Week 124.
Gilly and I were out for a bimble when we spied a sign that reminded us of the critical importance of small things.
Not children. Commas.
“Slow Children at Play” the sign warned. Of course, Elder Advice guessed the likely meaning. After all, in these heady days of participation trophies, no neighbourhood would care to acknowledge the local children are anything but the fastest and smartest around.
It has always been so. One of Elder Advice’s favourite German anecdotes is the old story of the boy who never uttered a single word. Then, one morning, when he was 6, he looked up from his breakfast plate and said, in perfect German - ''Der Toast ist verbrannt' -The toast is burnt'. The family was astonished: 'You can speak! That is wonderful! But why have you never spoken until now?' To which the boy replied: 'There was nothing wrong until now”. Even better is the true story of a neighbour of Elder Advice’s grandparents who, as she watched her hopelessly uncoordinated offspring try vainly to keep up with the rest of the regiment as they marched with teutonic precision through Berlin and off to World War I, was heard to say: “Sieh mal, alle außer meinem Willie sind außer Tritt” - “Look, everyone is out of step but my Willy!”
That said, for the past twenty years or so, social scientists have affirmed what parents think when they are at their most exasperated: children make you miserable. In 2004, Princeton University published a study which uncovered that parents considered the joy looking after their children on a par with doing the housework. Two 2012 meta-studies - that is, studies of studies - found that, in most of the research, self-reported “life satisfaction” (which is a primary measure of happiness) was somewhat lower when there was a child in the house. All of which may explain why Canada’s 2016 Census revealed that Canadian 65 years and older now outnumber children, aged 14 and under. And the gap is widening.
So perhaps the sign was notice to motorists of easy and distracted targets in the vicinity.
To be clear, Elder Advice likes most kids. While he is well past his child-bearing years, it is most adults he finds unbearable.
Anyway, as Elder Advice considered the missing comma and the many other perils of of absent punctuation, a piercing cry announced the nearby fall of one of the neighbourhood’s children and the minor knee injury that resulted. Of course, without the hovering parental presence, with its endless supply of commiseration and Kleenex, Elder Advice is certain no crying would have disturbed his thoughts.
Leaving the comma aside - and if readers learn nothing from Elder Advice this week, it is never to do that- those scattered thoughts turned to the ubiquitous tissue, and the news that Kleenex is leaving Canada.
Kleenex abruptly announced its intention to depart this week, ensuring there will no longer be a dry eye in the house - or in the country. Funerals and weddings now promise to be perpetually damp events - mascara and children with rhinorrhea running everywhere. As one of my favourite clients, a mortician who was kind enough to once describe Elder Advice as “looking open-casket good” observed yesterday : “It’s a crying shame”.
No one will shed a tear though, when they read the unintelligible corporate communication from Kimberly-Clark announcing the abandonment of the Canadian market -“Despite our best efforts, we have been faced with some unique complexities on the Kleenex business”. Whatever that might mean.
Perhaps the company’s retreat south of the 49th parallel relates to supply chain issues, the always reliable excuse for all failings these days. Well … the almost always reliable excuse. I recently suggested to Lisa that my repeated failure to complete the household chores was the result of an energy shortage caused by supply chain issues. A suggestion that went over as well as you might expect. On the other hand, it may be that the company has finally succumbed in the valiant yet vain struggle against genericization - the loss of trademark rights in the brand name because the stubborn and unreasonable public will not accept that the product is not a “Kleenex”, but a “Kleenex tissue”.
A nation full of unrestrained tears, drool and boogers is most assuredly not to Elder Advice’s liking. But he will be amused at the post-exit fury of retailers of Scotties brand tissues, when customers call them “Kleenex”.