This afternoon, as I put a Toy Story band-aid on my blistered heel, I feel old. It could be because I am hobbling around today with another one of those mystery pains, you know, the ones that show up and are crippling in nature, yet you can’t remember actually hurting yourself and causing that degree of limitation? Then again, it could be because I just spent twenty minutes inspecting my face in the magnifying mirror in my bathroom. Maybe it’s because I cleaned out my baby girl’s underwear drawer to make room for training bras. Or maybe it’s because I’m old.
Old is a relative term on the time continuum. I’m certainly not Egyptian pyramid old, but I am too old to pull off dancing wildly in my car. If a teenage girl is dancing wildly in her car, she’s cute. If it’s someone in my age range, it’s just a spectacle, and not the good kind.
I was hoping by this stage of my life, I would be approaching the self-acceptance, confident phase that comes with experience. Instead, I am still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. The only thing I know for sure, I don’t want to be old.
I wanted to make an appointment for a massage tomorrow, but I won’t because I don’t want the massage therapist to see my roots. You know that inch of dark hair you see on your blond friends every five weeks or so? Well, mine isn’t dark; it’s white. I also plan on avoiding everyone taller than me for the next forty-eight hours until I can go to my hair dresser. Morticia Addams could pull off the white streak. Bonnie Raitt can make it look funky. The rest of us look like we need a babushka to cover our heads on our way out to the field to pick potatoes.
I hung out at the pool yesterday with my friend while my daughters were at day camp. When I told my younger daughter how I spent my day, she asked me if I played in the pool. I pointed out to her that people my age don’t “play.” Normally when I go to the pool, I don’t even get in the water. I sit in a chair and read a book until the heat becomes unbearable. That’s when I slip into the water, complain about how cold it is, then step out and back to my chair and book. I don’t usually swim with my kids because they hang all over me, and they are annoying. Also, I don’t want to lose a contact lens. That happened to me once, when I was sixteen. I was traumatized, clearly, since I still won’t put my head under water after decades. But did my friend and I have an underwater tea party and swim between each other’s legs like tunnels? No, sadly, we didn’t.
Using the word decades also makes me old.
I bought new sneakers last week, and I treated myself to a pair of insoles. I excitedly told my friends at the gym about my new sneakers with insoles. Then it occurred to me that young people don’t get excited about insoles. Old.
My older daughter has been complaining that her ankle is bothering her. She doesn’t remember to take it easy. She just plays soccer and tennis and runs around like the kid she is, and then she wonders why it still hurts. I take the stairs one at a time because even my heel is too mature and set in its ways to try something out of the daily routine.
When you are a teenager, you can sleep until ten o’clock and everyone just thinks you need the rest and are probably growing. When you are my age, they hold a mirror under your nostrils to make sure you are still alive.
Okay, I’m not that old. I can still get pregnant, unfortunately. I can balance on one foot for over a minute. I remember what I had for breakfast and also the score of my IQ test from the second grade. I can order a bottle of wine and sound like I know what I am talking about. I can end a sentence in a preposition if I want to.
On the down side, I can’t go backpacking across Europe and stay in youth hostels. If I joke with the bag boy at the grocery store, my daughter finds it creepy. I look like I should be driving a minivan. I can’t shoot pool, but I can fold a set of king sheets in under two minutes. I take vitamins. Lots of vitamins. And those spots on my arms? They aren’t freckles.
I would keep going, but I don’t want to miss the early bird specials.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Deep Space Nine
We start every summer with a week at the beach. It’s wonderful. School is over and the whole family wants a break from our routine, so we go to the South Carolina coast and stay in a small oceanfront condo, enjoying all the sand and sun and relaxation that goes along with it. Every time we leave, we think how nice it would be to stay longer. So this year, we went to the beach for two weeks. Guess what? We were wrong.
You know that idea that less is more? Well, it should apply to everything. I am pretty sure that’s why gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins. Two weeks at the beach is gluttony. Two weeks of relaxing sounds fun, but it’s really nine days of bliss and another five of desperately wanting to leave and go home. You can’t even say that out loud for fear of starting yet another argument, so even though everyone is thinking it, no one is saying it. Homesick, we all just get snippy with each other instead of appreciating our good fortune that allowed a two week vacation in the first place.
Here is a list of some of the things that I missed on my extended summer vacation:
• My Bed
You know what you want after two weeks, besides your routine? Your bed. Yes, I said it. I don’t care how old or dull it makes me sound; it’s true. I missed my pancake flat pillow and how high my bed is off the floor and the way my headboard doesn’t make a sound against the wall (no, not because of that) and even getting awoken for a little early morning cat lovin’. By the end of two weeks, my neck and back got sore from the hard mattress and the fluffy pillow combo. I swear it had nothing to do with the noisy headboard.
As much as I missed my bed, my two daughters missed theirs even more. They, who each have their own bedrooms at home, shared a room for two weeks. They can’t even share a cookie. It’s like forcing the Odd Couple in to live in an 8x8 space. One of them tried to tidy up her little bit of room every morning and then step over the other one’s sprawling landfill. By day nine, they couldn’t stand to hear each other breathe. Hot pink ear plugs were all over the room.
• Cleanliness
I hear it’s next to godliness. Let’s face it; the beach isn’t exactly a clean place. Why? Sand. Tiny particles of sand. It sticks to everything. I could take a walk on the beach, then go inside the condo and have breakfast. When I would take a shower, I would have sand in my eyebrows. Eyebrows? Seriously? Add to the sand the sweltering humidity and the lingering sunscreen film, and you have the recipe for a rudimentary concrete. A Silkwood shower wouldn’t scrub that shit off. After nine days of sand build up, why even bother showering? You could make a sand castle on my scalp.
• My space
I am fortunate to live in a very lovely and spacious home. Growing up, my house was a small three bedroom/ two bath Florida home, which means something to those of us who grew up in Florida. I have also lived in my share of shithole apartments both during and after college, so I wouldn’t say I have been spoiled. But the condo where we stay is 800 square feet. It’s not bad for a week, but after nine days, it’s like living in an elevator. Add to that the wet towels and bathing suits draped over every available surface. Scratch the elevator; it’s more like living in a laundry room.
• The Internet
I love having Internet access. I enjoy using my smart phone and I like taking my laptop when I travel. It’s more entertaining to me than a television any day. Luckily, the condo building has wifi. What it doesn’t have is functional wifi. I would start the day with attempting to check email, opening maybe one, and then watching that little wheel spin. Spin, wheel, spin. It’s not a big deal, really. Until the ninth day, at which point the Amish were more on the grid than me.
• Vegetables
I love ice cream as much as the next person. But seriously, did we need to eat that much ice cream in two weeks? Damn you, Ben and Jerry, with your chunky ice cream. I know there are allegedly four servings in a pint, but who divides a pint of ice cream into four servings? So we would have to get more. And more. And pretty soon, we forgot we didn’t have to get more, we just felt obligated to do it. Is this how aversion therapy works? Honestly, how can there even be room for any ice cream after the deep fried feast we have just consumed?
And to the restaurants at the beach, here’s an idea: shrimp can be prepared more than three ways. Just watch any Red Lobster commercial. Cold boiled, scampi, or fried? Why yes, I think I’ll have fried again. I want to see if these fried shrimp taste as good as last night’s fried shrimp. Throw a couple of hush puppies on that plate, while you’re at it. Fried flounder? Don’t mind if I do. Wait a minute; do I detect a hint of clam strip? Don’t skimp on the strips, garcon.
