Counseling dad, age 5

As a young boy when things wouldn’t go my way I would threaten suicide. “Fine! I’ll just kill myself.”
This seemed to be effective in infuriating my mother, which is strange since I was five years old. We were in the kitchen in the upstairs duplex we rented on Tinker Bell St. I was upset because we had gone shopping for piñata party favors and was jealous of the prospective winners. There was a king Arthur book that I wanted, but I think at the time I had my eye on one of those neon-colored Koosh rubber balls with strings flying out at every possible angle.
“Don’t say that! That’s terrible. Why would you say that? It’s just a toy, stop being so ridiculous.” What confuses me is why she would even bother getting angry. I would just laugh at my kid if he threatened suicide. This of course is a judgment call based on age and I wouldn’t recommend it as a blanket strategy.
“No one cares! I’ll just kill myself.” Oh the ennui of a five year old, but how did I know about suicide? That was a lesson from my sterling example of a father. Dad alternated between a thin veneer of happy go lucky attitude and the pits of despair.
Generally a phrase such as “the pits of despair” is hyperbole, here it is not. David was capable of curling up into a ball and asking existential questions to anyone who would listen. The apartment was a one bedroom since mom was the only one who worked. My younger sister and I shared the bedroom, and my parents used half of the living-room as their bedroom, with a futon on the floor in the corner nearby the television and bookshelf. On hard days Dad would lie on the futon in the fetal position and ask me why life was worth living. This was a frequent enough occurrence that it didn’t trouble me to answer these questions thoughtfully and also that I was comfortable pretending that I would kill myself over a rubber toy. “Why should I even go on buddy?”
“Because things change. Tomorrow is going to be different.”
“Nothing changes for the better. Things just get worse.”
“You had one kid before and now you have two. That’s a good change.” Reminding him of his responsibilities was a misguided attempt in inciting some sort of lingering maturity but most likely reminded him of his feelings of hopelessness.
“You ever just want to curl up into a ball and die?”
“No. I don’t think about that. Sometimes I get really tired of waiting for a friend who is late.”
“But what if you knew that friend was never coming and that you were going to wait there forever?”
“I’m gonna go to school dad. Feel better.”
“You should stay home, we can play Rad Racer.”
“Thanks but I can’t miss more school.”