. Not h-o-m-e, can you imagine that?

It was a different time. But then all this technology came along. The Internet and mobile phones and touch screens and all that crap, and it just put a huge amount of pressure on my generation when we became parents, you know? Every other generation of parents could just say they didnt know. Thats what our parents do. Drank wine while you were breast-feeding? Didnt know. Let us eat cinnamon buns for breakfast? Didnt know. Put us in the back seat without a seat belt? Took just a little bit of LSD while you were pregnant? Please, we didnt