FLSA

If you're like me, the building blocks of your legal prowess may be limited to the scope of a 42 minute David E. Kelley television drama or a John Grisham novel.  However, I have recently come to understand that FLSA stands for the Fair Labor Standards Act, which is the framework of child labor laws in this country.  Thankfully, many precious appendages have been spared the blades, needles and cogwheels of the industrial age! (The laws did exclude labor involving agriculture, in which case, you could strap on the yoke and drive them out to pasture for "unlimited hours"-so long as they went to school.)

As I ponder the most notorious conspiracy theories, from the Kennedy assassination to landing on the moon, I recognize the plausible right-wing involvement in formulating the child labor laws.  I have seen my children "labor," and it is not a pretty thing.  It is not efficient, nor productive.  It is not quiet, effective, or safe.  It would not generate a product or a piece of something that could construct a product.  It is nonsensical and exhausting.  It is what a band of bush babies wielding dish soap and a leaf blower in laundry baskets full of styrofoam peanuts would create.  It is madness.

The child labor laws were undoubtedly rushed through Congress to protect all industries from the "labor" of children.


I do ask for the help of my children and try to hold them responsible for the carnage they produce in the wake of their play, and there is an unmistakable pattern to the process that thus ensues: 

Step 1:  Ignore the parent.   No eye contact is made and all movements of the body must continue in the exact perpetuation of motion.  Otherwise, any pause of the slightest nature would give away the fact that the vibrations from my mouth did, in fact, bang on their English-receptive eardrum.  They will be exuberant and unusually joyful at this time, and no altercations between siblings will occur, for they know that a mother will not break a cycle of peace, not willingly anyway, to introduce a cycle of  drama.

Step 2: Flop.  Eventually, the cracks in their facade will emerge and contentions develop.  The mother is impelled to re-direct to the original request.  And, in an act of defiance, they will literally flop their bodies onto the floor, against the wall, perhaps (if they were smart, into an upholstered piece).  Their arms will hang as if detached from the sockets and loosely bang ineffectively, with half-opened hands, against the arch of their torso, heads back, moaning like a cow giving birth.  (I really don't know what that sounds like, but I would bet money I'm close.)

Step 3: Re-engage play.  Yes, they will re-enter the scene of the crime and commit to more criminal activity.  The love affair with the toy that had previously been set aside in a moment of deficient attention has now become tantalizing.  A Lego spaceship begins to take form again, and in another corner a soliloquy has ensued as Princess Pinkie-Pink has been rescued by a bedazzled Stallion from an imposing two-inch Tyrannosaurus Rex.  Again,....a cycle of peace...

By now, beds must be occupied, or shoes put on (that is an entire post in and of itself) to go to a doctor or run to the school (again!) or pick up some cilantro (because pad thai just isn't the same without cilantro, and as much as I've tried to convince myself it's not worth an entire trip to the store, I really love cilantro even if nobody else does, and I'm also out of my Two-buck Chuck!)

Step 4:  The Blitz.  Threats are flying, time is running out, pressure is on....it's "Go Time."  The atmospheric pressure has changed and it's a blinding moment of centrifugal force blowing the primary colored shrapnel into the corners and crevices of the room, under the bed, into the closets..  You would think parents would monitor this counter-productive behavior, but we don't, not after the first kid.  We don't want to see it.  We're in denial.  We don't really want to acknowledge their lack of skill or desire to do well, no....scrap that...that they don't even have the desire for average, even sub-par.  We see that the floor has room to walk and the surfaces are cleared, somewhat....(there is still a pair of underwear strapped to a slingshot cradling the Lego spaceship), and we must press on, move forward...

Yes, in a day or two I will go back to separate the Polly Pockets from the Memory game, from the puzzle pieces, from the rock collection, from the paint brushes, from the Operation game body parts, from the silverware, (why do they always need my silverware?) from the matchbox cars, from the Highlights magazines, from the doll clothes...

And, that's okay, because I didn't pay them a dime.