Keep hands to yourself and other preschool wisdom

MY WIFE TAKES A washcloth and scrubs blue ink from the toddler’s knee. It’s the morning of the first day of preschool.

Lesson No. 1: Appearance counts.

“Let me get your face too,” she says.

She gave him a bath last night, but his face is dirty again. Most toddlers have a magnetic force in their face that attracts dirt. Plus, their saliva is super sticky. Toddlers can catch moths, gnats and other flying objects just by licking their lips a lot.

“Here, give me your chin,” she tells him.

Yep, it’s the first day of preschool and we’re pulling out all the stops for the little guy, who has already shown an interest in chemistry. The other day, I caught him chasing the cat around the house with a turkey baster, attempting to perform, I think, some sort of in-vitro procedure. For several weeks he’s been asking about a little brother, and apparently he’s found a surrogate: the little black cat with emerald eyes. “What a lovely mother you’ll make,” thought the toddler.

“Come here!” he screamed. “Me won’t hurt you!”

“What’s going on in there?” his mother asked.

“He’s just playing with the cat,” I lied.

Lesson No. 2: A little lie never really hurt a marriage.

Lately, I seem sort of half married. I blame it on all the demands the new school year brings, the organized chaos that passes for education in this country. Breakfasts are like fire drills. Dinners are like bullfights. It’s beginning to take a toll on our formerly idyllic marriage.

In fact, I’ve been waking up every morning and proposing to her all over again. By noon, she usually gives me an answer: “Not today,” or, “Yeah, I guess” are the two most frequent responses -- though last week I did get a very loud “Bite me, OK?” that I think the neighbors all heard. Still, our marriage is better than some.

Lesson No. 3: Focus on the kids.

So, like many couples, we immerse ourselves in the children. For instance, we’re a little worried that the toddler is falling behind the other toddlers in their quest to all get into Yale in the year 2021.

It’s like this: The little guy is solid in science and thoroughly understands the economics of the new globalism. But his trig is weak and he has mastered only two languages, English and Latin. Well, three if you want to include barking. Every time the beagle goes nuts at the postman, the little guy joins in.

“He needs to work on his colors,” my wife says.

“Don’t we all?” I say.

“And the other day he said ‘booby,’ ” she says, as if that’s my fault.

To speed up his progress, his mother applied to two of the finest preschools in our area, where they now choose prospective students by lottery. I mean, is that fair? I preferred the days when we used to get up at 3 in the morning to wait in line. Weeded out a lot of the riff-raff.

“Can’t we send the housekeeper?” I pleaded one year.

“We don’t have a housekeeper,” my wife said.

“Well, who cleans the ... never mind.”

Anyway, he got into the preschool of his mother’s choice, and today we’re piling the little guy into the minivan, with his new backpack and a separate lunch kit with pictures of Superman all over it. Frankly, I wouldn’t be caught dead carrying a lunch kit with Superman all over it.

“No hugging the other kids, OK?” his mother warns on the way to preschool.

“OK, Mommy,” he says.

We’ve had some issues with hugging lately. He’s an affectionate kid, but his hugs are often mistaken for GrecoRoman wrestling moves. Frequently, these hugs devolve into shoving matches. And what starts out as a gesture of friendship ends up being deemed inappropriate and aggressive behavior. Like when I kiss some of the pretty wives hello.

Lesson No. 4: Don’t kiss the pretty wives hello.

At the preschool, we find Gail and Debbie, two of the loveliest moms in a community teeming with former prom queens. As I often do, I throw my arms around them in a gesture of parental solidarity. This is misinterpreted by some people as being a little too flirty, or as my wife calls it, “pre-foreplay huggy stuff.” On the first day of preschool, I get scolded for it on the short ride home.

“No more of that pre-foreplay huggy stuff, OK?” she says.

“But ... “

“I said no hugging!” she says.

You know, it’s only the first day of preschool. But I’m already learning a lot.

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Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com or at myspace.com/chriserskine.