Say what you will about Rob Ford—and
it's pretty much all been said already—but his recent admission to
smoking crack while in a drunken stupor has provided parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, godparents, teachers, family friends and
leaders of children everywhere with a wonderful opportunity.
We can finally have that awkward
discussion with our kids—and I don't mean teenagers, I mean kids.
Little kids. Let's get it out in the open, way before they're
hiding under the school bleachers and smoking it.
No, not weed, I mean rock.
Badrock. 24-7. Crumbs, cloud, candy, Devil drug, Electric Kool-Aid.
You know what I'm talking about.
Let's talk to our kids about crack.
With Rob Ford's apology all over the
news today—it was only once, when he was so shitfaced he can't
remember it and he'll never, ever do it again, honest, he
pinky-swears—children across Toronto were asking, “Mom, Dad?
What's crack cocaine?”
My kids asked, after we got home from
school just in time to watch Ford's afternoon press conference.
Of course I said, "Don't do crack. It's a ghetto drug.” I have been waiting and
waiting and waiting to say that to a child since I saw the
mockumentary Bob Roberts in 1994.
But my kids had a bunch of other
questions. The middle child asked if we should feel bad for Ford. The
5-year-old asked, “What does the government do?” My eldest asked
if I thought Ford's head was shaped more like a squash or a potato.
I hushed them because I wanted to hear our mayor's incredible statements. He tossed his
own accountability to the wind and said, “The past is the past. I can't change it," and, “God bless the people of Toronto.” (Translation:
“Whatever, okay?”)
By the end of the press conference, I
had at least one answer for my kids: “Mashed potatoes, honey. He
looks like a pile of mashed potatoes.”
