The family that I'm staying with here in England has a young boy, closing in on his fourth birthday. I've known him since he was just a couple months old, so it's safe to say we go way back. At some point during my current sojourn here, I made either a brilliant discovery or a fatal mistake, by conceptualizing and introducing a game which has come to be known in the household - and, to a certain extent, in the local community - as "Alligators."
Alligators is devilishly simple. One person - the alligator - chases the other person - the not-alligator - around the house, the garden, etc. until either the non-alligator decides they want to be the alligator, a scheduling conflict with a meal or bedtime occurs (for either party), or Fireman Sam comes on the telly.
One of the beauties about Alligators is that it allows for multiple variations. For example, there's "Alligator Hide and Seek" (in which the alligator hides, and then chases the not-alligator around the house as soon as they are discovered), "Alligator Dance Party" (needs no description), and "Alligators Resting Quietly on the Floor Taking 'Pretend' Naps." The permutations are almost as endless as the enthusiasm displayed by the young alligator for this particular game.
Alligators has now invaded every phase of household life. When someone is reluctant to eat their peas at dinner, the unsubstantiated - and yet unable to be readily disproven - fact that "Alligators love peas, it's what helps them stay green" is cited.¹ Running in a zig-zag is encouraged, so as to enable a not-alligator to more easily escape the swift-in-a-straight-line, but slow-to-turn alligator in pursuit.² An alligator t-shirt was even recently acquired for the young 'gator by his mother, which has only served to increase his fervor for the game.
The one downside to all this enthusiasm for a game that, I must admit, I take no small delight in playing myself, is that there's no "off" switch. It's hard for him to understand why I'm not available all hours, every day, to play Alligators. And sometimes it's hard for me to explain why while being both truthful and persuasive.
Y.A. (young alligator), upon hearing my footsteps coming down the stairs in the morning: "Patrick! Can you play Alligators!
O.A. (old alligator, aka me): "Um, sorry, I can't right now.
Y.A.: "Why?"
O.S.: "I've got some things I have to do before I can play Alligators this morning."³
Y.A: "Okay, maybe in five minutes you can play?"
To his credit, he's fairly understanding for a young boy not-yet-four. But sometimes, if I'm honest, I do walk softly down the stairs in the morning.
Sometimes my desire to postpone - or, to be blunt, outright avoid - a game of Alligators can lead to longer conversations than I'd like about my reasons for not being able to play. Uncomfortable conversations. The kind where you realize you don't have a great reason; that in fact checking your email or reading the news is actually not that important, but you still call it "doing work" to legitimatize it to yourself, even if the young alligator has no real concept about what "doing work" is or isn't; that in fact, playing Alligators might actually be more important and meaningful than watching that online re-run of that tv show you've already seen before anyways.⁴
And then you make the mistake of thinking about all of this while you're sitting with your cup of coffee, "doing work," and you realize that the young alligator isn't the only person you tend to shunt off with vapid excuses. That your tendencies towards self-centeredness in the usage of your time also shut out other people. That the tools you use to stay connected are in fact the very tools which disengage you from the world, and - this makes me shudder - from God.
Tools are never the problem. They can mask the real issues, or exacerbate them, but they're not the source. The real source can be found in the dark corners of my self.
Do I use the same excuses on the young alligator as I would if I was having a conversation with a peer? Of course not. I use much more sophisticated ones. Like the classic: "Sorry, I'd love to, but I'm just too busy right now." I use that one with God all the time; I'm sure he understands.
Yeesh.
Yeesh.
Look, I get that sometimes you have to say no. I can't spend every waking moment playing Alligators. Neither can I spend all day in focused, concentrated prayer.⁵ But if I'm careful to examine my time, how I use it and how I share it, what am I going to find?
A pretty selfish alligator, that's what.
Which is no fun for anyone.
¹With decidedly mixed results at being accepted: "But mommy, I don't want to turn green like an alligator; I'm a boy!"
²Apparently an alligator's top speed is around 10mph. So if you're slower than that, perhaps the zig-zag method is good for you. But I guarantee that if you're being chased by an alligator, you are running faster than 10mph.
³Translation: I need a cup of coffee before I feel human enough to be an alligator. Also, I'm probably going to check my email, facebook, and read the news while sipping said coffee.
⁴Why is it that I automatically feel more guilty about skipping out on a game of Alligators to watch a video that I do to spend time reading? Do I have some sort of self-justifying value system, biased by my love for reading and homeschooled upbringing, or is reading a more legitimate excuse - and use of my time - than watching a tv show? Deep questions to be asking before my first cup of coffee.
⁵I do think that the idea of always praying (1 Thess. 5:17, Luke 18:1, etc) is not something to lightly discard as an inherent impossibility - it's mentioned too often to reject offhand - but I do think that to be possible, it would require reorienting our concept of what prayer is and what it looks like.