For the record, French fries do not count as a vegetable. Ditto for the cole slaw. Shredded pale green cabbage and a carrot sliver swimming in mayonnaise are not going to undo the ice cream and fried shrimp. By the end of day nine, even tartar and cocktail sauces try to pass themselves off as healthy because they aren’t deep fried.
• Solitude
I love my family and my friends, and I love to spend time with them. Walking together, sitting together, talking or just reading and sharing stories and laughter are all a gift. Until day nine. On day nine, even the word together makes the walls close in. My friends and family start to morph into a Guillermo Del Toro nightmare. I’m pretty sure my husband developed eyeballs in the palms of his hands. I’m no better than they are. I’m not nearly as funny as I think I am. I know of at least ten people who would back me up on that.
• The gym
I work out almost every day at the gym, and I do a variety of classes. I like it. It makes me feel good. When I go to the beach, I happily walk every day, the sand beneath my toes, feeling the water lap up around my feet, looking for shells. Until day nine, when my Achilles tendons go on strike. I could walk in the morning, but after sitting in a beach chair for an hour, I could hardly stand. So I constantly stretched everywhere like a Lipizzaner stallion. Gentlemen, I am no Lipizzaner stallion.
By the ninth day, I hobbled around like I needed bilateral hip replacements. Taking two weeks off a fitness routine can be a good thing, but if you’ve overstretched your tendons and walked the skin off the soles of your feet, you can’t just go balls to the wall. You have to ease back into your workout, starting slowly. Starting slowly, by the way, doesn’t work off the daily dose of fried shrimp and ice cream.
• My Town
When I’m at the beach, I love to go to my favorite restaurants and head up to the pier to watch the fishermen and play a few rounds of skeeball. I want to shop at the shops they don’t have at home. I don’t object to a bit of mini golf if it doesn’t get too competitive. I’m happy to walk the flat sandy shore and smell the marshy air. On day nine, the beach becomes a blur of cheap crappy beach stores and lousy seafood buffets with giant crustaceans on the roof. You’ve seen one go-cart track, you’ve seen them all. Didn’t we just pass that ice cream store and fireworks stand? For the love of God, does this town have a library? I am pretty sure there should be a tree or two somewhere around here. And how is anyone supposed to breathe with all this humidity?
• Sobriety
Nobody made me order vodka or rum or tequila every night. I get that now. It’s a choice. A poor choice. A nightly mixed drink did not take the edge off; it just packed the calories on. It certainly didn’t make me more pleasant to be around.
Actually, it was a good choice. Because if I had to look at those faces in those 800 square feet one more day, something was going to go horribly wrong. In retrospect, maybe I didn't drink enough.
In conclusion, I recommend exactly nine days at the beach. Make sure the weather is good. Pack your baggy clothes. Smile a lot. Have a drink. Maybe get another room for yourself, and don’t tell anyone else where it is. And step away from the ice cream.
You know that idea that less is more? Well, it should apply to everything. I am pretty sure that’s why gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins. Two weeks at the beach is gluttony. Two weeks of relaxing sounds fun, but it’s really nine days of bliss and another five of desperately wanting to leave and go home. You can’t even say that out loud for fear of starting yet another argument, so even though everyone is thinking it, no one is saying it. Homesick, we all just get snippy with each other instead of appreciating our good fortune that allowed a two week vacation in the first place.
Here is a list of some of the things that I missed on my extended summer vacation:
• My Bed
You know what you want after two weeks, besides your routine? Your bed. Yes, I said it. I don’t care how old or dull it makes me sound; it’s true. I missed my pancake flat pillow and how high my bed is off the floor and the way my headboard doesn’t make a sound against the wall (no, not because of that) and even getting awoken for a little early morning cat lovin’. By the end of two weeks, my neck and back got sore from the hard mattress and the fluffy pillow combo. I swear it had nothing to do with the noisy headboard.
As much as I missed my bed, my two daughters missed theirs even more. They, who each have their own bedrooms at home, shared a room for two weeks. They can’t even share a cookie. It’s like forcing the Odd Couple in to live in an 8x8 space. One of them tried to tidy up her little bit of room every morning and then step over the other one’s sprawling landfill. By day nine, they couldn’t stand to hear each other breathe. Hot pink ear plugs were all over the room.
• Cleanliness
I hear it’s next to godliness. Let’s face it; the beach isn’t exactly a clean place. Why? Sand. Tiny particles of sand. It sticks to everything. I could take a walk on the beach, then go inside the condo and have breakfast. When I would take a shower, I would have sand in my eyebrows. Eyebrows? Seriously? Add to the sand the sweltering humidity and the lingering sunscreen film, and you have the recipe for a rudimentary concrete. A Silkwood shower wouldn’t scrub that shit off. After nine days of sand build up, why even bother showering? You could make a sand castle on my scalp.
• My space
I am fortunate to live in a very lovely and spacious home. Growing up, my house was a small three bedroom/ two bath Florida home, which means something to those of us who grew up in Florida. I have also lived in my share of shithole apartments both during and after college, so I wouldn’t say I have been spoiled. But the condo where we stay is 800 square feet. It’s not bad for a week, but after nine days, it’s like living in an elevator. Add to that the wet towels and bathing suits draped over every available surface. Scratch the elevator; it’s more like living in a laundry room.
• The Internet
I love having Internet access. I enjoy using my smart phone and I like taking my laptop when I travel. It’s more entertaining to me than a television any day. Luckily, the condo building has wifi. What it doesn’t have is functional wifi. I would start the day with attempting to check email, opening maybe one, and then watching that little wheel spin. Spin, wheel, spin. It’s not a big deal, really. Until the ninth day, at which point the Amish were more on the grid than me.
• Vegetables
I love ice cream as much as the next person. But seriously, did we need to eat that much ice cream in two weeks? Damn you, Ben and Jerry, with your chunky ice cream. I know there are allegedly four servings in a pint, but who divides a pint of ice cream into four servings? So we would have to get more. And more. And pretty soon, we forgot we didn’t have to get more, we just felt obligated to do it. Is this how aversion therapy works? Honestly, how can there even be room for any ice cream after the deep fried feast we have just consumed?
And to the restaurants at the beach, here’s an idea: shrimp can be prepared more than three ways. Just watch any Red Lobster commercial. Cold boiled, scampi, or fried? Why yes, I think I’ll have fried again. I want to see if these fried shrimp taste as good as last night’s fried shrimp. Throw a couple of hush puppies on that plate, while you’re at it. Fried flounder? Don’t mind if I do. Wait a minute; do I detect a hint of clam strip? Don’t skimp on the strips, garcon.
For the record, French fries do not count as a vegetable. Ditto for the cole slaw. Shredded pale green cabbage and a carrot sliver swimming in mayonnaise are not going to undo the ice cream and fried shrimp. By the end of day nine, even tartar and cocktail sauces try to pass themselves off as healthy because they aren’t deep fried.
• Solitude
I love my family and my friends, and I love to spend time with them. Walking together, sitting together, talking or just reading and sharing stories and laughter are all a gift. Until day nine. On day nine, even the word together makes the walls close in. My friends and family start to morph into a Guillermo Del Toro nightmare. I’m pretty sure my husband developed eyeballs in the palms of his hands. I’m no better than they are. I’m not nearly as funny as I think I am. I know of at least ten people who would back me up on that.
