Little Victory No.42: Smackdown at the Punchbowl

Is it wrong of me to enjoy telling a kid I don’t like that she can’t do something? The way I see it, this is a kid who isn’t used to being told no, and I am more than happy to remind her what it sounds like. On second thought, that’s not entirely true, because she gets in trouble a fair amount. But denying her something she wants, even if it makes me look petty, is a small but satisfying morsel.

I do not have it out for this kid. She, however, has it out for my kid. AH (her actual initials, not just a slur) has been bullying my youngest daughter, S, for a year and a half now. They attend a Montessori school, so they will be in class together for another year and half, although the constant physical and verbal abuse my child endures makes me question my decision to keep her there. In public school, they have a slew of programs designed to identify and deal with bullying. They probably even have a mascot with a Scottish name or something. At S’s private school, I have the privilege of paying thousands of dollars a year for them to turn a blind eye.

Last year, AH was very physical. She would push S, shove her, knock her out of chairs, and even once smacked her upside the head with a lunchbox. Granted, it wasn’t a metal one like we used to have, but even those soft sided PVC-free bags can pack a wallop. And don’t forget about the ice pack. It makes a Hello Kitty lunch box the school yard equivalent of a tube sock filled with oranges.

AH has since started ADHD medication, which lessens her physical assaults. Unfortunately, AH is now more focused and better able to articulate her contempt for S, with a much greater verbal ability. She needles her daily, putting down virtually everything she can think of to get a rise out of my child. She doesn’t just call her stupid, she tells S that the teacher is wrong to think S is smart. She tells S that no one wants to be her friend because she is a liar and a tattletale. She forbids S from joining in games (much like the ostracized Rudolph) and attempts to sway other children in shunning her.

My daughter generally keeps her frustration inside, going about her day, doing her work and being kind to the other children in her class. But when she gets in my car at the end of the school day, she decompensates and gives me a detailed grievance report. She shares not only her conflicts, but the ones her friends experienced as well, and believe me, it is a never-ending list.

The situation with AH even has me questioning my style of parenting. I am an attentive, mostly patient mother to my children, and they know they can tell me anything, even if they have done something wrong. I have taught them to try to resolve their own conflicts, but never physically, and also to learn how to ignore people who persist in their hateful behavior. Overall, we try to include everyone, to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I am not preparing them for the real world, which is more likely filled with people like AH instead of people like S. If this were 1952, and S were a boy, I would have told her to deck AH, to pop her in the kisser. But that isn't an option in today's world, where even taking a plastic knife to school gets you a year in juvie.

AH is a lost cause. Whatever her reasons, she has a mission to destroy S’s self esteem. I’ve talked about it with her teachers and the school director, but always, it is a case of an unwitnessed occurrence, over before the teacher had an opportunity to see it or intervene. I’ve pointed out that each individual event is not my concern. Rather, it is the chronic nature of these incidents, the overall pattern, with which I have a problem. But AH’s mother also pays thousands of dollars a year, and the school collects it and tells the kids to try to get along.

I feel powerless to change this situation, but when a rare passive-aggressive opportunity for retaliation arises, I pounce on it, all ninja cat.

Last week was the class play/holiday party. The teacher chose the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, a Grimm Brothers feel-good story that fictionalizes the disappearance of children in a small German village, the kind of story that puts even the Scrooges among us in a holiday mood.
As the unofficial class mom, I was in charge of the holiday party, making sure there was enough food for the class and family members who came to watch the performance. With the help of a few other moms, I set up the food trays before the show, then joined my husband and watched the production, trying to refrain from laughing unless appropriate to the scene. Afterwards, it was time to enjoy the goodies and fellowship (my daughter actually said that once after a similar play/holiday party combo.) I rushed ahead of the other parents, not to raid the food, but to uncover all the trays and mix up the punch.

I poured cans of pineapple-mango juice with two liter bottles of Sprite and chunks of ice—Voila! Punch!—and filled cups with the concoction when AH sidled up to the table.

“What are you making?” she asked me.
“Punch,” I answered.
“Can I just have a cup of Sprite?” she asked.
“No,” I told her. “The Sprite is for the punch. If I gave everyone Sprite, there wouldn’t be enough for the punch.” In your face, AH!

She skulked away, carrying her plate of cookies. About fifteen minutes later, she tried again, this time with her big headed little sister.
“Can we have some Sprite?” AH asked.
“The answer is still no. Sorry,” I replied sweetly.

That will show her not to be mean to my kid! Okay, it might not be the most mature thing I could do, but so what? Drink Sprite on your own dime, brat. This here is some motherfucking punch. If you don’t like it, go slurp out of that germy lukewarm water fountain. And no, you can’t have an empty cup. The cups, like the Sprite, are for punch.

I didn’t tell S what I had done, because she is way nicer than I am, but I don’t want her to know that yet. I’d like to think it would make her smile, though. She hates Sprite as much as she hates AH. She would also be happy to know that in one small way, I stood up for her. We have to advocate for our children, if only by one denied cup of Sprite. Maybe next year I will limit AH’s cookie consumption too. That’ll show her!

Fly the Friendly Skies

I’m scared to fly, and I don’t understand why everyone isn’t. I have a variety of reasons, most of which are irrational. The basic reason is I don’t understand how a giant heavy metal tube filled with people can stay in the air. I am sure there is a simple explanation, involving the laws of nature and basic engineering principles, but it’s probably too complicated for my pea brain to grasp.

It’s more than just the feasibility of the big metal bird. It’s the canned air, filled with H1N1 virus and whiffs of Legionnaire’s disease. It’s the noise on takeoff, the hum mid flight, and the racket upon landing. It’s all that bumpy, the invisible bumps like potholes in the sky, that make me thinks one more jolt like that and we will fall out of the sky.

The parts of flying that I’m not scared of I just don’t like. The unregulated temperature of the recirculated air, always too hot or too cold. The existence of the barf bag tucked into the seat back, and the knowledge that other people considered using it, or, at the very least, have touched it. The shifting of the contents of the overhead bin. The way the air smells like microwaved chicken, even though they stopped serving meals in 2003. The cramped seats and the cramped aisles and the cramped bathrooms.

And while we are on the subject of airplane bathrooms, what is up with the airplane bathroom? It’s like a port-a-potty in the sky, only not that nice. The only thing missing is feces smeared all over the textured walls. I always wondered about the receptacle for used razor blades. Are that many people shaving with disposable razor blades while flying, or are they more likely contemplating slitting their wrists? I am so scared of someone opening the door while in that tiny water closet, even though it says occupied. I am going to be sitting there, in the middle of a big pee, when the accordion door folds in on me, my jeans at my ankles, bracing myself against the wall in case we hit turbulence and my own pee flies up and hits my ass. How mortifying would that be? Have you ever tried to change a diaper on that rickety little shelf? I’d be scared my baby would be sucked into that metal toilet vacuum hole. Now, seriously, why would anyone want to join the mile high club in there? And what if one day, while sleeping in my bed, a frozen blue chunk of airplane waste crashes through my roof and kills me? What an undignified way to go.

I haven’t even gotten to the parts I don’t like about the airport, but let’s save that for another day, shall we?

Other than writing about it now, however, I don’t’ really talk much about my issues with flying because I don’t want to influence my daughter E’s issues with flying. E has flown several times before, but like me, the older she gets, the more the idea of flying just freaks her out. So when we planned two months ago to fly to Orlando instead of driving for a Thanksgiving trip to Disney World (why spend the holidays with family when you could actually have a good time?), E decided she didn’t want to go at all. Not because she doesn’t like Disney; she loves it. No, she didn’t want to fly there. My husband and I explained to her the advantage of a one hour flight versus a nine hour car trip, but it didn’t matter. She didn’t want to go, and she cried a lot to show us how much she didn’t want to go, and then she had trouble sleeping for two weeks to further illustrate how much she didn’t want to go. I decided we would make a visit to the pediatrician for a little something to help make the proposed vacation a reality.

Our pediatrician, Dr. L, asked the reason for our visit. I explained to him that we needed some medication so that E could fly to Orlando with the rest of the family. He paused and said, “In all the time that I have been a doctor, no one has ever asked me for that.” “Well,” I answered, “if you have any suggestions on how to get her on the plane, I’m all ears. If not, we’ll be needing that prescription.”

We discussed how other children are also scared to fly but don’t need medicine. We discussed how E had already taken Valium for minor oral surgery, and how I had to kick her down the aisle the last time we flew. Then he wrote out a prescription for anti-anxiety medication. Four Valium. Perfect! Two for her and two for me.

The day of our trip, E and I both got nervous. It didn’t help matters much that our flight left after lunch, so that we had the entire morning to sit around and panic. I occupied myself with last minute obsessive packing of unnecessary things. E opted for a whole lotta Spongebob. When we finally drove to the airport, I could tell E was getting all worked up. Her face was red, her eyes were big, and she kept putting her hand on her chest as if she were going to say the Pledge of Allegiance.

We checked in at the ticket counter, went through security, bought non-terrorist bottled water, and each popped only half of a pill, because I got some bright idea that we really would be fine once we boarded and sat in our seats. Was I wrong!

After we settled in our seats, E’s red face and big eyes gave way to tears and shallow breathing. We asked the kind looking elderly lady in the window seat if we could keep the blinds closed, and she huffed but did as we asked. I spent the next hour playing motivational coach, talking my daughter through each noise and jostle of the plane. It’s a lot easier to keep your mind off how scared you are to fly when you are trying to convince someone else to not be scared to fly.

