Abstinence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Last week, my 14 year old daughter started the sex education unit in PE at her middle school. The school was smart to schedule it in winter, so they could use two weeks that are too cold to go outside to discuss one of the world’s favorite indoor sports. Unfortunately, we live in South Carolina, and unfortunately, the educators of this state don’t believe in teaching about sex. I don’t know why they bother, especially since what they teach to sixth graders is almost exactly what they teach to eighth graders. It doesn’t seem like the best use of anyone’s time, now, does it?

I’m still trying to figure out why this stuff is not part of the science curriculum, especially the way they teach it here, as there is nothing physical about sex ed. I have a feeling they flipped a coin and the PE department lost. No matter, really, because nothing is being taught, so it doesn’t matter if they miss a week or two of four square and kingpin. I just find it amusing that the one class that requires students to disrobe is the same one that discourages it.

As with every other year since the fifth grade, my teen likes to report back what she didn’t learn in sex education. I like to start our conversations with a little joke to lighten the mood, usually about how they split up the class in couples or if the test is going to be oral. Now that she is fourteen, she gets all the jokes, but I do have to remember that technically she is still a child, even with her young woman’s body and raunchy twelve year old boy mind, and no, I don’t wonder where she gets it from. I try my best to keep it on the clean side of dirty.

It turns out she isn’t the only one who gets the jokes. Her whole class, girls who have pretty much all started their periods and have also sat through the waste of time that is sexual education in South Carolina, realizes there is nothing new to be gleaned from the third year of learning about abstinence. And if they have to sit there, not learning anything, they might as well have some fun.

Not the kind of fun you are thinking of. After all, it’s abstinence education. In our state, the girls are told they have to abstain from sexual activity until marriage. The boys are told it’s normal to have urges, but they should still try to abstain. Mind you, there is no education on how to abstain, if such a thing exists. I pity those girls who have no plans to marry.

The only thing my child has learned in sexual education is that she isn’t the only one who thinks the whole thing is a joke. Every day, a different girl raises her hand and asks a question their female PE coach isn’t allowed to answer. And it’s fabulous. She doesn’t want to discourage them from asking questions, but by Friday, I am sure she will no longer recognize any hands in the air. Here’s a taste of some of the more thought provoking questions:

Um, oral sex, is that like a blow job?

So, is it okay to masturbate with a magazine?

What other kind of sex is there besides oral, vaginal, and anal?

Does anal sex always hurt or only the first time?

Is it easier to learn how to do it if there are mirrors on the ceiling?

And my personal favorite:

Can you break a penis?

After each question is asked, the PE coach then has to provide an answer without actually answering. Her response was usually a version of “I am not allowed to answer that” or “I am not supposed to talk about that” or “I am not authorized to use that word.” Her hands were tied, but not in a good way. Sometimes, she started her answer with a head shake or a small chuckle, and this is a woman who generally doesn’t even smile.

At one point, in the course of not being able to answer any questions, she explained that the panel that decides on the curriculum has to have anywhere from two to six ministers, since they are experts on both sex and public education. Makes sense to me.  Kudos to her for not losing her cool, and extra kudos to the class for trying to make her.

Next year, my daughter will be in high school and most likely take physical education again. She told me that rumor has it in high school, they pass around condoms and talk up the birth control. What a difference a year makes.  

Snog: The Snow Blog

8:30: I am awake. The room has a brightness it normally doesn’t.  I get up and peek through the blind slats. It’s snowing! The whole backyard is draped in soft whiteness. It looks like it would melt if touched, like it’s been coated with powdered sugar. It’s magical.

9:00: I am going to bake for my family. Hmm, oh, a box of Trader Joe’s scones…crap, it’s not berry, it’s pumpkin cranberry. Will they notice I’ve had this shit since December? It’s definitely a Christmas flavor. Maybe I’ll add white chocolate chips to spruce it up a bit. Plus that way I won’t want to eat them myself.

Oh, fuck it, it’s snowing! How lucky are we that we have power and a home.