• The gym
I work out almost every day at the gym, and I do a variety of classes. I like it. It makes me feel good. When I go to the beach, I happily walk every day, the sand beneath my toes, feeling the water lap up around my feet, looking for shells. Until day nine, when my Achilles tendons go on strike. I could walk in the morning, but after sitting in a beach chair for an hour, I could hardly stand. So I constantly stretched everywhere like a Lipizzaner stallion. Gentlemen, I am no Lipizzaner stallion.
By the ninth day, I hobbled around like I needed bilateral hip replacements. Taking two weeks off a fitness routine can be a good thing, but if you’ve overstretched your tendons and walked the skin off the soles of your feet, you can’t just go balls to the wall. You have to ease back into your workout, starting slowly. Starting slowly, by the way, doesn’t work off the daily dose of fried shrimp and ice cream.
• My Town
When I’m at the beach, I love to go to my favorite restaurants and head up to the pier to watch the fishermen and play a few rounds of skeeball. I want to shop at the shops they don’t have at home. I don’t object to a bit of mini golf if it doesn’t get too competitive. I’m happy to walk the flat sandy shore and smell the marshy air. On day nine, the beach becomes a blur of cheap crappy beach stores and lousy seafood buffets with giant crustaceans on the roof. You’ve seen one go-cart track, you’ve seen them all. Didn’t we just pass that ice cream store and fireworks stand? For the love of God, does this town have a library? I am pretty sure there should be a tree or two somewhere around here. And how is anyone supposed to breathe with all this humidity?
• Sobriety
Nobody made me order vodka or rum or tequila every night. I get that now. It’s a choice. A poor choice. A nightly mixed drink did not take the edge off; it just packed the calories on. It certainly didn’t make me more pleasant to be around.
Actually, it was a good choice. Because if I had to look at those faces in those 800 square feet one more day, something was going to go horribly wrong. In retrospect, maybe I didn't drink enough.
In conclusion, I recommend exactly nine days at the beach. Make sure the weather is good. Pack your baggy clothes. Smile a lot. Have a drink. Maybe get another room for yourself, and don’t tell anyone else where it is. And step away from the ice cream.
Friday, June 1, 2012
A Three-hour Tour
It sounded like a good idea. A relaxing boat ride after dinner. It was about 7:30, the air was cooler and breezy, and the lake not as crowded with Memorial Weekend boaters and jet skiers. We could enjoy the fresh air and let the kids go tubing. My sister’s and my families all piled into the motor boat in our life vests. I am a stickler for the life vests; it seems every weekend somebody dies on the lake, and it wasn’t going to be one of us.
That’s one of several reasons why I’m not a big lake fan. I’m also not crazy about the part where you can’t stand up in the water, or that it smells bad, or that you don’t know where you are, or that it’s filled with drunk rednecks.
Six of us piled in the boat, with the other two on the tube behind it, and headed out of our cove to the big open part of the lake.The water level at the lake is already so low this year that we had to lower the dock so that it floated farther out in the water. Otherwise, the dock wouldn’t be floating anymore, and the boat would be stuck in the orange clay of the lake bed. The bad part is that when the dock was lowered, no steps were added. The steps now just end, and anyone who wants to get on the dock has to climb down the rocky slope, which is more like a short cliff.
Once we were on the main lake, my husband maneuvered the boat around buoys and over wakes, trying to make the tubing a little more adventurous. We waved at the other boaters as we went past, and then slowed down when we got to the I-85 bridge.
Boating under a bridge is a little surreal. There are statistics about boat accidents stenciled on the bridge supports, just as a little reminder of how dangerous tooling around on the lake can be. To add to the sense of danger are a bunch of ropes dangling from the bridge. Night time fishers will tie their boats to the bridge by throwing a rope over the railing instead of using an anchor. When they are done fishing, they cut the rope, leaving a long piece dangling from the bridge. The result is a series of cut ropes just blowing in the breeze under the bridge. It looks like we happened upon a site where a mass lynching took place, but the bodies had already been cut down. I wouldn’t be shocked to see a body swaying under the bridge.
After we passed the bridge, my husband sped up and curved the boat around to make the tubing more fun. Then the boat sputtered a few times. Then it stopped. He tried to start the engine but it wouldn’t. We were stranded. We enjoyed the beautiful sunset while trying to decide the best course of action. My sister's husband pulled the tube in so the two kids could get in the boat. I guess with all eight of us in a broken down boat, the chances of one of us panicking would be less without having to worry about the two floating behind us.
If you have boat trouble in the ocean, you can always radio the Coast Guard for help. If you have trouble on the lake, your only option is relying on the kindness of strangers. We waved down the first boat to pass us, a small family also out to enjoy an early evening boat ride. They kindly pulled their watercraft up to ours. From the smell of them, they had been enjoying their beer as much as the boating. I don’t know if the alcohol made them nicer, but they were amenable to towing us to the marina, and threw us a rope. My sister’s husband tied it to the bow and they began the very slow process of dragging our boat behind theirs.
Do you know how to get four children to be quiet? Put them on a boat, run out of gas, and then have a boat full of drunk people tow them. The reality of the situation was not lost on them.
By the time we got to the marina, their whining resumed. We gave the rope back to the sots and offered them some cash for their trouble, in case they wanted more beer. They declined and went on their way, leaving us with the fun task of trying to figure out how to fill up a boat.
Did I mention it isn’t even our boat? It’s my other brother in law’s watercraft, and normally he is there when we go tooling around on the lake. So paying attention to the gas gauge isn’t something we remember to do. And filling up the tank before we go out is also not part of our routine. We waited while a houseboat gassed up, then dragged the long hose over from the pump and filled up the boat. I begged some other boaters on the dock for change for a five to buy drinks from the machine for the kids. The lone machine, which only took one dollar bills, even though the drinks cost $1.25. My nephews each wanted a soda. I asked if they were allowed to have caffeine that close to bed, and they assured me my sister would be cool with it. I bought water for my girls to share and we all carried our drinks over to the boat, where the dads were trying to figure out why the lights on the boat didn’t work. My sister took one look at the sodas and disputed my nephew’s claims.
We all piled back into the boat, ready to attempt the journey home. The tricky thing about lakes is they don’t have directional signs. You have to know where you are going, but also where you came from, so you can find your way back to your house or car. That isn’t so difficult if you do it all the time, and it’s light outside. But if you are a novice boater and it’s dark, it’s like driving a car across country while blindfolded. My tween was the only one with decent enough night vision and a good enough memory to help get us back home. My sister’s husband’s job was calling out water hazards like buoys and other boats, while my husband slowly steered us under the bridge and back to the main lake.
You know what else makes four children quiet? The reality of being on a boat in the dark in unfamiliar territory with no lights. My husband drove at frog gigging speed, like he didn’t want to startle any fish nearby, but really he didn’t want to hit that tree jutting up from the bottom of the lake. With the tween’s help, he made it past the tree and back to our cove. It was pitch black, and ten o’clock, and now we all had to figure out how to get back up the rock wall from the dock in the dark. My husband was pumped full of adrenaline and bounced around us, talking about adventure and risk and excitement. The rest of us just wanted showers and a bed.
Here’s a tip: try to keep a flash light or two on a boat, just in case. Also, make sure you have gas and you know where you are. Just sayin’. And one more thing: don’t judge the drunk rednecks too harshly. You never know when you’ll need their help.
Friday, May 25, 2012
Shut My Mouth
You may think you always say the most inappropriate thing, but you’re wrong. I do.