I learned some important things that flight, things I’ll need to remember for a long time. I learned that my daughter thought we had to know where the emergency exits are so we can jump out of the plane mid-air. I learned that flying is not so bad, although I’m sure I’ll be just as scared the next time I do it. I learned that just because an older lady looks like a grandmother, it doesn’t mean she will be nice too. But most importantly, I learned I should just take the whole Valium.

The 3-H Club

When was the last time you heard the word hobo? I hear it with surprising frequency, as my daughters think a hobo is any person down on his luck. I have tried to explain to them that the life of a hobo is more than just a downward turn. It is a hardscrabble life, men with an ever present five o’clock shadow, bandana knapsacks tied to a stick over one shoulder, riding the rails from one town to the next, eating beans out of a can heated over an open flame. The hobos sit on stumps and overturned pails, the light from the fire illuminating their rough features as they share their stories of like on the tracks. I have even showed them pictures of Boxcar Willie, that hobo’s hobo.

Well, the railroad connection is lost on my children. We have the same issue for hillbilly; the “hill” part has no meaning for them. The focus instead on the silly way it sounds. To my girls, hillbilly is a stupid word used for stupid people, and while it makes them dance around and stick their teeth out, it does not make them think of the Hatfields, the McCoys, or even any part of Kentucky.

But why the analysis of the misuse of hobo and hillbilly? A few weekends ago was the twentieth anniversary of United Ministries’ Walk for the Homeless. The three mile charity walk is a well attended event which raises oodles of money for different programs in the upstate of South Carolina, all geared to help the homeless both with their immediate needs and they long term goals. The event is so successful because of the support of area churches and religious groups which form large teams of walkers with a great fundraising capacity.

We learned of the walk not by the social action committee of our temples, since, shame on us, we don’t have one, but from my friend, MJ, and her daughter, AJ. MJ lives to serve her fellow man. She not only publishes a senior resource guide, she also volunteers in capacities not seen in the under 40 crowd. When she’s not supporting some cause or another, she is fostering that spirit of goodwill in her daughter.

The night before the walk, AJ slept over with my daughter, E. She came in and flopped on the couch, and the two of them began to play an imaginary game which revolved around the walk the next day. I sat behind them and acted as if I were engrossed in a computer game. I kept my mouth shut so they would forget I was in the room.

One of them pretended to be a reporter interviewing the other one who pretended to be a homeless person. If I heard correctly, the game was called “Interview with a Hobo.” Here are some sample questions and answers:

AJ (as interviewer): What is your favorite food to eat?
E (as hobo/homeless person): I like spaghetti and meatballs and sushi a lot.
AJ: And where do you live?
E: Under the bridge, near the highway.
AJ: Do you have a cardboard box?
E: I have two. They’re very roomy.
AJ: What do you do for fun?
E: I look for places to live. And I walk a lot.

I am pretty sure AJ asked things about pets and favorite colors, which I thought was sweet. I bet homeless people don’t get asked about their pets and favorite colors very often.

They switched roles at one point, and E asked AJ similar questions. What struck me was how little either of them understood what it meant to be homeless. We live in a house with more toilets than family members. AJ’s parents are divorced, so she has not one but two houses to call home. To the two of them, being homeless meant nothing, in the same way that hobos are unlucky slobs and hillbillies are goofy.

I, however, do know what it means to be homeless. When I was a senior in college, my mother remarried and moved from my hometown in Florida to a big city in the Midwest. I no longer had a home to go to, and the bulk of my belongings from my childhood bedroom fit inside two white office storage boxes. One month after my mom moved, my roommates moved out of our shared college apartment with no warning or concern for our rental agreement. I handed their parent’s information over to my landlord in exchange for the termination of the lease and my share of the security deposit. Which meant I was free, but also that I had nowhere to go. I lived off campus at the time, and it never occurred to me to seek aid from the housing office, especially since I had less than three months until graduation.

I stayed on my boyfriend’s couch for a few nights and asked everyone I know if anyone needed a roommate, but mid-semester is not a good time to hastily change living arrangements. Lucky for me, my boyfriend’s uncle had a vacant apartment downstairs from his dental office, more like a basement with a sitting area, a closet sized bathroom, and a kitchenette than an actual apartment. He agreed to let me live there until graduation for the same amount of rent I had paid for my share of the apartment, which was $143 a month and all I could afford at the tail end of the school year.

As appreciative as I was for his generosity, I hated living there. His office building was located on a highway across from a small state park which was known more for its illicit activities than its natural beauty. One window had a bullet hole through it, and the unused kitchenette had become home to more than a few large roaches and their many tiny offspring.

The main storage room became my bedroom, with my second hand twin bed scooted against one wall while the rest of the large dark room was overrun with a collection of antique furniture and cardboard boxes. I never unpacked my clothes, since I didn’t have a dresser, but kept them in the boxes I had clustered around my bed. I would close the door to sleep because the bullet hole in the window freaked me out, but the darkness of the room with the door closed would freak me out worse. I didn’t sleep until after graduation.

I didn’t share my story with AJ or my daughter. Instead, I tried to point out that being homeless for most people is not a choice. While they may have made other poor choices that led to their current lack of living arrangements, they certainly didn’t think having no home is a lifestyle. I emphasized the need for us to be sensitive to other people’s misfortune and life circumstances, and also to appreciate what we have.

The next day, we walked for, and occasionally, with, the homeless. It was a cold, blustery afternoon despite the bright sunshine, and if it weren’t for the massive crowd surrounding us and leading the way, I would not have known where the hell I was, even though I’ve lived in their town for twelve years. The walk route followed the path that the homeless walk to find services, and along the way, the girls, acting as tour guides, would point out service locations as landmarks. We stopped at water stations along the route, and made conversation with friends we saw while walking. After we completed the three mile loop, MJ drove us to another sketchy part of town to get Blizzards from the Dairy Queen. And after that, we returned to our cozy, well appointed homes.

I don’t know if AJ and E had a better understanding of what being homeless means, or at least, the difference between a hobo, a hillbilly, and a homeless person. But I do know that even the free t-shirt made E a little sad, and with that sadness came a lesson that stuck somewhere in that spongy absorbent brain of hers. Raising the awareness of one child is still raising awareness, even if the benefit won’t be appreciated for years to come.

Redirected Road Rage

An open letter to the people in front of and behind me on the drive home last night from my meeting:

Dear Sir/Madam:

Welcome to the road. You are sharing it with other people, so there are some basic rules of etiquette you need to remember.

To the person in front of me, your car has automatic transmission, which means you may use the same foot for the gas and the brake pedals. This is not 1953, and your Buick does not have a clutch. So please, do us all a favor and take your foot off the brake. I understand that the road is dark, and foxes and raccoons can appear out of nowhere, but destroying your brake pads isn’t the way to anticipate them. I was mesmerized by your three glowing red brake lights, and kept wondering when I was supposed to know the difference between you being overly cautious and when you actually planned to stop. Were you unsure of where you were going? Were you looking for a side road? If so, I would recommend, in the future, the purchase and usage of a GPS system. I did find out, however, that it was neither. You therefore must not know where to put your left foot. I know where to put mine; let me tell you. There is a little foot rest on the left hand side of your floor board. Put your foot there. Free up your brake pedal for more important things, like braking.

To the person behind me, I understand it was a dark road. After all, it was after nine o’clock in December. One can expect the night time sky to be a little dark under such conditions. And yes, this particular road does not have street lights. So I can see why you might have been tempted to use your bright lights the entire trip down the road. After all, foxes and raccoons can appear out of nowhere, but blinding the person in front of you, in this case, me, is not the way to go. I hate to be the one to tell you, but you are not the only one on the road. Even though you are visually impaired, I can see you just fine. Too fine, in fact. I felt like I was reliving a scene from “Mississippi Burning” or “Silkwood.” I didn’t know if you were going to run me off the road or pull me over and shoot me in the head. Lucky for me, it was neither. Your bright lights are most likely operated by a stem on one side of your steering wheel. If you are unsure where, take a moment to review your user manual before you leave your driveway. That way, you won't make the mistake of driving for miles blinding both the oncoming traffic and those unfortunate souls going in your direction.

The next time you are tooling down the road, take a minute to look at your dashboard. Is there a blue light indicating your high beams are on? Look down a second, and check the position of your left foot. Is it hovering over the brake pedal? If the answer is yes, then let someone else drive. You need some additional training in the operation of your motor vehicle. You are not road ready. And if the rest of us can’t see because we are being blinded from behind, or tell what the hell is going on while you ride your brakes, then how are we going to be able to tell when the foxes and raccoons appear out of nowhere?

Sincerely,

Everyone else on the road

Confessions of A Cat Person

I have come to the realization that I am not much of a dog person. It’s not that I don’t like dogs, exactly. I like them just fine. I like to look at cute dogs, and to pat their heads, and to throw toys for them, or perhaps to watch them enjoy their toys all by themselves. But beyond that, I really have no use for them.

Picking up small dogs is awkward because of the possibility of accidentally touching canine genitalia. The big ones don’t have that same risk, but instead you just have to look at their junk. Jesus, put on some pants, would you? Think of the children. And when you aren’t looking at their stuff, they are nose deep in yours, sniffing. I don’t really want anyone sniffing my goods, thank you very much. I haven’t even gotten to the other things that make dogs a deal breaker, like picking up poop, waiting for them to poop, hoping they don’t eat some other dog’s poop. Dogs are too natural for me, with all that genitalia and poop. And don’t even get me started on the way they smell.