What about those less fortunate than us, those who live in the tent city under the bridge? What are they doing today? How are those families surviving the worst storm of the decade, nay, the century? And what about those kids whose only hot meal for the day is at school? What are they doing today, tomorrow, yesterday, for food? I feel for them.

9:15: Why is it so dark in here? Oh, the sky lights are covered in snow. How much snow can they hold before they leak, or worse, break? Can that happen? Is that a possibility? Do they use sky lights in the North?

9:17: I just saw a gust of wind. It’s like throwing baby powder on the invisible man and seeing the shape of his face. I saw wind. It’s really swirly.

10:07: What is the cat screaming about? Shut up. And shut up, Spongebob. The sound of your laugh makes millions of parents contemplate filicide.

10:08: I can’t see the road in front of the house. No road. No way out.

10:29: The Shriner’s Hospital just called for a donation. I wasn’t rude when I said no. “For once,” my younger daughter said.

10:47: I am so glad my kids aren’t young anymore. I don’t have to get their little bodies into twenty layers and trek out into the below freezing snow to walk around long enough for someone to fall down and cry, which means back inside to dry tears and make twenty gallons of hot cocoa, which no one would drink, just eat damp marshmallows off the top.

My mother used to tell my sisters and me what snow days were like when we were little and lived in Baltimore. It involved getting everyone into snow suits and hats and mittens and boots and pushing us out the door, a process that took at least an hour, until one of us would invariably shit ourselves and we all had to come back inside to peel the layers to get to the bowel movement.

I just woke up the teen. She looked out the window and said, “Snow.” Then she climbed back in bed. That is the way to do a snow day.

10:56: My husband sounds like Archie Bunker. Why did I wake him up?

The Olympics are on.  These Olympics need less ice dancing and more ski jump fails.

11:01: The teenager wants to go for a driving lesson. What part of the teenage brain is that disconnected from reality??

11:13: Why isn’t anyone answering my texts? Has the cellular network already failed us? Am I off the grid? Or maybe they just don’t like me. Maybe they weren’t my friends to begin with. Does anyone like me? Oh god, they all hate me. Or maybe they are playing in the snow.

11:31: I’m bored. I’ve looked at all the websites. Ice dancing persists. No one wants to bother with getting dressed. I refuse to clean the house. Refuse. We can live in filth for all I care.  Where are the cats? Their presence soothes my inner demons.

11:49: My husband thinks he should start his car to melt the ice off of it. He parks it in the driveway. I am going to trek out there with him. I wonder if I should take a snack and some bottled water and one of those silver emergency blankets. Oh wait. He can start the car from the warmth of the house, right from his keychain. Crisis averted. Thank god we are all safe.

11:50: He read what I wrote a minute ago and thought I made him sound stupid. We are starting to turn against each other.

12:54:  I can’t feel my face or my toes. I was coerced into walking to the entrance of the neighborhood. Over a mile round trip. I found yellow snow. I’ve heard about it for years but never actually saw it before. I was not tempted to eat it. Speaking of dogs, we met one on our stupid cold walk. What must his paws feel like? I wanted to kick his owner in the nuts, except I doubt he would feel it through all the layers. His dog only has one layer. Maybe he doesn’t love it, owner. Maybe he is jumping up on us as a cry of help.

1:21: Everyone is now in a different room. It’s for the best. I think I should clean the toilets. Should I clean the toilets? If I do that, I should also clean the sinks. Wait, we have five toilets. I’m not cleaning the toilets.

I would take the cats outside if I didn’t have to put on all those layers again. I like to look at white snow on black cat fur. It’s aesthetically pleasing, plus they are scared of it. Chicken Littles.

2:25: I made microwave popcorn. Isn’t this stuff going to kill me, with its butter flavored carcinogens? And why is the microwave smoking? Should microwaves smoke? Should I unplug it? If it causes a fire, how is the fire truck going to get here through all this snow? I hope this popcorn was worth it. Burning down the house. Sheesh. Now I am scared to go watch a movie in case the microwave bursts in flames and I am in the bonus room upstairs. I should put it outside in the snow.