It’s one of my gifts. It stems from the fact that I have no filter, and also that I am generally inappropriate, which is a really bad combination. At least the people who know me well tend to overlook it, but perfect strangers don’t have any warning of what they are about to experience. Even when I am trying to keep things light and make chit chat, I still come up with some real doozies that escape my mouth before my brain can register that my thoughts should be kept inside. It’s not just that I say the most horrible things inadvertently, it’s also that the person that I say them to must somehow muster a response that balances out whatever I have let fly, or just allow my words to plummet to the ground, lead balloon style. I don't mean to put people in that position; I just can't help myself.
Why, just yesterday, I unleashed my bizarro self on my hair dresser. She was painting my hair its one time natural color, and I engaged in small talk in order to keep myself awake. I asked her if she had any plans to travel in the summer, and she said not yet, as they were expecting a family member to pass away, and she did not want to be out of town in case the worst happened. She then proceeded to tell me this horrible story, which I will now relate to you. It was one of those stories that you always hear at the hairdressers, but rarely happens to anyone you know, for which we should all be grateful. The reason she can’t go out of town is that her family is expecting her sister-in-law to die any day.
About a year ago, this young woman of twenty one was driving home from her job at a restaurant on a rainy Saturday night. It was late, after midnight, and she texted her boyfriend to tell him good night as she drove. The literary term for that is foreshadowing. She drove along, not really paying attention, when her car began to hydroplane. She slid off the road, and her car flipped over about three times before coming to rest upside down in a ravine near a small bridge.
Did I mention she was not wearing her seat belt?
Her family and boyfriend assumed she had made it home safely, as it was late at night and no one was expecting her. Her car was not discovered until the next day. She had suffered multiple traumatic injuries, and the lack of immediate medical care worsened her condition to the point where her family was not sure she would make it. She was in intensive care for months, and with treatment, rallied to the point where she could return home, under her parents’ care.
She was not the same girl. She could no longer walk. She could no longer talk. Her ability to communicate, to care for herself, to comprehend, all were gone. Any time she made strides towards recovery or stabilization, she would get an infection or have a respiratory issue, and back in the hospital she would go. And each time, where she had to be resuscitated or just receive other inpatient treatment, she would return home again, a little weaker than before.
She was on a feeding tube. Her parents had to hire round the clock caregivers to help keep her alive. Every few months,she would end up back in the hospital. The family would brace for her death, which would seem like an inevitability, and she would respond to care and get better and everyone would breathe a sigh of relief and go on with their lives until the next episode.
My hairdresser told me her sister-in-law was back in the hospital again, and with all the weight loss and breathing problems she was having, she seemed like she wasn’t going to pull through this time. She told me how hard this has been on her in-laws to watch their daughter slowly die before their eyes, to think that every few weeks her time had come, and yet, by some miracle of modern medicine, she would recover just enough to stay alive. She told me about how her mother in law was making decisions based on emotion and not realism. And she told me about how the doctors were constantly amazed when she would improve.
It was a horrible story. Just horrible. As a parent, I cannot imagine how painful this would be for her family to go through, to maintain their spirits and their faith and hope for the best when what they were faced with was the worst they could imagine, and then to have to keep experiencing that same pain over and over again for a whole year, knowing that no matter what happened, their child was still going to die.
Instead of expressing any of that to my hairdresser, I said this instead: “I bet your in-laws wished she had died in the accident.”
And, because that wasn’t bad enough, I followed it up with this: “It would have been cheaper.”
Lucky for me, my hairdresser works with the general public and knows not to get too riled up by anyone’s words. So she politely agreed with me and continued to cut my hair. I remained silent, the damage already done, and tried to let her concentrate on making me look good instead of my insensitive remarks or the eventual death of her sister in law.
Someone needs to invent an external filter for people like me, if indeed there are other people like me. It could look like one of those electronic voice boxes used by smokers with cancer. I could hold it up to my throat whenever I was about to speak, and the box would somehow transform the atrocious thing I was about to say into something socially acceptable, preferably in that computerized voice.
Actually, that’s not a bad idea. It could start with cancer survivors, and then go on to people suffering from foot in mouth, but eventually could have applications for folks with trouble making small talk or even men uncomfortable with their emotions. One of you engineering types needs to start working on this right away, because my next hair appointment is coming up soon. As horrible as it was for me to say what I did, it would be just as bad to not ask a follow-up “how is your sister in law?” and who knows where that will lead.
Hopefully not to a new hairdresser.
It’s one of my gifts. It stems from the fact that I have no filter, and also that I am generally inappropriate, which is a really bad combination. At least the people who know me well tend to overlook it, but perfect strangers don’t have any warning of what they are about to experience. Even when I am trying to keep things light and make chit chat, I still come up with some real doozies that escape my mouth before my brain can register that my thoughts should be kept inside. It’s not just that I say the most horrible things inadvertently, it’s also that the person that I say them to must somehow muster a response that balances out whatever I have let fly, or just allow my words to plummet to the ground, lead balloon style. I don't mean to put people in that position; I just can't help myself.
Why, just yesterday, I unleashed my bizarro self on my hair dresser. She was painting my hair its one time natural color, and I engaged in small talk in order to keep myself awake. I asked her if she had any plans to travel in the summer, and she said not yet, as they were expecting a family member to pass away, and she did not want to be out of town in case the worst happened. She then proceeded to tell me this horrible story, which I will now relate to you. It was one of those stories that you always hear at the hairdressers, but rarely happens to anyone you know, for which we should all be grateful. The reason she can’t go out of town is that her family is expecting her sister-in-law to die any day.
About a year ago, this young woman of twenty one was driving home from her job at a restaurant on a rainy Saturday night. It was late, after midnight, and she texted her boyfriend to tell him good night as she drove. The literary term for that is foreshadowing. She drove along, not really paying attention, when her car began to hydroplane. She slid off the road, and her car flipped over about three times before coming to rest upside down in a ravine near a small bridge.
Did I mention she was not wearing her seat belt?
Her family and boyfriend assumed she had made it home safely, as it was late at night and no one was expecting her. Her car was not discovered until the next day. She had suffered multiple traumatic injuries, and the lack of immediate medical care worsened her condition to the point where her family was not sure she would make it. She was in intensive care for months, and with treatment, rallied to the point where she could return home, under her parents’ care.
She was not the same girl. She could no longer walk. She could no longer talk. Her ability to communicate, to care for herself, to comprehend, all were gone. Any time she made strides towards recovery or stabilization, she would get an infection or have a respiratory issue, and back in the hospital she would go. And each time, where she had to be resuscitated or just receive other inpatient treatment, she would return home again, a little weaker than before.
She was on a feeding tube. Her parents had to hire round the clock caregivers to help keep her alive. Every few months,she would end up back in the hospital. The family would brace for her death, which would seem like an inevitability, and she would respond to care and get better and everyone would breathe a sigh of relief and go on with their lives until the next episode.
My hairdresser told me her sister-in-law was back in the hospital again, and with all the weight loss and breathing problems she was having, she seemed like she wasn’t going to pull through this time. She told me how hard this has been on her in-laws to watch their daughter slowly die before their eyes, to think that every few weeks her time had come, and yet, by some miracle of modern medicine, she would recover just enough to stay alive. She told me about how her mother in law was making decisions based on emotion and not realism. And she told me about how the doctors were constantly amazed when she would improve.
It was a horrible story. Just horrible. As a parent, I cannot imagine how painful this would be for her family to go through, to maintain their spirits and their faith and hope for the best when what they were faced with was the worst they could imagine, and then to have to keep experiencing that same pain over and over again for a whole year, knowing that no matter what happened, their child was still going to die.