I know dog people will say that you have to have a dog to truly learn to love a dog. I grew up with a dog, so I have had some experience. His name was Gus, G-d rest his soul, and he was the kind of dog that everyone else in the neighborhood hated. My mother didn’t believe in responsible pet ownership, so she would just open the front door and let Gus roam free. He used this opportunity to knock over garbage cans like trash day was an all-you-can-eat buffet. He would stand in the middle of the road, staring down oncoming traffic. He pooped wherever he wanted to, and when feeling randy, would screw anyone or anything, the neighbor’s dogs, my mother’s dates. He was a humping machine. Once he even pinned down our male cat, who was even more confused than we were.

I could go on and on about Gus, but that’s for another day. After he passed away, my exposure to dogs was spotty until I started dating my husband in college. He had an English sheepdog with a skin condition and a stupid poodle named Cookie that his mother had driven crazy. Cookie’s diet consisted of Vienna sausages and Mighty Dog, essentially the same thing in a different shape, with the occasional pimento cheese covered Wheat Thin for color. She was fond of pissing on the den carpet, masturbating with a slipper, and going through my bag and removing articles that did not belong to her. Her acts of sabotage started small, like dragging out my toothbrush and chomping on it like a teething biscuit. Another time she raided my bag and extracted an expensive makeup brush. She upped her game when she went through my dirty laundry and dragged my black lace panties unto the middle of the den for my mother in law to discover.

The worst was the time we returned to my in law’s house after a dinner out to find Cookie chewing happily on something on the den floor (Cookie really liked the den). My mother-in-law moved in for a closer inspection, then hurriedly grabbed a Kleenex, picked up the offending item, and tossed it in the closest trash can. It turned out that Cookie had been rooting around in the bathroom trash can earlier that evening and had produced a used tampon that I thought had been wrapped and buried well, a used tampon that surely would have clogged an already feisty and temperamental downstairs toilet. I hated that freaking dog, probably as much as my mother in law hated me for menstruating at her house.

My friend MJ, on the other hand, loves dogs. She has a rescue Papillion that lives with her and a rescue Borzoi that lives with her ex-husband, since he kept the house and the accompanying large fenced –in yard. He doesn’t seem to mind, since her Borzoi keeps his rescued greyhound company. These folks are their own no-kill animal shelter.

Her Papillion, when not pooping on the floor and shaking nervously, is also a fan of the search and rescue mission. MJ just returned from a trip last week, and before she had a chance to unpack, her little dog liberated all her dirty panties. Being the thoughtful and intelligent creature that he is, he not only inventoried them, he even washed them thoroughly by hand, er, tongue. He lovingly and painstakingly went over every bit of fabric, making sure that the entire pantie was inspected and licked clean before discarding it and moving on to the next, ready to be put back in the drawer for another day. Think about that the next time someone's dog greets you by licking your mouth.

My cats are far from perfect. Sure, they knock glasses over and claw my furniture and chew on the girls’ toys and wake me up every night and scratch my hardwood floor tearing through the house after one another, but they are not interested in my genitalia at all, nor I in theirs, which is the way I like it. I would rather find that they left me a dead mouse, which means they are doing their jobs, then a used tampon, which means they are just nosy. And if I want to pick up their poop, I know exactly where it is. I don’t have to go looking for it. They might act like they don’t know their own names, but I do, so it’s a win-win. What they lack in loyalty they make up for in good-natured aloofness. I don’t have to walk them or bathe them or entertain them. They don’t require day care or sweaters or chew toys. I can leave them at home alone, and know that the furniture and my shoes will still exist when I return. And never once has either of them tried to fuck anything. They may not slobber all over me with wet kisses, but then again, they don’t slobber all over me with wet kisses.

So yes, I can see the alleged charm of a dog. By looking over the neighbor’s fence. Where, I am sure, there is a whole minefield of poop waiting for a child’s sneaker to discover.

Tie One On

I never thought that taking a walk on a Sunday morning would involve dressing a teenage boy. Fresh air, maybe, some nice conversation with my walking buddy, some semblance of physical activity, although, let’s face it, we are not walking at any kind of clip that results in sweat. But teenage boys? I don’t even have one of those.

BD and I took our normal walk this past Sunday, after I dropped my daughters off at Sunday school. The air was warmer than it should have been on a November morning, and the acrid stench of burning leaves hung heavy in the air, respiratory issues be damned. BD lives in a neighborhood that is so white bread Middle America that you think you are walking on a set in Hollywood. It’s like being on Elm Street, only without Freddy Krueger. Cats are sunning themselves on front steps. Dogs are wagging their tails and chasing butterflies. The squeal of children and the hum of leaf blowers punctuate the air. Any second, you expect the Kool-Aid man to come bursting out of a garage, screaming, “Oh Yeah!” In fact, to further cement the illusion, BD leaves her older school age children at home and carries a walkie-talkie through the neighborhood in case they need her. Which begs the question, why not a string and two tin cans?

Anyway, the walk was a normal walk. For us, something odd always happens while walking, so expecting the unexpected is our norm. We had passed maybe three houses when I noticed the biggest slug to ever ooze out of the grass was working its way across the road. I am not talking a slug the size of a cocktail weinie. This thing was longer than my hand from middle finger tip to wrist. BD almost stepped on it because she thought it was a stick. We stopped walking and looked at it for a while, amazed and disgusted at the same time. BD decided that we couldn’t leave it in the road to get run over, as a slug of this size had clearly been alive for a while. For all we knew, that slug could have been the same age as one of our kids, certainly as old as someone’s kid. We couldn’t just leave it there to die.

But how to move it? Neither of us was interested in touching it, because, yuck, it’s a slug. BD suggested I get a stick. So I did. A small stick, a twig, really. I tried to scoot it over to the side of the road, but all it did was ball up to the size of a mini Three Musketeers bar. I couldn’t scoot it with the stick. I was merely taunting it. BD suggested a bigger stick. Notice BD had no interest in getting the slug out of the road herself, preferring to supervise my actions instead. The yard next to us, however, had no sticks, certainly none the size of, say, the slug. I found another twig, and calling upon my prowess with chopsticks, plucked it off the ground like a piece of sushi and flung it in the closest yard.

“That was my good deed for the day,” I said proudly as I tossed the sticks into the yard as I had the slug moments before. And we continued walking. We covered the usual topics, our children, our husbands, our in-laws, with an occasional rant on politics or religion. BD and I like to think we can discuss the bigger things as fluently as those from our own spheres. We thought no more of the slug, and kept walking at a less than brisk pace.

When we approached the mid-point of the walk, we passed a house where a mom and her teenage son stood on the front porch. She stood behind him, so I don’t recall what she had on, but he was wearing a suit and dress shirt. He called out to us, “Do you know how to tie a tie?” BD yelled back, “No, I don’t, but she does,” she meaning me. Now, I need to point out here that BD’s husband wears a tie every day to work. Mine, on the other hand, wears one maybe once a year. In fact, he specifically chose his career based on the fact that a tie is not required. (He wants me to clarify that the previous statement is not entirely true.) So while neither of us might know how to tie a tie, she certainly has more exposure to the process. I also did not grow up with a father at home, so there was no tying history from which to draw. I had to search the far corners of my memory’s attic for how to tie a tie.

“I’ll give it a try,” I said, walking across his lawn. “It’s been a while, but let’s see if I remember.” The teenage boy walked over to me, but his healthy dousing of cologne got to me before he did. I stood on my tip toes and tried to remember, around, around, up from behind and dive down the middle. I did what I remembered, and the poor boy looked like a hobo. BD suggested I try again, since it sort of almost maybe possibly looked like it was close to being right. I undid the whole mess and tried again. Around, around, up, then down. Pinch, tug, push. Voila. I tied a tie.

“How’s that?” I asked him.
“Pretty good, thanks!” He answered, then bounded back across the lawn and into his house.

BD and I continued our walk. I was filled with a sense of pride at my tiny little slice of community service.
“Who knew I could tie a tie? That's two good deeds in one day!” I said.
“I did,” she said. “You know how to do all sorts of things.”
I smelled my hand, which was covered in teenage boy cologne, then held it up to BD's face so she too could smell the folly of youth.

In some strange way, BD is right. I can do things that I wouldn’t think I could. Or that I don’t realize I can. I am sure we all feel that way, but when called upon to serve, we can conjure up a decent tie knot.

“Only in my neighborhood would someone stand on the front porch and wait for people to walk by to tie ties,” BD said.
“Yeah, in my neighborhood they would just go without, like loafers without socks at the country club. Besides, in my neighborhood, we never lay eyes upon one another. It helps us to imagine we are living on estates rather than in peeping distance of one another.”

I don’t know what you see or do when taking a walk, but me, it’s slugs and neckties and small opportunities for public service.

Better Than A Poke in the Eye

I survived my eye appointment. If you read back a year ago on my blog, you will see exactly how I feel about going to the eye doctor. Lucky for me, this year’s appointment was a routine one, with no dilation of anything. I barely even had to wait before my name was called, which disappointed me because I was all set to make a dent in the book I am struggling to read, and I also had not yet finished sneakily gawking and passing judgment on the other patients in the waiting room.

After being seated in the exam room, I perched atop the chair on my sitz bones, wondering how the office staff keeps things sanitary. Do they wipe the chair down after each patient? Just curious. I didn’t ask because I didn’t need an extra reason for them to think I was nutty. Instead, I answered all the history of me questions enthusiastically and mostly honestly. I even admitted I had dry eyes yet did nothing about it. I never use eye drops, which surprised her. What I didn’t say was that I opt instead to rinse them in my mouth and pop them back in my eyes, but then again, she didn’t ask me about that. She had me read the lowest line I could on the eye chart, which somehow always feels like entrapment. Then the optical assistant took my glasses to read the prescription and left me in the room, with its soft mood lighting and disturbingly accurate posters of eye anatomy and disease processes.