Cool. Maybe I can get a new microwave. Plus, I burned the popcorn.

2:38: The snow stopped. Thank you sweet baby Jesus.

2:39: It started again. Fuck.

2:45: We are watching “My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding” on Netflix. My favorite line is “My third cousin was my first husband.”

3:59: Enough Netflix. My brain is rotting. My husband is hiding in the bathroom with some drink that involves an ice cube he made outside and a lot of rye and bitters. Sazerac?  The teen is singing Lana Del Ray songs at the top of her lungs while blowing bubbles in her glass of limeade. And the bonus room smells like popcorn farts.

I will not make it til Friday. I have found a website that helps design labyrinths for the backyard. Overlook, here we come.

4:07: Time to plug in all the electronics. Laptops, iPhones, everything with a cord. Because what I hear now isn’t snow, it’s sleet or freezing rain, and it’s the size of summer hail. How long do we have until the power goes out?

4:12: There is one SUV going down the street. Where the hell do you think you are going? Nothing is open except the hospital, and you don’t look like you are in a big hurry. Bring back some milk, please. Someone used it all up on hot chocolate and lattes.

An ATV just went by in the other direction, and it was going significantly faster than the SUV. I’m glad there was no head on collision in front of my home. I’m also glad my mailbox was not collateral damage.

4:45: The sleet continues. I just scooped up some snow in my glass, added chocolate syrup, a splash of milk, and enough Bailey’s to make me nice again. The 12 year old found it delicious. Is it wrong to give my tween a Bailey’s snow cream? I’m pretty sure it will make us both like each other more.

5:04: I feel really badly for that bird on the tree outside my window. It looks so cold. It’s also looking at me, right in the eyes, deep in to my soul. I think it only has one leg. Is this some sort of test? Seriously, doesn’t this bird have somewhere to go? All the other birds found a safe place. What’s wrong with you, stupid bird? No wonder you only have one leg. And this, on Darwin’s birthday.

5:21: At least the wind gusts are blowing tons of snow off the roof. It doesn’t seem likely that a total collapse will happen tonight.

5:45: I did it. I cleaned a toilet. Even the cats are looking at me like what the fuck are you doing.

6:39: Time to make dinner. This may be our last hot meal for a while. I opted for the fridge cleaning tortellini. I tossed it with cherry tomatoes, sautéed sun dried tomato chicken sausage, peas, spinach, sweet caramelized onions, and roasted red pepper puree. That way it had something that everyone hated. And lucky for us, plenty left over for lunch tomorrow.

If my husband asks me one more time if I want a glass of wine, I am going to hit him with the bottle.

7:25: My family is in the front of the TV. Two of them are on their phones. The teen has decided now is the right time to shop online for bikinis. It goes something like this: “Mom, what’s a good website for bathing suits?” How the fuck should I know? Do I look like I need to be wearing a bikini? Plus, it’s February and we have more snow and ice than we have had since you’ve been alive. Go eat another cookie and leave me alone.

7:43: My husband asks who wants to go outside and look at the snow. No one answers.

7:47: The teen asks my husband if he has to sound like that when he coughs.

7:52: Watching the local weather forecast. The meteorologist said it’s in the twenties, and to just stay home and relax. Was he talking to me?

8:01: Just a thought. What if we all met outside with our hair dryers plugged into outdoor extension cords? Could we clear our neighborhoods in less than an hour?

8:28: Snow is beautiful. This is freezing rain, and it’s like a freaking summer storm of ice pellets out there. It’s ruining all my lovely snow. Ice is good in a glass with water but horrible when it coats power lines and my driveway. Please, power, stay on. I would hate to resort to using my spouse as a Tauntaun, but I will do what I have to for survival. Also, I am out of chocolate. Would it be wrong to raid the Valentine’s goodie bags I made for my family? I can’t exactly replace them before the 14^th, since no big thaw is expected. I’m talking a Lindt dark chocolate orange bar. No one even knows it’s there.

8:33: My husband just discovered the use of “hella” as an adjective. Yet another defense for justifiable homicide.

