Easygoing, No. Big Easy, Oh Yeah

A few weeks ago, after Dixie had, for the second time in two days, relieved herself on the expensive new bathmats and Tallulah had sobbed herself to sleep because Dixie had been allowed, inexcusably, to touch her American Girl doll, my wife sent me an e-mail. We're in the market for a new nanny -- the old one is going back to school -- and her e-mail was the copy she'd written for our advertisement. She wanted me to look it over to make sure the job sounded sufficiently appealing.

I began to read of the many pleasures we might offer anyone so wise as to enter our service -- a charming place to live in Berkeley, fair wages, exotic travel, two lovely little girls, etc. But at the very end of the thing, she briefly tried to describe us. "We are a young and easygoing family," she had written, and left it at that.

Normally I have a policy of not getting in my wife's way. She is more energetic and competent and responsible than I ever will be. I have also found that the moment I interfere I have work on my hands. To question her ad copy was to run the risk of being assigned to rewrite it.

But this time I couldn't restrain myself -- it was the word "easygoing" that left me uneasy. Any Martian who observed our family would note: Every meal is a war to insert nutrition into the body of a 2-year-old bent on starving to death. Every family conversation is a lesson in the art of interruption. Every bedtime is less the inevitable conclusion to a day than an excuse to argue about the meaning of "bedtime" -- and the wisdom of howling for 20 minutes after it has commenced.

This ad of ours was a bold lie. The only moments during a week when we might be mistaken for "easygoing" are the rare few when all four of us happen to be asleep.

I thought about adjectives that might fairly describe us. Playful and slightly unhinged? Undersexed and overtired? Finally, I gave up, and e-mailed my wife back. "Is it really accurate to describe ourselves as 'easygoing'?" I asked.

Moments later came the reply: "I already changed it," she wrote. "And, by the way, we're not young either."

What she meant is that I am not young. (One of my wife's favorite tricks is to catch me out whenever I dare to describe myself as young.)

I review the new version of the nanny ad. Everything in it is as before except that now we are "an active and energetic family."