After a few minutes, she came back with my glasses and Dr. S. We went through the usual routine, where he starts by asking me the same questions the technician did. Wouldn’t it be faster to hook me up to a lie detector and just ask me once? After that fun, we got down to the nitty gritty, with that Victorian eye contraption with all its little lenses and gadgets. The only thing missing is a handlebar mustache and middle part with lots of Brylcreem, a look I think Dr. S could pull off. He again made me cover my eyes one at a time and read my way through the eye chart that I couldn’t see. Every letter I said aloud sounded wrong even to me. I really hate failing a test. After a while, he stopped me, then got up close to my face with the bright light.

“You have a dot on your left eye,” he told me. I was petrified. What did that mean? Cancer? Glaucoma? Macular degeneration? Oh wait, one of my contacts has a dot on it. The right one. The right one, which was floating around on my left eye.

“Oh, Jesus,” I muttered. “How embarrassing.”

Dr. S laughed. “I was wondering why your prescription changed so much. You’ve got the right contact on the left eye. No need to be embarrassed though. You are the second patient to do that this hour.”

“So you only treat morons here? Ugh. And I sat here with the nerve to complain about them being dry. No wonder I can’t see anything.”

“Really, you aren’t that special,” Dr. S said. Could he not have chosen a different way to say that? “I have patients do that all day.”

“He does,” the assistant said. “I do it too. I came in here last week and couldn’t see a thing. I had them in the wrong eyes the whole time!” So his staff is idiotic as well.

Dr. S went on, “No lie, I had a patient in here a month ago, complaining about how bad her right eye hurt, and how she couldn’t see anything out of her left eye. She went on and on about how I gave her bad contacts and how she couldn’t see a thing and her eye was killing her. I sat her down and had a look, and sure enough, she had four contacts in one eye. She just kept putting them in there. She had two on top of one another on the cornea, and then two more folded up like tacos kind of behind her eyelid."

I sat quietly, thinking, gee, Dr. S, it’s a good thing you’re not a gynecologist. But then I didn’t want to have to explain my comment to him. I saw myself describing the whole new tampon shoved in after forgetting to take the old one out, and even I had the sense to keep my mouth shut.

“So, you see, it’s not just you, I promise. It happens all the time around here. You’re the second one today, this hour. I have a long way to go.”

Dr. S left the room, and I said to the assistant, “You know, I can’t even see the dot when I put my contacts in. That’s why I get them switched around in the first place.”

“Just leave your glasses on to look for the dot,” she said. “Then take them off and insert your contact.”

Why didn’t I think of that? And at the same time, ugh, another step in the morning routine. As if leaving my glasses on for ten more seconds will make everyone late for school. I am so rigid in my routine that I can’t allow for a little extra help, even from myself. “Thanks,” I said. “That’s a good idea.”

The good news was my prescription hasn’t changed in years, and I still don’t need reading glasses. Finally, one part of me is stable. The bad part was that I made a fool of myself before I got get the good news. Oh well, it could have been worse. I could have said tampon to my eye doctor.

Let's Do Lunch

I had lunch with my daughter E's class last week in honor of her tenth birthday. I had a tough time picking out what to wear, as if it were a first date and not a lunch with twenty-seven children. I knew if I didn't make the right choice, it might somehow negatively impact E's social life, and Lord knows she doesn't need my help to make socialization more difficult. Two outfits later, I found the right combination of motherly but not matronly, colorful but not gaudy, with no sign of cleavage. I had in hand a tray of twenty-eight pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, E's favorite birthday treat (and yes, I made them from scratch), along with my own lunch, a turkey and Swiss on egg bagel with crisp romaine lettuce and thinly sliced campari tomato (I just committed the cardinal sign of describing my lunch on my blog; apparently, it has come to this.) I had on a tasteful amount of makeup and my volunteer ID badge.

After checking in at the front office, I walked over to the fourth grade pod and waited patiently at a table for lunchtime to commence. E's classroom door opened and the class trickled out, some greeting me as E's mom and asking me if I was really a writer. Clearly, I was not a surprise visitor, since not only had she told them I was coming, but she expressed some level of pride in what I do. How validating! E came out of the room in line, all smiles because she felt so special. I followed behind her class to the cafeteria.

No matter how many times I walk in the lunchroom, I am never prepared for the old sandwich smell that lingers. The last time I was in the school cafeteria, it was for the room mother's meeting at the beginning of the school year, and was just a bunch of moms sitting around. This time, it was chock full of students, most in third through fifth grade. These kids were big, and some looked like they could easily pass for 8th graders. I bet the 8th graders can pass for 11th graders these days. There's nothing like a room full of giant kids to remind you that your own children are growing up, and fast. I do remember wearing a training bra in fifth grade, but not make up. Then again, my role models weren't Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears.

E could not contain her delight at having me join her for lunch. She saved me a seat, and we sat next to each other and waited for the kids who bought their lunch to join the class at the table. The cafeteria lunch, by the way, was an odd assortment of chicken fingers, refried beans, and Italian breadsticks. I know it's November, but isn't it kind of early to be using up all the leftover food before the winter break?

What stood out for me about her class was how different it was than at her last school. This is E's first year in the public school near our home; she spent the last six years at a Montessori school. That school was very ethnically diverse in a way that always sounded like the start of a joke: a Jew, a Buddhist, and three Hindus walk into a classroom... E tended to make friends with more boys than girls because, well, there were more boys than girls. Half the kids were Asian, and the rest were such a mix of other cultures that a white American kid was the minority.

In contrast, her new school is so white, I thought I had moved back to Phoenix. Not only were there no Indian kids, there was only one African American girl. Where was the diversity? Oh right, I live in the suburbs in a town that has yet to learn about integration.

The boys and the girls did not mix at all, except for one boy who sat right in the middle of all the girls, either A. to bug the crap out of them; B. because he likes them; or C. because he wants to be one of them. Whatever the reason, his choice to sit in the girls' section cause a fair amount of eye rolling followed by mass shunning. I liked him immediately, because that kid had balls!

The other thing that freaked me out about E's class was that, with the exception of maybe four kids out of twenty-seven, they all had the same hair color. Dirty blond, light brown, you know, that shade that millions of women put tin foil in their hair to achieve? Well, I was surrounded by healthy straight Jennifer Anniston hair. It was like a cloning experiment. And the boys all had the same haircut, probably from the same SportsClips down the street. I know I will never be able to tell any of them apart. They were gingerbread boys and girls.


I passed out the muffins to the class, pleasantly surprised that most of the kids took them without being put off by the pumpkin. When I sat back down, E had helped herself to my sandwich, and smiled at me with bits of tomato hanging out of her mouth. We shared my sandwich and her Sun chips, like friends sometimes do in the school cafeteria.


The best part of lunch, however, was how happy E was. She was excited it was her birthday, and was pleased I was there to join her. She wasn't the least bit embarrassed when I kissed her forehead. She threw her arm around me and leaned on me and whispered in my ear, and she even wanted me to walk back to the classroom with her so she could say good bye one last time.

It might be her birthday, but that lunch was a gift for me. She is ten now; in a matter of a few years, she's not going to want me to come to school, or to sit next to her, or to throw my arms around her. I fear I will feel the same way about her, that just being together makes us both insane, as her head spins around and I screech loudly like a turkey vulture. Until then, I have to take advantage of these lovely opportunities and not concentrate on how many pairs of shoes she leaves all over the house. Happy birthday, baby!

Trippin' Fall

Looking out my window, I see the colors of the leaves changing on the branches of the trees. The air is still warm, as is normal here in early November, but the breeze holds a hint of chill, a promise of cold weather coming. Halloween is past, and on the occasional front stoop is a saggy jack-o-lantern, its wide gapped-toothed grin curving in on itself with the onset of rot. Across from my house, the big inflatable turkeys dot the lawn of the ostentatious neighborhood millionaires, replacing the five or so Halloween inflatables that were just there days ago. Never mind that they still have last year’s icicle lights up. It gives their yellow Victorian mansion a more gingerbready fairy tale appearance when lit, not unlike Sleeping Beauty’s castle at Disney World.The air is neither too hot nor too cold, just the right temperature for playing outside.

My daughters rushed though their homework yesterday afternoon so they would have the rest of the daylight to play. Normally, I like to think of the after school outside playtime as an hour or two when I can stay inside, uninterrupted. But they needed my help. After all, someone needed to rake the leaves into a big pile at the bottom of the slide. I found the rake hiding with the rest of the unused yard tools in the storage room in the garage. I walked to the backyard and put my shoulder into some serious leaf pile making. When my children were younger, I would stand outside with the rake, neatening the leaf pile after each romp so that each fresh mound seemed like the first one of autumn. They are older now, and so am I, and all that raking and appeasing is a lot of extra effort that I don’t want to make.

The only way my daughters like to enjoy a good leaf pile at the bottom of the slide is, well, to slide into it. Which meant that in addition to my raking and pile making duties, I also needed to remove all the spiders that made the slide and the rest of the swing set their summer home. I am sure there was an easy way to do this, but I don’t know it, so I opted for the lazy way instead. I found a small twig on the ground and used it to poke holes in all the spider webs, swirling them around the end of my stick like creepy cotton candy. I worked first on the on the simulated rock wall, as each toe hold was inhabited, making the entire wall like an arachnid condo building. After I displaced all of those spiders, I used my twig to clean each step into the playhouse. There was a surprising number of spiders lurking on the steps. I realize that it was outdoors, but seriously? Can't the birds do a better job of eating?