Instead of expressing any of that to my hairdresser, I said this instead: “I bet your in-laws wished she had died in the accident.”
And, because that wasn’t bad enough, I followed it up with this: “It would have been cheaper.”
Lucky for me, my hairdresser works with the general public and knows not to get too riled up by anyone’s words. So she politely agreed with me and continued to cut my hair. I remained silent, the damage already done, and tried to let her concentrate on making me look good instead of my insensitive remarks or the eventual death of her sister in law.
Someone needs to invent an external filter for people like me, if indeed there are other people like me. It could look like one of those electronic voice boxes used by smokers with cancer. I could hold it up to my throat whenever I was about to speak, and the box would somehow transform the atrocious thing I was about to say into something socially acceptable, preferably in that computerized voice.
Actually, that’s not a bad idea. It could start with cancer survivors, and then go on to people suffering from foot in mouth, but eventually could have applications for folks with trouble making small talk or even men uncomfortable with their emotions. One of you engineering types needs to start working on this right away, because my next hair appointment is coming up soon. As horrible as it was for me to say what I did, it would be just as bad to not ask a follow-up “how is your sister in law?” and who knows where that will lead.
Hopefully not to a new hairdresser.
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Tough Love
I consider myself a patient mother, but Jesus, do I have to repeat myself twenty times for my kid to do some pretty basic things? It’s not like I expect them to remember a detailed multistep process, like how to reproduce nuclear fusion in the kitchen out of a rubber band, a paper clip, and an old potato. Just the basics, like get your shoes on before we leave the house, or take a jacket because it’s below freezing outside, or brush your teeth, or don’t forget to pack your lunch, since we eat lunch pretty much every fucking day of our lives.
Yes, it’s true. We do eat lunch every day. It’s one of the three main meals in which we indulge, to nourish our bodies. And we do it often enough so that it should be routine, second nature really, like breathing or peeing or watching mindless television. I take the providing three square meals a day thing pretty seriously. I make sure we have lots of fresh, wholesome foods on hand. I give my family a healthy breakfast and a hearty dinner, chock full of nutrients and fiber and free of chemicals. As far as lunch goes, however, it’s every man and child for him- and herself. At the ages of ten and twelve, my daughters are old enough to be responsible for their midday meal on a school day. Clearly, they have choices, two of them to be exact, eating at school or packing a lunch. It’s not an overwhelming decision, is it?
God forbid my children eat a cafeteria lunch. They firmly believe that filthy insects without hairnets are preparing school meals. It doesn’t matter if it’s a slice of pizza or a chicken nugget or steamed broccoli or a banana; whatever the food, they wouldn’t eat it anymore than they would chew used gum from the underside of a table. My younger daughter, S, will occasionally eat a grilled cheese or mozzarella sticks, since it’s hard to mess those up. The tween, however, is convinced she saw a hair in her soup back in the fourth grade and hasn’t purchased a school lunch in almost three years.
Every school night, after dinner, I get up to put away leftovers and clean up the kitchen. And every night, I remind my daughters to pack their lunches. S doesn’t need to be told twice; she gets up from the table and picks out a balanced assortment of foods to sustain her for a full day of learning. The tween, on the other hand, does not have the attention span to persist at a task like lunch packing. She requires constant reminders and still cannot remember that every day she needs a fruit and a protein and a starch and a dairy item and a beverage. I check behind her most of the time, either pointing out that a six month old baby eats a bigger lunch than what’s in her box, or when I am feeling extra beaten down, just finishing the job myself. It gets old, you know?
Last night, as usual, I reminded my daughters to pack their lunches. S complied, as she normally does. The tween wandered into the other room, texting furiously. She decided later to take a walk. I reminded her to pack her lunch before she left. When she came home, I asked her if she packed her lunch, knowing full well that the answer was no. She said she would after she practiced piano, another part of the daily routine she hates. Before she went upstairs to shower, I reminded her to pack her lunch. If you are keeping count, that was four reminders to pack her lunch. Which is also part of the daily routine. And that’s the part I am getting really tired of.
So last night, I stopped reminding her. I stopped enabling her. I left her alone. She went upstairs and got ready for bed, even coming back downstairs for more water, and still she forgot to pack her lunch. I went to bed and didn’t give it another thought. This morning, when we came downstairs for breakfast, there she was, eating her cereal. I took out her sister’s lunch box and put an ice pack in it before setting it on the kitchen table. The tween didn’t notice that her lunch box wasn’t on the table, like it is every day of her life. I brushed my teeth and got ready to drive the girls to school. S put her lunch box in her back pack and walked out to the car.
The tween grabbed her shoes, then looked in her back pack and noticed her lunch box. “Did you put that in there for me?” she asked me.
“Nope, I haven’t touched your lunch box in days,” I told her.
She turned around and asked my friend MJ, who had spent the night with us, if she put it in her back pack. “Not me,” MJ said. MJ doesn’t pack her tween’s lunch either. MJ barely feeds herself lunch. She is not known for her lunchtime skills.
The tween didn’t find it peculiar that her lunchbox was inside her back pack. She just shrugged her shoulders and got in the car.
On the way to school, I asked her how she would get her lunch in the cafeteria if she needed to buy it. She said she had no idea because she had never bought anything in the school cafeteria. I knew for a fact she had over twenty dollars in her account, so I said nothing. I wanted her to learn to be responsible for herself. I dropped her off at school and told her what I do every morning: make good choices.
Around 10:30, the time the tween eats her lunch, I commented to my husband that she was, at the very moment, realizing she did not remember to pack a lunch. I was feeling both guilty and proud of myself for teaching her a lesson, even if I couldn’t be there to see it. I couldn’t wait to pick her up from school in the afternoon.
When she got in my car, she was in a happy mood, chatting and telling me the daily stories of who got in trouble for what. I asked her how lunch was and she just smiled. She said she had to borrow money from her friend for a slice of pizza because she couldn’t remember her account number. Plus, the computer system was down, so they couldn’t access her account if they wanted to. She ate, as I knew she would, but I wanted more details. I wanted to know what she thought when she opened her light lunch box and found it full of yesterday’s smelly food wrappers. She would not give me the satisfaction. She also did not seem scarred by her lesson in responsibility, although she did admit it got her attention.
When you have to teach your child a tough lesson, sometimes letting them discover it on their own is the best way. Ultimately, the tween knows she has to do some things for herself, that her mother will not always be there to protect her from the world. Seriously, it was just a slice of pizza, not a terrorist attack. I doubt she will even remember it by Monday night, when I again will have to remind her four times to pack her lunch.
Yes, it’s true. We do eat lunch every day. It’s one of the three main meals in which we indulge, to nourish our bodies. And we do it often enough so that it should be routine, second nature really, like breathing or peeing or watching mindless television. I take the providing three square meals a day thing pretty seriously. I make sure we have lots of fresh, wholesome foods on hand. I give my family a healthy breakfast and a hearty dinner, chock full of nutrients and fiber and free of chemicals. As far as lunch goes, however, it’s every man and child for him- and herself. At the ages of ten and twelve, my daughters are old enough to be responsible for their midday meal on a school day. Clearly, they have choices, two of them to be exact, eating at school or packing a lunch. It’s not an overwhelming decision, is it?
