How to Talk to Your Child About Fellow South African Elon Musk

In this day and age, it can be hard to keep your child from being exposed to Elon Musk. Although you may do your best on the home front, they may inevitably stumble across a profile piece or news item on TV at a friend’s house or the computer at the school library. For that reason, it’s better to be prepared for your child’s eventual exposure to Elon Musk and to know how to respond to the questions you may be asked.

If your child asks why you’re not a billionaire like Elon Musk.

Tell your child that Elon Musk is highly unusual, as exemplified by his strange name.

Tell your child that if your parents had named you Zambor Dweemoflux you might very well have become a billionaire too, but the fact of the matter is you’re stuck with Jim or Linda or Steve and a normal surname.

This is a good opportunity to inform them that life isn’t always “fair” and not everyone gets a circus name like Elon Musk or Sepp Blatter that simply lends itself to being crazy wealthy.

If your child asks why Elon Musk seemingly generates amazing ideas on routine trips to the bathroom.

Tell your child that before he/she was born you too had a groundbreaking idea for a rainbow-powered washing machine. Let them know you were on the verge of getting a patent and becoming fabulously wealthy but then they happened.

Tell them you selflessly let your dreams die so that you could focus on being a “hands on” parent because Harry Chapin’s Cat’s In The Cradle really freaked you out.

If your child asks why you’ve still failed to build a toolshed in the backyard while Elon Musk creates multiple corporations with the snap of his fingers.

Make sure your child understands that Elon Musk is an abomination created in human form – the love child of two ender-demons, Gorshak and Melkanor from the seventh circle of Hell. Tell him/her that Elon was born specifically to make everyone else in the world look like serial underachievers and feel bad about themselves.

Tell your child that you are “The Chosen One” and that in order to prevent Elon Musk from his nefarious goal of spreading global unhappiness and dissatisfaction with everyone else’s relatively pathetic accomplishments they must never again acknowledge the demon-spawn’s profane victories.

If that doesn’t work, take away your child’s iPad until they stop bringing his name up.

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This article first appeared on www.banterist.com (a New York blog with original humour writing and commentary by Brian Sack), and is republished her with Brian Sack’s kind permission.

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