I’m not a big fan of climbing up into the playhouse, for the same reason my daughters never play in it. It’s filled with spiders. I had at them with my twig, stick-sweeping all the corners and eaves. Pearl sized spiders dropped down like paratroopers and surrounded me. I poked at them with my kindling and yelped a few times, until they crab-walked close enough to the edge of the playhouse that I could flick them into the grass below.

The whole process of leaf raking and spider evicting lasted over thirty minutes. My daughters each sat on a swing, patiently waiting for me to finish so they could attack the leaf pile and frolic around in the playhouse. At one point, one of them went inside and got a Sharpie from the kitchen, which they used to write each other secret messages about how slow I was on sheets of river birch bark.

It’s not that I minded cleaning up. It’s just that I know all this playing outside excitement is a one day event. One afternoon of activities will bring us home too late to play outside. A day or two of rain will set in. Birthday parties and dance practice will have priority, and the next thing you know, the play set will once again be filled with spiders and the remains of their frequent meals. And who do you think will have to clean that mess up? I’ll give you a hint. It’s not Daddy.

I complain about the cleaning, but honestly, we rarely play outside. In winter, it’s too cold to swing and slide. Gloves make the handles difficult to grip. Noses run and lips chap. Spring is also a no-go, with everything outdoors coated in a thick layer of greenish yellow pollen. All it takes is one innocent rub to the eye to make it swell shut for a few days. Summer is no better. All that sweating and dirt makes for an interesting skin tone, and no one enjoys that third degree burn to the back of the thighs from searing down the slide. And don’t forget the mosquitoes. Five minutes outside and it looks like they have the pox.

So fall it is. Leaves and spiders be damned, it is the perfect season for back yard play. Hopefully the conditions will stay right to allow a week or two of fresh air and free reign of imagination, of fluid movements and high pitched laughter, all of which I can observe from the comfort of my kitchen window. Until I am needed again, twig in hand, rake at the ready.

Trash Talk

What’s the deal with people throwing trash on the side of the road? Every day I see a new bag of garbage abandoned on a curb or tossed in a lane on the highway. South Carolina used to be known for the amount of road kill left to ferment on the road ways. Lately, garbage bags are giving flattened opossums a run for their money. I do occasionally see the detention center suckers in their bright orange jumpsuits cleaning it up, with the port-a-potty on a wagon behind them. They aren't able to keep up with the mess the so-called law abiders are making.

I understand that the cost of trash pick-up is ridiculously high. I too have to suck it up for my quarterly Waste Management bill, with its fuel surcharge fees and recycling fees and landfill fees. Remember when the fuel surcharges were added? I do. Gas was at an all time high, and what were companies like the airlines and the garbage collectors going to do? They passed the expense on to us, the consumers, as a fuel surcharge, and they made it look like it was a temporary thing, until fuel prices stabilized and we could go back to the normal rates. Well, I don’t know about you, but I am no longer paying over four dollars at the pump. But my fuel surcharge goes right on, more regular than the trash collection itself.

I don’t like it, but I accept it as part of being an adult. We have to pay for a place to live. We need electricity to run appliances in our homes. We need a form of transportation to get us from work and school and the occasional trip to the movies. And like it or not, we all make garbage and have to pay someone to haul it off for us. Now, if you choose to do it yourself, that’s great. Just make sure it actually makes it to the landfill. The road two blocks away from your shitty house, by the way, is not the landfill. It is the route I take twice a day to and from my daughter’s school, and I am tired of looking at your empty potato chip bags and pizza boxes. Ever hear of a vegetable? Try a little variety in your diet, for G-d’s sake.

The bag of trash that I pass daily never stays a bag for long. Like the long forgotten raccoon, it soon becomes entrails of waste strewn along the road, until a day or two later, when all that remains is a stain of what once was. Who knows what was in there? It could have been a body part or two, but now we’ll never know how close we were to catching the serial killer terrorizing our community.

Here we are, in the new century, and we still have folks discarding their rubbish like it is the Middle Ages. Remember back then, when everyone chucked their chamber pot swill and potato peelings and dead rats out on the muddy streets? Women wore long skirts that acted as mops for the gutters, swirling around in the muck before dragging it all back indoors. Well, I am pretty sure we attempt a more sanitary approach to waste disposal now, except for you, garbage infidel. I don’t want to drive my Volvo through your mess any more than I do my bullocks cart. Egads! We will all get the pox from thine waste, if thoust doesn’t tidy up a bit. Does thou havest a reason for disposing of your refuse in such manner? Pray, think of the children!

And another thing, enough with your cigarette butts being tossed out the windows. I just know it’s the same people. I bet you are the same fuckers who throw a pillow case full of kittens off a bridge too. I am very tempted at the next red light to get out of my car, pick up your filthy lipstick or gingivitis tinged cigarette tip, and chuck it back through your window, while screaming, “Oops! I think you dropped something!”

I am so over the dirty roadways. I don’t take a shit on your living room floor, so stop throwing your tampon wrappers and hamburger helper on my streets. As you can see, your mess is pushing some of us over the edge. The next time I hit another garbage bag on the interstate and papers go flying, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Not that I would do anything about it, other than grumble under my breath while I drive past. But in my head, it’s epic.

Cattle Call

For the second year in a row, I dragged my unmotivated ass over to Myrtle Beach to attend the South Carolina Writer’s Workshop conference, which is held there every fall. I have yet to figure out why Myrtle Beach, year in and out. Every conference is at the aging Kingston Plantation, a series of midsized hotels and condo buildings clustered together on the beach. I can sort of understand the appeal. Most of the agents who attend the conference come down from New York City and want a little sun on their vampire pale skin, a reason to escape the late October chill. But why not Charleston? Surely they have room for a conference of this size. So what if it’s not directly on the beach? What it lacks in ocean view it makes up for in Southern charm and historical quirkiness.

The rooms sold out quickly at the Hilton, where the conference was held, so I had a room in a neighboring condo building. My one bedroom condo was actually smaller than a standard hotel room, only with a larger nightly price tag. The advertised seating area was literally a chair, and not an oversized lounge one either. A dining room chair. A waiting room chair. Kudos to marketing on that!

But the idea of the conference was not to stay tucked away in my tiny room, stewing over the false advertising and the long drive. The idea was to surround myself with my peers, fellow writers, both new and seasoned, to learn about the craft of writing, what sells, and balancing the two in a way that satisfies the creative need and the business model. In between sessions offered on a wide range of topics, we had the opportunity to mix and mingle and discover and bond.

Except the conference organizers forgot that key feature of writers which makes them good at what they do. They are mostly introverts. They tend to hide in their homes, usually in stained clothes (if they bothered to get dressed at all), unshowered and jacked up on too much coffee/chocolate/Capt’n Crunch. They don’t work in packs. As my daughter S once said before a nap, “I sleep alone.” Taking a group of shy loners and throwing them together does not create a community; it creates a sociological experiment. This awkward gathering was then sprinkled with publishing professionals like agents and editors, which tapped into a deeply rooted desperation that guaranteed social interaction.

The best example of this was the nightly buffet dinner. One or two publishing professionals were assigned to each round table in the ballroom. They were not allowed to sit with their friends and co-workers from back home, but instead were forced to be available to the many writers who paid top dollar for that kind of access. While the wannabe writers sipped their house wine and bar brand drinks outside, the professionals were brought in and seated like the celebrities they are. The attendees would then crowd around the one door in, pushing and shoving each other impatiently, hoping to volley for position to attack their agent or editor of choice. One poor volunteer was given the unpleasant task of checking each person’s access at the door, before the people gained admittance and sprinted furiously around the room, searching frantically for the “right” table. It was reminiscent of registration for high school classes, and inevitably someone was left out of the process and would stand alone, like the loser at musical chairs. The experts were then forced to make nicey small talk with people they would never consider conversing with in any other capacity in their professional or personal lives. They did it, they claimed, because they wanted to find hidden talent. More likely, they did it because they lost the office pool, or perhaps the devil had come for their souls.

The workshops themselves were not much different. The rooms were organized in lecture style, and no matter what the topic, one person who was slightly off would dominate the question and answer section, and sometimes even the lecture. This person, different in each lecture and yet surprisingly the same, had varying standards of hygiene, with bits of food clinging to beard hair or all the hair on one side of the head matted from the pillow. Sometimes she would take her shoes off and walk around the room. Sometimes he left his cane behind after each lecture so kind strangers would bring it back to him and he could trap them in conversation. He asked questions like, “Is it okay to like what I write?” She would thank the speaker and ask for a hug. It was painful to watch.

I did have something in common with the rest of the bunch. Despite the overpriced rooms, the adequate dining, and the stilted conversation, I was full of hope at the conference. Hope that I would make the right connection. That one extra witty comment would make an impression. That something I had to say would make someone with the key to success want to hear more from me. Was it fun? Not particularly. What is was, and no offense to cows, was a big fat cattle prod, designed to zap my rump into action. Hear me moo!

Spooked

I asked for ghosts on my big toes. Any American five year old can tell you what a ghost looks like. An amorphous white blob with two circles for eyes. It’s not like I wanted one of the backup dancers from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video replicated in perfect detail. Just some ghosts to jazz up my pre-Halloween pedicure. That is not exactly what I got.