God forbid my children eat a cafeteria lunch. They firmly believe that filthy insects without hairnets are preparing school meals. It doesn’t matter if it’s a slice of pizza or a chicken nugget or steamed broccoli or a banana; whatever the food, they wouldn’t eat it anymore than they would chew used gum from the underside of a table. My younger daughter, S, will occasionally eat a grilled cheese or mozzarella sticks, since it’s hard to mess those up. The tween, however, is convinced she saw a hair in her soup back in the fourth grade and hasn’t purchased a school lunch in almost three years.
Every school night, after dinner, I get up to put away leftovers and clean up the kitchen. And every night, I remind my daughters to pack their lunches. S doesn’t need to be told twice; she gets up from the table and picks out a balanced assortment of foods to sustain her for a full day of learning. The tween, on the other hand, does not have the attention span to persist at a task like lunch packing. She requires constant reminders and still cannot remember that every day she needs a fruit and a protein and a starch and a dairy item and a beverage. I check behind her most of the time, either pointing out that a six month old baby eats a bigger lunch than what’s in her box, or when I am feeling extra beaten down, just finishing the job myself. It gets old, you know?
Last night, as usual, I reminded my daughters to pack their lunches. S complied, as she normally does. The tween wandered into the other room, texting furiously. She decided later to take a walk. I reminded her to pack her lunch before she left. When she came home, I asked her if she packed her lunch, knowing full well that the answer was no. She said she would after she practiced piano, another part of the daily routine she hates. Before she went upstairs to shower, I reminded her to pack her lunch. If you are keeping count, that was four reminders to pack her lunch. Which is also part of the daily routine. And that’s the part I am getting really tired of.
So last night, I stopped reminding her. I stopped enabling her. I left her alone. She went upstairs and got ready for bed, even coming back downstairs for more water, and still she forgot to pack her lunch. I went to bed and didn’t give it another thought. This morning, when we came downstairs for breakfast, there she was, eating her cereal. I took out her sister’s lunch box and put an ice pack in it before setting it on the kitchen table. The tween didn’t notice that her lunch box wasn’t on the table, like it is every day of her life. I brushed my teeth and got ready to drive the girls to school. S put her lunch box in her back pack and walked out to the car.
The tween grabbed her shoes, then looked in her back pack and noticed her lunch box. “Did you put that in there for me?” she asked me.
“Nope, I haven’t touched your lunch box in days,” I told her.
She turned around and asked my friend MJ, who had spent the night with us, if she put it in her back pack. “Not me,” MJ said. MJ doesn’t pack her tween’s lunch either. MJ barely feeds herself lunch. She is not known for her lunchtime skills.
The tween didn’t find it peculiar that her lunchbox was inside her back pack. She just shrugged her shoulders and got in the car.
On the way to school, I asked her how she would get her lunch in the cafeteria if she needed to buy it. She said she had no idea because she had never bought anything in the school cafeteria. I knew for a fact she had over twenty dollars in her account, so I said nothing. I wanted her to learn to be responsible for herself. I dropped her off at school and told her what I do every morning: make good choices.
Around 10:30, the time the tween eats her lunch, I commented to my husband that she was, at the very moment, realizing she did not remember to pack a lunch. I was feeling both guilty and proud of myself for teaching her a lesson, even if I couldn’t be there to see it. I couldn’t wait to pick her up from school in the afternoon.
When she got in my car, she was in a happy mood, chatting and telling me the daily stories of who got in trouble for what. I asked her how lunch was and she just smiled. She said she had to borrow money from her friend for a slice of pizza because she couldn’t remember her account number. Plus, the computer system was down, so they couldn’t access her account if they wanted to. She ate, as I knew she would, but I wanted more details. I wanted to know what she thought when she opened her light lunch box and found it full of yesterday’s smelly food wrappers. She would not give me the satisfaction. She also did not seem scarred by her lesson in responsibility, although she did admit it got her attention.
When you have to teach your child a tough lesson, sometimes letting them discover it on their own is the best way. Ultimately, the tween knows she has to do some things for herself, that her mother will not always be there to protect her from the world. Seriously, it was just a slice of pizza, not a terrorist attack. I doubt she will even remember it by Monday night, when I again will have to remind her four times to pack her lunch.
Friday, May 11, 2012
Abstinence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder?
I shouldn’t be shocked by what passes for sex education in South Carolina, and yet, I am. Electric chair shocked. The tween has been “learning” all about human reproduction in her physical education class for the past two weeks, and I have already had to supplement her lessons twice. It’s not that they aren’t teaching accurate information; it’s that the abridged version of the information is so conservatively skewed that they might as well call it sexual mythology.
For starters, why is sex education always taught by physical education teachers, or rather, coaches? You would think that human anatomy and reproduction should be covered in science classes, since it is, after all, science. Instead, the people responsible for grading your ability to change your clothes are the ones who misrepresent reproduction by instructing you to keep those clothes on until marriage. Maybe that’s not fair; it’s not like they created the curriculum, but still, maybe we should leave ball throwing to the PE teachers and let the science teachers talk about actual balling.
The first week, the class covered anatomy and function of the reproductive system. The tween didn’t really want to talk about it much, but the day they covered male anatomy, she was a little squirrely when she got home. I asked her what they learned, and was it just penis and testicles. She told me not to say penis, and also that her friends ran down the halls yelling “testicles!” in an effort to lessen the embarrassment. She then told me she already knew all about the cock and balls, which I didn’t really believe.
“Well, then, what did you learn? Did you learn about the seminal vesicles?” I asked her.
“Gross,” she said.
“What about the prostate? The vas deferens?”
“Stop it, Mom,” she said.
“How about this? Which male part sounds like a spell from Harry Potter?” I asked her.
She blinked at me.
“Spongeosum!” I said, waving an imaginary wand at her.
“Go away!” she said back.
The next week, she came home and told me, “Today we learned all about the STDs and the HIVs.”
“The HIVs?” I laughed.
“You know what I mean. They told us all about the diseases and how to treat them and how to prevent them.”
“How do you treat them?” I asked.
“Medicine,” she said.
“Well, more specifically, antibiotics, for the most part anyway. How do you prevent them?” I asked her.
“Abstinence,” she said. “You should wait until you are married.”
“And that way your new husband can infect you with an untreated STD? Are you serious?”
“What, Mom?”
“Nevermind. Did they talk about condoms?”
“No, but I already know about them because Condom Boy brought one to school. Remember when he got in-school suspension?”
She had already told me about this boy in her French class who was suspended for bringing rubbers to school, earning him the nickname Condom Boy. Have you seen a sixth grade boy lately? I don’t think they could find their dicks unless they can hold an Xbox remote, like an elephant trunk. While sixth grade girls look like they are fifteen, sixth grade boys look like they are nine. But back to the more important part of the conversation.
“What do you mean they didn’t show you a condom? They didn’t even talk about it?”
“No, they just said to wait until marriage. And I don’t think that’s very realistic, do you?”
“No, sweetie. They should have said college, at least.”
She rolled her eyes at me.
I was pissed. This wasn’t sex education. It was morality legislation. If you want to educate a kid, tell them about sexually transmitted diseases and what they can do to you. Frame it with a little history. Who doesn’t want to hear about the madness of syphilis or watch a military film about venereal disease? And then whip out some Trojans and show these kids how to use them. I’m not saying you should pull a volunteer in front of the classroom and roll it on his Johnson. But seriously, we don’t live in 1950. Kids don’t neck and pet; they hook up. With all the sexualizing of our society, why would we decide the best way to educate our kids about sex is to pretend it doesn’t happen?