8:49: Is there ever a time when SpongeBob isn’t on? Also, the satellite seems to have a glitch in its matrix. Wait, that’s probably a weather related issue. Oh shit, a weather related issue. We might lose our satellite. We might lose television. Might we lose internet? Suddenly losing electricity is about more than staying warm. Shit just got real.

9:01: Things have turned desperate. I have agreed to watch that Burt Weatherstone movie. I don’t even like magicians.

9:50: Is this movie really almost funny or am I that starved for entertainment? And it turns out his name is Wonderstone. Whatever.

10:19: No one can go to sleep until we fight over who hid all the iPhone chargers. There should be four, but only two have surfaced. Who gets to use them? Obviously, the ones who paid for the phones. Instagram can wait, children. Now get your slug butts in bed because I am through with you, and through with this day.

The next morning, 9:07: How can it still be snowing?

 

Peekaboo, I See You

People: listen up. You might be alone in your car, but we can still see you through your windows. Sure, we’ve all had some moments behind the wheel that we hope and pray no one witnessed. Perhaps you’ve seen me digging crumbs out of my bra, the under boob part where the crumbs tend to settle. Trust me; it’s not for the weak of heart. I'm sorry, I didn't mean for you to see that, but crumbs get itchy.

Nowhere is this false sense of privacy more apparent than in the car pool line at a school. Short of the occasional nose picking or nail clipping, I tend to spend my time doing publicly condoned car line activities like reading, talking or playing with my phone, and even writing, long hand of course, because trying to balance a laptop on a steering wheel borders on the weird. I’ve never felt that I was totally alone, however, because I am in lines with dozens of other people killing time in similar ways. Except for some people who seem oblivious that they are not really alone.

I am pretty sure I have seen everything short of sexual acts while waiting for my children to be dismissed from their school days. As much as I don’t want to think about it, I have to admit, I have spent the better part of over thirty minutes every school day for over eleven years sitting in a line of other cars, waiting on children. So it stands to reason that during that block of time, people are going to find creative ways to fill it. I have to tell you, sometimes it’s hard to concentrate on my own time wasting because I am so curious or distracted by the time wasting that surrounds me.

Elementary school car lines are pretty normal compared to the middle school line. In elementary school, the moms and occasional dads usually sleep or talk loudly on the phone. They might have younger children napping in their car seats, waiting for big brother or sister to play with them after a busy day of learning.  I don’t think I saw anything weirder than someone walking their dog on the school grounds while waiting in the car line, and just as a reminder, if you decide to do the same, it’s kind of courteous to pick up after your dog. Especially at a school. What if your kid is the one who steps in the offending pile of crap? I bet you wouldn’t like it much, would you, if your Dodge Durango was defiled by some dog doo. Plus on a hot afternoon, that crap gets a little ripe.

Middle school takes the car pool line to a whole other level. First of all, the care and concern for the children’s safety is just totally out the window after fifth grade. In elementary school, you have to have a numbered tag to identify you as the authorized person to whom your child should be released. In middle school, you could pretty much have your pick of victims. No one gives a shit who gets in what car. If you were in the kidnapping business, the middle school car line might be the place for you.

All that not paying attention to children’s safety lends a certain air of not giving a shit to the whole line, which is apparent when you spend some time observing the cars around you. There are the parents who expect their kids to walk to their car and therefore refuse to follow the car line protocol. They don’t pull forward to the car in front of them; they just stop where they want to, and fuck the rest of you. These are the same parents who like to make a seven point turn to get back out of the line after collecting their kids. Again, fuck you while you wait for them to execute what is a pretty tricky maneuver in a Lincoln Navigator. Never mind the flow of cars and the one way road loop designed for smooth dismissal. It's every jackass for himself.

Once on a sunny day, I got a contact high from the high school student smoking weed in the car in front of me. Clearly he knew how he wanted to kill time waiting on his younger brother, and his weed fog wafted out of his sun roof on a cloud of Van Halen before drifting through my open windows. I didn't mind the wait so much that afternoon.