I treated myself to a pedicure yesterday at my usual salon, but when I walked in the door, everything seemed slightly off. The floor, previously tiled, was now carpeted in a beige that was so beige there was no way to tell if it was new or had been there for years. It looked pre-stained, and the way that it blended in with the beige couch disoriented me. The nail stations (are they desks? Tables?) used to have open shelving on top, like a hutch, but that was gone as well, leaving a lot more wall visible and bare. I only recognized two of the usual bored Vietnamese nail technicians, and instead of the regular bossman with thinning hair and a faintly pubic mustache, there was a new bossman with thinning hair and a faintly pubic mustache. Like there was a glitch in the matrix.

After I picked a color, I bypassed the newer, nicer massage chairs to sit in one of the older ones at the end. While the bossman filled the foot bath with water hot enough to cook a lobster, I adjusted the seat and switched on the massage remote. It was less relaxing than I remembered, but if I were going purely on memory, I could have sworn I was outside of Rose’s, about 1975, riding on the twenty five cent carousel. I grabbed a new gossip rag from the stack next to the chair and pretended to enjoy myself.

While the bossman removed my old, chipped polish and trimmed my toenails, he tried to hard sell me a manicure. I told him no thanks, but he was determined.

“I make you nails better. I file down, put pink and white set, no one know not you nail.”I told him no thank you again.

“You want special foot scrub? Four kind. $25. You like? You pick one?”

“No, thank you,” I said again, sweetly. I was planning on ghosts. That was enough of a value added nail experience.

He inspected my calluses. I learned why K-Fed is gaining weight. He rubbed generic pink lotion on the stubble of my shins. I read about how “Jon and Kate plus 8” is now called “Kate plus 8.” He shook my nail polish bottles, then stopped. I had selected black and orange. I wanted every other toe black, with a ghost painted on each big toe. I explained that to the bossman, who cocked his head to one side like a confused puppy.

I tried again, pointing to my toes, “Black, orange, black, orange, black.”

He looked over to the bored nail technician sitting in the next chair, who stopped filing her nails and sing-songed some Vietnamese back at him.

“Okay,” he said, pointing to my big toes. “Orange, then black, then orange, then black, then orange?”

“No,” I tried again. “Black, orange, black, orange, black. With ghosts on the big toes.”

A giant light bulb went on over his head. “Ohhh,” he said. And then he painted my toes as I had explained. When he finished, he got up and pointed to the seat. The bored technician sat down, holding a basket of tiny bottles.

“You want ghost?” she asked me.

“Yes, a ghost,” I answered. “On the big toes.”

“Ghost?” she asked again.

“Yes, ghost. Oooooo. Ghost. Boo. A ghost?”

She nodded and made a white dot on each of my big toenails. She looked at this for a while, and then said,” You want hat?”

Hat? No, I don’t want a fucking hat. I want a ghost.

I said this instead, “Um, no. You might be thinking of a witch. Witches wear pointy hats.” I gestured a pointy hat atop my head. “Ghost’s don’t really wear hats.”

She nodded again and started painting little ghost bodies on the round circles. Then she stared at them some more. She painted on two black dots for eyes. I was okay with it. Then she took the black and painted on more black dots down the middle of the ghost.

“Are those buttons?” I asked her.

She stared at me blankly. Perhaps all the ghosts she knows have buttons. In December. When we call them snowmen.

After she finished painting buttons on the other ghost, she looked up at me and said, “You want hat?”

I exhaled loudly and said, “Sure, why not? Hats will be great. They’ll match the buttons.”
So she painted on little pointy hats. Like dunce caps. Or witches’ hats. Or hoods.

“Want glitter?” she asked.

“Go for it!”

The other nail technicians came over and looked at my feet. “Like star at night,” one of them said to me, pointing to the glitter. Then they began conversing in Vietnamese, which I didn’t understand, all clicks and ngs, and then they laughed hard, which I did understand.

After I left, I took some time in the parking lot to really inspect my toenails. I don’t know if they are supposed to be ghosts or snowmen or both. But with the pointy hats, they do look a lot like imperial wizards of the Ku Klux Klan. Racist ghost snowmen. With stars. My Halloween pedicure is much scarier than I could have ever imagined.

What's One More?

I really tried to say no to my older daughter, E. I did. I practiced with a couple of friends before I even attempted to have the conversation with E. I am not particularly good at no in general, but even less so when it comes to my daughters. Now, that’s not to say I let them walk all over me on a daily basis, because if I did, E would spend every day stomping around in my shoes and S’s diet would consist solely of things coated either in chocolate or cheese dust. But when it comes to things they want to do, like extracurricular activities, I have a hard time knowing when enough is enough. So when the email about basketball practice appeared in my inbox, I knew I needed some help with a strategy. Besides just deleting it, which seems obvious now but didn’t occur to me until it was too late.

When my girls were babies, I maintained a strong opinion on limiting activities, rather sanctimoniously, I can admit in retrospect. One activity at a time per child made sense. If they wanted to try something new, then they would have to give something up.

Activities, believe it or not, began in infancy. It started with Gymboree classes, where you might make one good mom friend, with whom you then quietly judged the rest of the moms on their appearance, the cuteness of their babies, and their parenting style. Gymboree had more to do with you getting out of the house than your child’s actual development, although I am sure the Gymboree people would disagree with me. The babies were delighted at the songs and crawling around, but really, the mothers were there to feel better than one another.

Then preschool started, and with it came new activities. We graduated from Gymboree and moved on to mommy and me gymnastics, swim lessons. I even signed the girls up for music classes than didn’t seem extracurricular since they took place at the preschool one morning a week and didn’t require any extra driving. It worked out to one and a half activities at a time, so it wasn't that far from my original position.

All hell broke loose in grade school. Suddenly my two girls wanted to learn a musical instrument. We opted for piano, as you get a lot of bang for your musical buck, even though E really wanted guitar lessons. We also continued with gymnastics, only without the mommy part, because, let’s face it, I’m no Mary Lou Retton. And the spring still saw swim lessons and oh my god, how did they end up with three activities each? What happened to the one activity at a time rule? I had to revise it. I rationalized music as an essential part of their education, not really extra at all. And physical activity is necessary for their health, right? Once I clarified that one at a time was an impossibility, that meant the girls could pursue other interests, such as dance, with its extra rehearsals for performances, and eventually guitar, because it is just one half hour a week. What's an extra half hour at this point?

Did I mention Sunday school? Oh, yes. Most Sundays a month, the girls attend religious school at our temple. Being Jewish isn’t something they are going to learn about in other ways in this southern state. I never went to religious school, and now I can only mumble songs and prayers, hoping the person next to me on the pew doesn’t notice when my mucus producing grunts don’t match up with their own. And when E started third grade, Sunday school spawned Wednesday night Hebrew, which will continue until the magic age of thirteen. Yet one more activity, which will be with us for years to come.

The girls eventually grew bored with swimming lessons and fearful of the more advanced gymnastic moves. So their physical activity interests have turned to team sports. In grade school, that means soccer, which is the team sport equivalent of piano. It doesn’t require much in the way of skill or coordination in order to participate, and most of the time, the kids are able to run and kick at a ball without causing damage to themselves and each other. But soccer is not a once a week activity; practices are on Mondays and the games are on Saturdays. It is a time suck and a pain in my ass, but the girls claim to love it, so I make the sacrifice of my time, driving them around, doing the extra laundry for the uniforms and odd long socks, and sitting with other parents, making small talk while rooting the child that likes to be rooted and ignoring the one who doesn’t want extra attention. It is not my idea of a good time, and saying I look forward to the end of the two and a half month season is an understatement. But I do it, because I know that as the days grow shorter, so does the number of games and practices, and eventually my Monday nights and Saturday mornings will be mine again.

That is, until I saw the basketball email. I decided no more, I have enough with the piano and dance and guitar and Hebrew and Sunday school. I didn’t need another activity without a carpool. So I rehearsed how to say no. I rationalized the need for some free time and a break from all the chauffeuring. I discussed the opportunity for simple at home exercise. And then I took a few deep breaths and talked to E.

She, unbeknownst to me, had her heart set on basketball. Soccer, according to her, is just something to do until basketball begins. She is willing to give up, well, nothing, but she must have basketball. She worked me over good. She mentioned that the team is with our temple, thus adding a uniquely Jewish experience to her childhood, an effective use of the guilt, I might add. She elaborated on how difficult it is to get exercise in the winter and what a good opportunity for her to maintain her healthy habits. How she is improving her skills and won’t be scared of the ball this season. And then she reminded me that soccer was ending and how if freed up our Mondays and Saturdays. I didn’t really have a good reason to not do it, other than I didn’t want to. So I compromised. I told her that we could only practice on Mondays, and if it wasn’t that afternoon, we just couldn’t do it this year. See, it almost sounded like a no. At least, to me it did.

Guess what day basketball practice is going to be?

If These Lips Could Talk

My friend MJ went to the gynecologist last week for her annual exam, and no, she doesn’t care if I tell you. She called me in the morning before her appointment just to check in, which is what friends do when they don’t have actual time to spend with each other. These brief calls are typically conducted via cell phone as we drive around town, since no one sits still for a corded conversation anymore. Anyway, we were going over our day’s agendas for each other when she mentioned her exam. Then she asked me one of those personal questions, which are also easier to ask over the phone rather than in person.

“Do you tidy up down there before you go to see the doctor?” she asked me, more demurely than she is ever capable of in real life.
“No, I prefer to go in all overgrown, preferably with little bits of toilet paper and lint stuck everywhere. She has to use a machete to cut through the underbrush,” I told her. She didn’t answer. “Not really,” I said. “Everyone cleans it up a little. Some might even get a blow-out, maybe use a little mousse or gel.”
“Seriously,” she tried again. “Should I shave before my appointment?”
"Of course you should! It shows you care. Perhaps while she is between your thighs you should ask her preference. Not with her own, but as a professional. Does she like it up or down? Maybe braided?”
“I know, I’ll do a landing strip,” MJ said cheerily. “No, wait, definitely the Hitler.”