That night, I decided to do what the school wasn’t willing to do. I took out a condom and showed it to my child. “Look,” I said. “This is the package a condom comes in.” I ripped it open and took it out of the package. “See? Do you want to touch it?”
“No, Mom, gross!” She turned her face to the wall.
“Turn around,” I told her. “I want you to see this. This is what a condom looks like. It smells like a balloon, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t want to smell it!”
“I mean you can smell it from there, not to put your nose in it.” I unrolled it and held it up for her to see. “It rolls over the penis so when it ejaculates, the sperm will stay inside the condom. And also any STDs.”
The tween turned twenty shades of red and giggled. I put my hand all the way inside the condom to show her how it could take some pressure and still not rip. “It’s pretty durable,” I pointed out.
“Please stop that!”
After I finished stretching it all about, I balled up the condom and threw it in the trash. “Those shouldn’t be flushed. Just like tampons. They belong in the trash,” I said.
“I can’t believe you just stuck your hand inside of it,” she said.
“The things I do for you. Besides, it’s not like it was used,” I replied.
We sat down on my bed and I asked her if she had any other questions.
“Well, one. The teacher told us that we have something called a hymen and it tears during sex and also if you use a tampon. Now I’m really scared to try one.”
“You learned about hymens? What about the rest of your parts?”
“I already know the other parts,” she said.
“Did you learn about labia? And the mons pubis?”
“What are you talking about?”
Oh lord. Not this again.
“What parts did you learn?”
“Nothing I haven’t heard before,” she said.
“But they didn’t tell you anything! Did they teach you what a clitoris is?”
“What’s that?” she asked.
I sighed. “A clitoris is, um, a very sensitive part of your female anatomy. It has a lot of nerve endings in it, and it helps make sex pleasurable.” I thought that was vague but accurate enough.
“Nasty. Do boys have a clitoris too?”
“No, all their nerve endings are in their penis. Everything pretty much works through the penis.”
Yeah, the whole world revolves around it. Including sex education, apparently. I found it very odd that they would learn very detailed male anatomy but nothing of their own.
“Well, why do girls have one?”
“Think about it. Sex is about reproducing, but if it doesn’t feel good, no one would want to do it. If it’s all ripped hymens, we would die out as a species.”
“You have a point,” she said. “Can we stop talking about this now?”
“You got it.”
As angry as I was and still am that the educator's answer to preventing disease is abstinence, I am just as angry that the curriculum would go into great detail for male anatomy but only concentrate on the hymen for females. So in South Carolina, sex education is all about keeping your hymen intact and waiting until marriage. What the hell? Do they get an envelope to open on their wedding nights with the all the details that they weren’t allowed to learn at public school? And this coming from a state with one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the nation. Gee, I wonder why.
If they want to make these kids wait until marriage, why not really teach them about STDs? With pictures. I guarantee if middle schoolers could see a penis covered in genital warts, chances are pretty good they would all keep their pants on and legs closed. But giving teenagers inadequate and incomplete information isn’t going to prevent anything except ignorance. They need to be armed with good information about how their bodies work and what the risks are for certain activities. Why even call it sex education?
I read a year or two ago that some kids who make abstinence pledges engage in anal sex because they don’t think that counts as losing their virginity. Do we want our sons and daughters butt fucking because they think it’s a sin to have regular intercourse? How’s that for some twisted logic? As uncomfortable as it was to have that conversation with my daughter, at the end of the day, I know I did the right thing. She knows I will give her good information, and that I will tell her the truth. She also knows she can ask me anything. And the best part is, she is so freaked out about the whole idea of sex that I know I have a few more years before we have to talk about it again.
For starters, why is sex education always taught by physical education teachers, or rather, coaches? You would think that human anatomy and reproduction should be covered in science classes, since it is, after all, science. Instead, the people responsible for grading your ability to change your clothes are the ones who misrepresent reproduction by instructing you to keep those clothes on until marriage. Maybe that’s not fair; it’s not like they created the curriculum, but still, maybe we should leave ball throwing to the PE teachers and let the science teachers talk about actual balling.
The first week, the class covered anatomy and function of the reproductive system. The tween didn’t really want to talk about it much, but the day they covered male anatomy, she was a little squirrely when she got home. I asked her what they learned, and was it just penis and testicles. She told me not to say penis, and also that her friends ran down the halls yelling “testicles!” in an effort to lessen the embarrassment. She then told me she already knew all about the cock and balls, which I didn’t really believe.
“Well, then, what did you learn? Did you learn about the seminal vesicles?” I asked her.
“Gross,” she said.
“What about the prostate? The vas deferens?”
“Stop it, Mom,” she said.
“How about this? Which male part sounds like a spell from Harry Potter?” I asked her.
She blinked at me.
“Spongeosum!” I said, waving an imaginary wand at her.
“Go away!” she said back.
The next week, she came home and told me, “Today we learned all about the STDs and the HIVs.”
“The HIVs?” I laughed.
“You know what I mean. They told us all about the diseases and how to treat them and how to prevent them.”
“How do you treat them?” I asked.
“Medicine,” she said.
“Well, more specifically, antibiotics, for the most part anyway. How do you prevent them?” I asked her.
“Abstinence,” she said. “You should wait until you are married.”
“And that way your new husband can infect you with an untreated STD? Are you serious?”
“What, Mom?”
“Nevermind. Did they talk about condoms?”
“No, but I already know about them because Condom Boy brought one to school. Remember when he got in-school suspension?”
She had already told me about this boy in her French class who was suspended for bringing rubbers to school, earning him the nickname Condom Boy. Have you seen a sixth grade boy lately? I don’t think they could find their dicks unless they can hold an Xbox remote, like an elephant trunk. While sixth grade girls look like they are fifteen, sixth grade boys look like they are nine. But back to the more important part of the conversation.
“What do you mean they didn’t show you a condom? They didn’t even talk about it?”
“No, they just said to wait until marriage. And I don’t think that’s very realistic, do you?”
“No, sweetie. They should have said college, at least.”
She rolled her eyes at me.
I was pissed. This wasn’t sex education. It was morality legislation. If you want to educate a kid, tell them about sexually transmitted diseases and what they can do to you. Frame it with a little history. Who doesn’t want to hear about the madness of syphilis or watch a military film about venereal disease? And then whip out some Trojans and show these kids how to use them. I’m not saying you should pull a volunteer in front of the classroom and roll it on his Johnson. But seriously, we don’t live in 1950. Kids don’t neck and pet; they hook up. With all the sexualizing of our society, why would we decide the best way to educate our kids about sex is to pretend it doesn’t happen?
That night, I decided to do what the school wasn’t willing to do. I took out a condom and showed it to my child. “Look,” I said. “This is the package a condom comes in.” I ripped it open and took it out of the package. “See? Do you want to touch it?”
“No, Mom, gross!” She turned her face to the wall.
“Turn around,” I told her. “I want you to see this. This is what a condom looks like. It smells like a balloon, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t want to smell it!”
“I mean you can smell it from there, not to put your nose in it.” I unrolled it and held it up for her to see. “It rolls over the penis so when it ejaculates, the sperm will stay inside the condom. And also any STDs.”
The tween turned twenty shades of red and giggled. I put my hand all the way inside the condom to show her how it could take some pressure and still not rip. “It’s pretty durable,” I pointed out.
“Please stop that!”
After I finished stretching it all about, I balled up the condom and threw it in the trash. “Those shouldn’t be flushed. Just like tampons. They belong in the trash,” I said.
“I can’t believe you just stuck your hand inside of it,” she said.