The other day, I had to drop off some medicine at the school, so I parked my car in line and got out to walk into the school. I passed by one car with its windows down, and inside was a barefoot woman rubbing the space between her big toe and pointer toe along her steering wheel. What the actual fuck? Was that some sort of trigger point massage technique I’ve not heard about? She was pretty into it, although I didn’t hear any moaning, thank you Jesus. She's going to rub her hands all over that after she's done, and then she will be in front of you at the grocery store, paying in cash before you get money back from your debit card. You might as well have rubbed her feet for her.

Last week, I was treated to a real show in the white Fiat in front of me. The driver was an elderly woman with that unnatural shade of red hair preferred by women who think it makes them look younger than white or gray even though it really looks like they’ve soaked their shorn locks in a cheap box of Franzia. Anyway, red headed grandma had a full back seat, three kids across, in her Fiat. Honestly, the car is the same size AS a box of Franzia.

She had her windows open and was making the loudest phone call ever, which was enhanced by the fact that she was on speaker phone. Not only did I get to hear her confusion, but I was also party to the frustration of the woman at the doctor’s office with whom she spoke. The topic was none other than her prolapsed bladder, and she had a lot of information to share with a front office clerk who would have preferred to just schedule an appointment or connect her to the nurse’s voice mail. Honestly, I was convinced the call was taking place inside my car, nay, inside my head. I hope to never experience what she is. I am sorry about her bladder, truly I am.

Loud doesn’t cover the volume at which this call was conducted. What is louder than loud?  

After she completed the call, she hung up, opened her car door, and stepped out to adjust her pants and possibly her bladder. She stood next to the car, tugging her velour track pants back up to her armpits, making sure to get them wedged in both the front and the back before clambering back into her Fiat, at which point she began yelling at what I presume were her grandchildren in the back seat, all three of them. Whatever they had done to provoke her wasn’t audible over her phone call, but clearly she was upset with them, and we all needed to know about it. Maybe she was just cranky because she needs a bladder tuck. I felt sorry for the lot of them, trapped with a crabby wine head in that clown car. Too bad she didn't have a big glass of what she used to dye her hair.

My request for my fellow car line patrons? Just stick to nose picking or slack jawed naps when waiting behind the wheel. It’s almost more socially appropriate. I don't want to know that much about you people.

The Kiddie Table

It takes a big pair of balls to go out to eat with a three year old and a baby. 

Dining out is supposed to be a relaxing experience. You sit at a table, and someone waits on you, brings you your food, your water, your alcohol. You are to relax, to enjoy your meal as much as you enjoy someone else preparing it and cleaning it up. It is a break from you having to do it all.

When you have young children, you don’t get to relax in public any more than you would at home. If anything, it’s easier at home because your kids are contained, and if they act out in an unpredictable manner, you can, in theory, discipline them without the judging eyes of strangers. In public, your parenting fails are on display for all the world to see.

I am writing this for EL, with whom I just had lunch. It was the six of us, me and my two teenage girls, and her and her two baby boys. I can relate to how difficult it is for her to dine out, but then again, I can’t.

My girls were always girls, in the sense that they didn’t throw themselves around the room and carry on and make rolls and forks into weapons. That’s not to say that they weren’t ever difficult at restaurants, because they were, plenty, just in a different way.  E, my fourteen year old, was never that hard in a restaurant. She wasn’t picky and was easily entertained with paper and crayons, even now, so she doesn’t count.

My twelve year old, S, was a different story. She was never much into rules as a young child, so etiquette like sitting calmly in a chair wasn’t high on her priority list. I remember taking her out to a nice restaurant for brunch once. I had to order her a bowl of shredded cheese since she refused to eat anything else that day. She got maybe three shreds in her mouth before she decided she was full, and then she peed on the chair.

My sister, LM, didn’t have it any easier. Her youngest was what I call a lobber. If he didn’t like what was on his plate, he didn’t just leave it there, he would throw it, generally at my sister, his mother. Broccoli, cheese, bread crusts. It was like tossing a salad without the tongs or the bowl.  I don’t blame him for not listening to his mom. It’s hard to take anyone seriously who has florets in her hair.