The Hitler, also known as Hitler’s Mustache, is the name MJ and I coined for a neatly trimmed trim, all boxy and Germanic, which resembles the notorious Aryan’s upper lip, only on your lower ones. I think you get the idea. Landing strip, the Hitler, lightning bolts, a sweet little heart. I wonder if waxing kits come with templates.

“Mach schnell,” I said. “That’ll get the doctor's attention. Achtung!”
‘I think I will ask her what she likes,” MJ said.
“I think you should,” I answered. “I once asked a massage therapist her position on moaning during a massage.”
“For real?” MJ asked.
“Yeah, I've always wondered if it creeped them out when people make noise. It’s bad enough they have to rub another person’s naked body, but to listen to their expressions of enjoyment while they do it? Blech. It’s not like they get to rub anyone they would actually want to touch.”
“Well, what did she say?”
“She said noises are kind of like feedback. But come to think of it, she didn't say if that was good or bad. I stayed quiet. So anyway, let me know what the doctor says about her pube preference.”
"Will do. Later, tater."

MJ called me back later with the report.

“So? What did she say?”
“I chickened out,” MJ admitted. “She’s all business, very ‘wham, bam, thank you ma’am.’ There wasn’t a window for casual conversation. I lost my nerve.”

MJ and I go to the same gynecologist. She is the model of OB-GYN efficiency. She’s out of there before you even realize she’s in.

“Well, did you at least get a rectal?”
“No six pack today,” MJ said.
“Why don’t doctors do that anymore? I used to get that done every time, but now it’s like they don’t care enough.”
“Maybe you could ask her that next time you go,” MJ offered.
“Like I’m gonna ask her to stuff her finger up my ass? I don’t think so. And now I don’t even know how to wear my pubic hair to her liking. Thanks for nothing.”

I’m curious about professions that deal with the human body in general and, more specifically, its orifices and odor-producing regions. Does the dentist know what you ate last by the smell emanating from your gaping pie hole? Does the nail technician think your feet stink and your calluses are disgusting? Does your hair dresser gag a little at combing out your dandruff? What does the Pilates instructor think when someone’s ass goes off during the open leg rocker? Is everyone else more comfortable with their bodies, or the human body itself, and I am the uptight exception? I don’t think so. After all, at least one other person I know worries about the appearance of her pubic hair before stepping into the stirrups. No wonder we’re such good friends.

Fetus, Don't Fail Me Now

The juxtaposition of local news stories in The Greenville News got my attention the other day in a way that the Monday edition rarely does. Normally, Monday’s newspaper is devoid of actual news, as somehow events know not to occur on a Sunday. It’s so thin you could hardly line your bird cage with it. So, when I read “fetus” and “abortion protest” on the same page of newsprint, I just had to keep reading.

The abortion protest which took place Sunday on Woodruff Road is not what I would consider newsworthy. Here’s the abridged version: some holy rollers from the small town (Anderson) came to the big city (Greenville, which is really just a bigger small town) to condemn our sinful lifestyle, and they chose one of our main thoroughfares to garner more attention to the horrors of murdering the unborn. Well, holy rollers, I got some news for you. We sinners don’t even do abortions in this town, unless they are of the hush-hush back alley wire hanger/stomach punching variety. And even if we did, which we don’t, we certainly don’t do them at the Barnes and Noble on a Sunday. So why waste your time and ours harassing Sunday shoppers with your graphic posters and empty baby strollers? If you want to protest abortion, I suggest you pack it up and tootle on down the interstate to the capital, where the only abortions in this state are actually performed. And save it for a weekday. No one is murdering babies on the Lord’s Day in South Carolina.

I have witnessed this little protest before, when out on a Sunday afternoon with the family. I recall my youngest daughter asking what an abortion is. I was impressed she could read the sign, and told her so. My husband was more direct, saying, “Oh, don’t pay any attention to them. They’re crazy people.” He dismissed the protesters and the question at the same time, which saved me from having to explain something I didn’t care to discuss over pizza at Whole Foods.

On to the fetus article. It turns out that a fetus was found at the water treatment plant on Sunday. I am somewhat skeptical about this news as well. Is it really that rare of an occurrence? I would think that amidst the many used condoms, goldfish corpses, and prescription drugs that are flushed on any given day, a fetus or two would not be that uncommon. But apparently this was a rather developed fetus, one which deserved an autopsy and full media coverage. The follow-up story the next day did lessen the shock by saying it was in fact a stillborn, not older than eighteen weeks, weighing less than a pound, and having no chance for survival, even prior to being flushed. There was also some concern about finding the fetus’s owner, but also doubt, as what woman wanted to step up and claim that miscarriage as her own? Maybe it was one of those unfortunate ladies who didn’t even realize she was pregnant, like on that TLC show. Maybe she thought it was just a really good bowel movement.

I liked that those two news stories ran next to each other on the page, but I think the paper should go one step further and combine them. The small town religious protesters should move their demonstration to the water treatment plant. It seems that is the only location in town where fetuses are found outside their host bodies. It sounds like the ideal place to mourn their passing and raise awareness for their cause. I like to think I am not the only one who wants to see an anti-abortion rally as much as I want to know what’s fished out of the water at the treatment facility. Which is to say, not at all.

Faster, Faster

Well, another Jewish year has begun (5770; it sounds like the title for a post-apocalyptic film starring Tom Cruise) and with it came Yom Kippur and another day of fasting. I try to fast every year, and I normally make it through my twenty four hours of self-imposed starvation fairly successfully. I did have that one year where I abstained from both food and water, which didn’t do much for my outlook but did cause a nasty bladder infection. So now I sip water judiciously throughout the day, both to stay hydrated and to take the occasional Advil. What? Advil does not count as food. And this isn’t the Jetsons, where a pill counts as a meal.

Last year, while I was fasting and bitching about fasting, my sister, CK, asked me why I even do it. I didn’t have an answer for her, other than because I was supposed to, which she felt was the worst reason ever to do anything. I saw her point, but continued fasting, if for no other reason than to see if I could.

This year was different, though. I had a reason to fast. My weight has been creeping up, and my will power has disappeared entirely, leaving a hole only chocolate seems to fill. I thought maybe a day of self-control and reflection might be just the ticket to making this the week I regained control over my eating habits and my weight. Just in time for the trifecta of uncontrolled eating months-October (Halloween candy), November (Thanksgiving), and December (Oh my G-d, I have to see both my family and my in-laws). And yes, I am aware that this is the wrong reason to fast for the Day of Atonement. I'll make peace with this one next Yom Kippur.

Some people I know fast until they can’t take it anymore and give up. Some people just don’t do it at all. Some people spend most of the day at temple, avoiding their kitchens at home. Still others nap their starvation-induced lethargy away. I suppose some people rub one out too, which is usually an excellent way to both pass the time and take your mind off of food, although frankly, while fasting, who has the energy?

But I have my own method for braving the fast. I employ some bizarre brain washing. I go with the obvious. Millions of people around the world are starving, not by choice or alleged religious obligations. They go to bed hungry and they wake up hungry and have no idea where their next meal is coming from. I know exactly where my next meal was coming from, Greenfield’s Deli (the ONLY place for bagels in the upstate of South Carolina), and I also know I could eat as much as I wanted to, if I could hold out until dinnertime. Sometimes I will reflect on the plight of concentration camp survivors, who made it through with only a crust of bread and a rotten potato for daily nutrition. I can live off my own blubber for a day and not even really notice. How lucky am I?

But alas, fasting to jump start a diet (not, by the way, a part of the Weight Watchers plan) is not what Yom Kippur is about. It is the Day of Atonement, a day of reflecting on self improvement and forgiveness, not just of the physical kind. It is sort of like a day for New Year’s resolutions, only with more Jewish guilt. We as Jews are supposed to look within, to think about how we have failed over the last year to be good, and how we can be better people in the coming year. The fasting is a great tool to attain that level of self-reflection. You can get a little starvation high, which might cause some delusional thought, which in turn is how you are able to forgive people who, really, we all know don’t deserve it. But ultimately, fasting is you devoid of feeding your need, and the gift of time to think about need in general.

Here’s what I don’t understand about fasting: if it is supposed to be a physical reminder of a spiritual obligation, why do we (meaning starving Jews) all wish each other an easy fast? It isn’t supposed to be easy. It is supposed to lay you bare and wrench your gut so that you know you did something hard on a day when you should do something hard. My friend TA agrees with me, and instead of an easy fast, she wishes people a meaningful one. She gets it.

I did spend some time reflecting and atoning on Yom Kippur, in the midst of trying to accomplish little tasks throughout the day. After temple, I ran errands until I was concerned I would pass out at Marshall’s. Honestly, I don’t know how the anorexics do it. 24 hours once a year is a small achievement compared to a life style of voluntary deprivation. I didn’t get sleepy or crabby, at least I don’t think I did, but I did get silly and slap happy. And then the sun set and I overate and drank too much red wine and felt like I needed another fast to get over that bit of unpleasantness. My fast brought me a little heightened awareness and a couple of pounds of water weight loss. A win-win, wouldn’t you agree?

Nutcracker? More Like Ballbreaker.

My daughter, S, doesn’t want to be a mouse. She wants to be a snowflake. Not in real life, but rather in the Nutcracker Ballet that her dance school performs in conjunction with its sister professional ballet company. This is the last thing I thought would be an issue on a Monday night in September, but sometimes that’s how it goes. My daughters have been known to fret about their birthday party themes a full eight months before their actual birthdays. Pre-suffering is a constant theme in my house. That’s how we roll.

