Book Review: Death by Children
Death by Children. Bull Garlington. Everything Goes Media, Chicago, October 2013, Trade paperback and e-book, 169 pages.
Reviewed by Ed Marohn.
“There were times I wasn’t sure my son belonged to me. I worried perhaps there’d been a mix up in maternity, like maybe one of the nurses held my actual son in her arms, his cherubic mug illuminating the entire ward, then looked at me and thought, ‘This can’t be right. Give him the trucker baby!’”
The quote from Death by Children highlights author Bull Garlington’s humorous bent about his children, and he carries that humor throughout his compiled series of essays. Those who have had children and then shooed them off into the world, or who still have children at home, will find solace in these writings.
Garlington’s book is funny and descriptive of parents and their kids interacting in a modern family of a stay-at-home dad and a working mom pursuing her legal career. The reader will be entertained while reading many of the crisp stories, and it is a book easily read in one sitting. It’s also a book to enjoy and relish by reading one essay a day as a funny anecdote to help unwind from a hectic day at work—a daily dose of humor if you will. After all, who hasn’t struggled in a conversation with a teenager, asking, “What did you do at school today?” and often getting the standard flat answer of, “Nothing.” Even dumb parents know that something had to occur at school. Really!
The book doesn’t stop with revelations about the author’s son and daughter. It goes beyond to the pets. Read this to whet your appetite: “I love our dog. I love the fact that he’s mildly retarded, that he thinks every command means beg, that he has an uncanny, nearly supernatural ability to sock me in the balls every time he jumps up into my lap, and that eats watermelon and popsicles. He is unbearably cute and truly remarkable and I’m going to miss him—but he has to go.”
Thus, the author uses his sarcasm to educate others who may not know kids and pets and, as you finish reading the book, you begin to understand why his book’s subtitle exists: “I had kids so that you don’t have to.” He is on a comical crusade to warn others about kids and pets while at the same time trying to rationalize his parenting. Let’s face it, we do not become parents through formal education on parenthood but through trial and error and hopefully from sound advice from others such as our own parents—that is, if they were good teachers. It is no wonder that when our children reach the teenage years they become formidable in countering our attempts to parent at every step of the way. This books serves to enlighten us about life, to show it isn’t perfect out there. Maybe we should chuckle about it.
The author is a syndicated humor columnist whose works appear in Chicago Parent and NY Parenting. He co-authored the popular foodie compendium, The Beat Cop’s Guide to Chicago Eats (Lake Claremont Press). Garlington won a Gold Award for best humor article from the Parenting Media Association in 2014. Check out his Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/christopher.garlington.