Many moons ago, my husband and I lived in Arizona, and his sister came to visit with her children who were four and two at the time. We spent the night in Flagstaff, and ate at the shitty restaurant adjacent to the hotel. I recall her nervously sipping her beer while her two children glued their French fries to the wall with their ketchup. I encouraged her to just sit quietly and drink. It wasn’t like we were ever going to eat there again, so who cared if they did a little remodel on the restaurant walls?

My friend MJS doesn’t even attempt dining out anymore. She can’t handle the stress.  No dining experience is worth trying to contain her two and a half year old, the one with no patience or volume control. He likes to ride his bike around the dining room at home. Who knows what he would do at a place with table cloths.

Today, my daughters and I met EL and her two boys at a local Indian buffet. We were seated in one of those round corner booths, with a high chair placed in the opening for her ten month old. He was the best behaved, really, as long as he had an orange slice to gum and then drop on the floor. He waved backwards at the other restaurant patrons and sucked his orange slices, stopping only to burp up an ounce or two of orange pulpy spit up before filling back up with more orange. His entire collar was covered in orange. He looked like someone had tried to juice him. He was quiet and lovely as long as you didn’t look too closely.

Her three year old, on the other hand, was ready to test some limits. EL had lovingly selected a variety of child friendly foods off the buffet. He had already declared he wanted pasta, the one thing not available, but he had chicken and rice and oranges and potatoes and salad and yogurt for dipping and what more could he possibly want?

What he wanted was to shove handfuls of rice in his mouth, scoot across the booth next to S, my twelve year old whom he adores, and spit the contents of his pie hole all over her. He did it gleefully, with smiling eyes. It was more an act of giving than of evil. EL would grab his arm and pull her close to him, calmly explaining that he shouldn’t spit, and she would take him out to the car. And then he would shriek, and lie on the bench, and she would let go out his arm and he would sit up and fill his mouth with rice and off again he would go, the spit cycle starting again.

When he realized he was pushing too hard, he would lie down face first on the booth seat, seemingly in defeat, so that EL would think it was okay to try to eat her food again. Then he would kick his feet into S, who by the time lunch was over was sitting on my lap because there was no more room for scooting over.

A few times, Z wouldn’t spit his rice. He would just get right in S’s face and open his mouth. She said quietly to him, “I don’t like see food.” He was too young to get it.

He also expressed interest in what the folks at the next booth were doing. Nothing is quite as relaxing as a meal time stare down with someone else’s kid.

At one point, EL put her head on the table in defeat. The baby grabbed a handful of her hair and coated it in his orangey love.

Z picked up his glass, HIS GLASS!!  filled to the top with water, which he precariously bobbed and swayed near S as he attempted to take a sip. We all held our collective breath waiting for him to dump it on S or the table, thus ending the meal. That three year old had amazing control of his glass. Not a drop was spilled.

My heart wept for her. I could go out whenever I wanted to eat. My kids misbehaving at the table involves not putting away their cell phones. We fight over where to go. Sometimes my teen, E, will decide to order a side salad to spite us. Glasses are upright, as are chairs. We sit, we eat, we leave. We sometimes love it and sometimes not. Sometimes the service is fantastic and sometimes it ruins the whole meal. I don’t have to mentally prepare myself for the meal. It doesn’t require advanced planning and even bringing my own pre meal food. No one has to hose down the booth when we are through, or burn the table linens or scrub the floors.  We can go out for lunch, and then go out again for dinner if we feel like it.

So, EL, don’t stop trying. One day, it will be easier to eat out, but if you stop going out, you won’t know when that is. Don’t worry about what other people think. Yes, they are judging you, but no, you don’t have to care what they think. If everyone is safe and fed, then what else matters? There are enough restaurants in our town that you could eat out at least once a week and not repeat for a good year. By the time you go back, they won’t remember you. Someone else’s kids will have scarred them much, much worse. You might not be relaxed but you didn’t have to cook or clean, and if you are lucky, you can have a drink with your meal. In fact, make it a double.