In the case of mouse versus snowflake, however, it was not premature at all. The day before, S auditioned for a part in the Nutcracker. Audition is a generous word for what took place, though, since every child who is enrolled in the dance school can participate as long as a parent wrote a check and agreed to the mysterious rehearsal schedule. So if your check clears and so does your weekend calendar for the next two months, you’re in!

I am sure more consideration goes into tryouts and assigning parts than it appeared, based on some incredibly complicated dance rubric that only the school director knows. My daughter was fairly stressed about the entire process, since we didn’t realize it was an automatic thing. When it comes to the Nutcracker, what’s one more mouse or party child, really? But S went through the motions, black leotard and pink tights on, her hair tucked up in a snood. She loves to say snood. When the audition was over, S was very excited about being in the dance and thought she did very well.

Cut to last night. My husband informed us that an email had been received from the dance school while I was reading bed time stories. The subject line read “mice recital.”

“Mice?” S asked incredulously. “I don’t want to be a mouse.” The tears began, the lip stuck out in a pout.
“Great,” I said to my husband, shooting him a look.
“What did I do? I thought she’d want to know.”

If there’s one thing I learned about my children, it’s that you don’t share news with them at bedtime. Not if you want them to sleep. I calmed S down the best I could using my arsenal of lullabies and back rubs.

No less than ten minutes after my husband left for the gym and the girls were tucked in bed, S came running down the hallway to where I sat on the couch watching television. She was really crying now and throwing herself on the loveseat, rolling back and forth. A tantrum, I think it’s called.

“What’s up?” I asked her noncommittally. “Is this still about the mouse?”
“Yessss,” she wailed. “I want to be a sssnowflakkke.”
“What’s so great about a snowflake? I’ve seen the Nutcracker a gazillion times and I don’t even remember a snowflake in it. But the dance with the mice is really important. Everyone remembers that part.”
“But the mouse dance is boring. And stupid. All they do is spin in a circle. Besides, I was a mouse last year in the school play.”
“Well, maybe they thought you would make a good mouse since you had experience. Or a better mouse than a snowflake. I’m sure they have a reason.”
“Yes, it’s cause I am a bad dancer. I’m never gonna dance again!” Fresh tears started, and S threw herself on the loveseat a couple more times.

Here’s my question: What do boys do? If they don’t get to play the position they want on a sports team, do they cry and carry on? How do they handle their disappointment? I don’t know, since I don’t have one of those. All I have are worrisome self-blaming drama queens. Not that S’s disappointment isn’t deserved nor understandable. It’s the leap from not getting the part to not wanting to dance anymore that I don’t get.

I tried to channel my inner Oprah and convince her that it is just an honor to be in the ballet. How wonderful that she will get to dance with grownups whose career path is dance because that is what they love to do. How next year she will probably get an even bigger part since she will have more experience. How she will be on the big stage, not the little one they use for the children’s theater. It worked well enough to stop her crying and drift off to sleep, her, not me. I spent the next two hours wondering if I was going to have to talk her off the ledge after each rehearsal.

A little disappointment is a good thing now and then. It will prepare her much better for adulthood than being a snowflake ever could.

Doggy Style

We all have needs. We need to eat, to rest, to feel safe, and to be loved. And as much as some people like deny it, we all have physical needs, sexual needs. Even chihuahuas.

My friend JR has a matching pair of black and white chihuahuas which shake and piss their way all over her house. They bark at the door bell and at men, pee on the floor , and strut around on their back feet before they settle down on the lap of the cat person (me) in the room, shedding only the white hairs all over that person’s (mine) clothes. If that person (me again) makes the mistake of making direct eye contact, the chihuahuas will dart their little tongues out and try to touch that person’s (mine) with theirs.

But sometimes, french kissing guests is not enough to satisfy the urges of one of the little dogs. While Bella, the more reserved and graceful of the two, prefers quality time reclining on JR’s pillow, Sprout, the more googly-eyed one, likes to get her freak on. Her unassuming partner is a Jewish dog toy, which I will a minute to describe. It is a blue plush dachshund shaped stuffed animal, but more generic dog-like than breed specific. He sports a little yarmulke and is clutching a dreidel in his front paws, while his back paws hang stunted and useless like flippers. He is about the length of Sprout’s torso, or at least from her front paws to her little puta nut. Sprout doesn’t just like her toy, she LOVES it. In fact, it is her lover.

JR has told me before about the intense chihuahua-dog toy lovemaking sessions that take place on her upstairs sectional sofa, but the other night, I was lucky enough to witness it for myself. JR and I were having a lovely time, sipping a little red wine and engaging in thoughtful conversation. Sprout was shaking happily on my lap. Then, we had a break in the discussion, and one of us (me) suggested that Sprout put on a show for us. A sex show. JR wasn’t interested in walking upstairs to get the nasty toy, but after I pleaded with her, she begrudgingly fetched it (ha!) for the dog.

Now, Sprout, like most ladies, doesn’t go from cold to hot without a little foreplay. To get her in the mood, JR had to toss the lover toy across the room a few times for Sprout to fetch and shake about before she was ready to get down to business. When Sprout had enough of the toy playing hard to get, she positioned it under her belly and kind of grabbed it with her one front paw in an awkward embrace. The other paw was on the couch for leverage, and Sprout tentatively gave the toy a hump or two. Getting everything just right isn’t easy for Sprout since she doesn’t have thumbs, so this step took a while. It was a delicate dance.

When the stars aligned and the mood was right, Sprout knew she was ready to power drive that toy. She wedged it up against her little Mexican jumping bean and started humping and grinding unabashedly. She went from pelvic thrusting to violent bouncing. Seriously, the whole couch moved. Being the pervs we are, JR and I sat and watched in sheer delight, with JR breaking the tension to ponder whether Sprout even has a magic button. The whole thing was over before we knew it, with Sprout’s little bulgy eyes showing her contentment while she snuggled into JR’s skirts. “It helps her sleep,” JR said. “It helps everyone sleep,” I replied.

We tried to interest Sprout in another toy, but without much luck. JR teased her a bit with a skunk road kill toy, which Sprout started to eat out, much to our amusement. But then, it was right back to the blue boy toy. After a brief rest, Sprout was ready to have another go, and before long, she was happily jack hammering away. Sprout didn’t throw back her head and howl or bark or anything, so it was hard to tell if she had a happy ending or just lost interest, but again, she rested and cuddled when she was finished abusing that disgusting thing.

“Dude,” I said to JR, “you gotta put that shit on YouTube.” I left soon after since JR and I didn’t really know what to say to each other after that. I think we both felt a little dirty. But Sprout slept the sleep of the innocent, without a care in the world.

Undercover at the PTA

Nothing makes you feel like you’re back in school like being back in school. Your child’s school, I mean. I went to a room mother’s meeting this morning at my daughter E’s elementary school, and it was like stepping back into my awkward school years, only not in a good way. Our family is new to the school this year, as my daughter finished her last year at the private school she has attended since she turned three. Now she is in the fourth grade, and it is like we are starting from scratch. I don’t know where anything is and I don’t know who anyone is, including both the staff who works there and all the moms sitting in the cafeteria that I could only find by following the color coordinated strip on the floor (orange for fourth grade). And I am not even the one in school. I can’t imagine how much worse it is for my daughter, so I concentrated instead on how it affected me.

I walked in the cafeteria which still held the stale odor of the free and reduced breakfast and took a seat near the front of the room. No one said hello to me, nor did I to anyone else. I sat there alone, fretting over the same things I did in school, only with a hopefully more mature slant. Am I overdressed? Underdressed? Why are they wearing flip flops? Can we even wear flip flops to school? We should set a better example for the children. Can anyone see my roots? I should have pulled my hair back. I need a touch up. I need some lip gloss. I’m so thirsty.

As more mothers strolled in, it became apparent to me that there were cliques here just like in high school. The thin pretty moms are seemed to know each other, and they chatted loudly in the back over the announcements of the former student council types who conducting the meeting. There were moms who looked sleep deprived and slightly disheveled and clearly had not showered for the occasion. There were the gym moms, all in their fitted tank tops and sporty little skorts. There was even one lone father who had fortified himself with a bible. I wonder if he knew what meeting he was attending or if he just saw it as another opportunity to spread HIS word.

I tried to focus on why I was there. But I don’t know why I was there. At one time, it had something to do with wanting to be involved on a more personal level so I can keep an eye on what happens in E’s classroom, which at this point seems to be a whole lot of nothing. I wanted to see what the kids in my daughter’s class are like, to help out her teacher so she can get busy with teaching. But sitting there, feeling alone with my chin acne and alcohol bloat from the long weekend, I realized that none of what that meeting detailed had anything to do with being involved in my daughter’s class at all.

In theory, we were all there to support our children and the school. The reality was more along the lines of one-up-man ship and controlling personalities. As we divided ourselves into grade levels and classes (by teacher, not socio-economics), I realized I did not fit in here much in the same way I did not fit in when I was in school. I defied classification then, and I still do. I had and still have a strong work ethic and desire to do the right thing, but a nasty lazy streak and fear of responsibility. At least I was smart enough to not head up anything.

It took a few hours for the awkward to wear off, when I could return to telling myself I was slightly fabulous and full of potential. It feels better when I’m at home making a tasty dinner or cracking a joke instead of being one more mom sitting in a cafeteria on a Tuesday morning. Feeling adequate doesn’t come easy to some, certainly not to me. Maybe those other moms are just better at faking it.