“The things I do for you. Besides, it’s not like it was used,” I replied.
We sat down on my bed and I asked her if she had any other questions.
“Well, one. The teacher told us that we have something called a hymen and it tears during sex and also if you use a tampon. Now I’m really scared to try one.”
“You learned about hymens? What about the rest of your parts?”
“I already know the other parts,” she said.
“Did you learn about labia? And the mons pubis?”
“What are you talking about?”
Oh lord. Not this again.
“What parts did you learn?”
“Nothing I haven’t heard before,” she said.
“But they didn’t tell you anything! Did they teach you what a clitoris is?”
“What’s that?” she asked.
I sighed. “A clitoris is, um, a very sensitive part of your female anatomy. It has a lot of nerve endings in it, and it helps make sex pleasurable.” I thought that was vague but accurate enough.
“Nasty. Do boys have a clitoris too?”
“No, all their nerve endings are in their penis. Everything pretty much works through the penis.”
Yeah, the whole world revolves around it. Including sex education, apparently. I found it very odd that they would learn very detailed male anatomy but nothing of their own.
“Well, why do girls have one?”
“Think about it. Sex is about reproducing, but if it doesn’t feel good, no one would want to do it. If it’s all ripped hymens, we would die out as a species.”
“You have a point,” she said. “Can we stop talking about this now?”
“You got it.”
As angry as I was and still am that the educator's answer to preventing disease is abstinence, I am just as angry that the curriculum would go into great detail for male anatomy but only concentrate on the hymen for females. So in South Carolina, sex education is all about keeping your hymen intact and waiting until marriage. What the hell? Do they get an envelope to open on their wedding nights with the all the details that they weren’t allowed to learn at public school? And this coming from a state with one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the nation. Gee, I wonder why.
If they want to make these kids wait until marriage, why not really teach them about STDs? With pictures. I guarantee if middle schoolers could see a penis covered in genital warts, chances are pretty good they would all keep their pants on and legs closed. But giving teenagers inadequate and incomplete information isn’t going to prevent anything except ignorance. They need to be armed with good information about how their bodies work and what the risks are for certain activities. Why even call it sex education?
I read a year or two ago that some kids who make abstinence pledges engage in anal sex because they don’t think that counts as losing their virginity. Do we want our sons and daughters butt fucking because they think it’s a sin to have regular intercourse? How’s that for some twisted logic? As uncomfortable as it was to have that conversation with my daughter, at the end of the day, I know I did the right thing. She knows I will give her good information, and that I will tell her the truth. She also knows she can ask me anything. And the best part is, she is so freaked out about the whole idea of sex that I know I have a few more years before we have to talk about it again.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Sloppy Seconds
I think I accidentally made love to the cat.
Before you throw up in your mouth, let me add I was not an active participant. It just sort of happened, kind of like a one night stand in college.
A few weeks ago, my husband and I decided to engage in consensual marital relations, and we closed our bedroom door so as not to disturb the children sleeping in their rooms or the neighbors or anyone else who might happen to walk by at that late hour. Normally, we sleep with our bedroom door open because both my cats have Houdini genes and can open any interior door in the house. Instead of us listening to a cat hanging off the doorknob until it opens, we allow the kitties access to our bedchambers at night so we can maybe catch a little shut eye. They have a system. The crazy girl cat, Yoko, opens the door, and the stupid male cat, Moshe, flies in the room and settles down on the bed. They work together as a super annoying team.
In the cat’s defense, Moshe isn’t used to being excluded from the room. Normally, he hides under the bed or behind the chair while we are fully in the throes of ecstasy. When we finish, there he is, watching from the nightstand, judging us silently. When he gets the all-clear signal, he slinks to the foot of the bed and goes to sleep. And knock it off; you all know you do it in front of your dogs.
This time, however, the door was closed. We did it, and then my husband got up to open the bedroom door before we nodded off to dreamland. Well, who comes bounding in the room but Moshe, and he’s really pissed off that he was left out of the fun. He hopped right up on the bed, not even waiting for my husband to get back on his side of the bed, and he starts making biscuits in my armpit.
Making biscuits is that thing when cats knead their paws and purr. Moshe is a big boy, a good fourteen pound tom cat, so he can’t very well climb on my tummy and make biscuits, lest he rupture my spleen. So he settles for my right armpit. I generally don’t mind because I exercise a lot and my shoulder and upper arm muscles get pretty sore. Plus, he was declawed after he turned my sectional sofa into a cat condo at the young age of four months, so his little cat fingers are strong but not sharp. A little cat massage helps work out those kinks.
He picks the right side of my body because my husband sleeps on the left side of the bed. My husband does not like his sleep disturbed by overly affectionate cats in the middle of the night, and Moshe is fully aware of this. One time, when my husband came to bed late, Moshe decided to start loving on me. My husband knocked him out of the bed and said, “Bitch, please,” which made us both to laugh for a good twenty minutes, because where did that come from?
Anyway, Moshe was working hard at my armpit, and I didn’t move. His moments of affection don’t last that long, so it’s better to be still and wait till he finishes. Otherwise, he has to start over again, and I rather just get it over with. I lay still, and he pumped his little paws in my armpit, just purring and kneading and happy as can be. Then he made the weirdest noise, sort of a half meow/ half yowl, almost like he was in pain, and everything stopped.
Yes, I thought it was creepy too. He got out of my armpit and started sniffing around on the bed in the general area where his backside was. Satisfied, he curled up and fell asleep next to me. I wasn’t about to turn on the lights and see what happened because that would have been an acknowledgement that something had indeed happened. Also, turning on the light would have alerted my husband to the possibility that something happened, which was not a good way to end the evening. I tried to put the whole thing out of my mind, and I too went to sleep.
The next morning, neither my husband nor I nor the cat discussed what may or may not have gone down in the bedroom the previous night. In fact, I am kind of hoping my husband doesn’t read this blog. I don’t want him to think I enjoyed it or anything, or that I plan on letting it happen again. Although, I have to admit, my shoulder felt great the next day, even if I did feel a little cheap and used.
Before you throw up in your mouth, let me add I was not an active participant. It just sort of happened, kind of like a one night stand in college.
A few weeks ago, my husband and I decided to engage in consensual marital relations, and we closed our bedroom door so as not to disturb the children sleeping in their rooms or the neighbors or anyone else who might happen to walk by at that late hour. Normally, we sleep with our bedroom door open because both my cats have Houdini genes and can open any interior door in the house. Instead of us listening to a cat hanging off the doorknob until it opens, we allow the kitties access to our bedchambers at night so we can maybe catch a little shut eye. They have a system. The crazy girl cat, Yoko, opens the door, and the stupid male cat, Moshe, flies in the room and settles down on the bed. They work together as a super annoying team.
In the cat’s defense, Moshe isn’t used to being excluded from the room. Normally, he hides under the bed or behind the chair while we are fully in the throes of ecstasy. When we finish, there he is, watching from the nightstand, judging us silently. When he gets the all-clear signal, he slinks to the foot of the bed and goes to sleep. And knock it off; you all know you do it in front of your dogs.
This time, however, the door was closed. We did it, and then my husband got up to open the bedroom door before we nodded off to dreamland. Well, who comes bounding in the room but Moshe, and he’s really pissed off that he was left out of the fun. He hopped right up on the bed, not even waiting for my husband to get back on his side of the bed, and he starts making biscuits in my armpit.
Making biscuits is that thing when cats knead their paws and purr. Moshe is a big boy, a good fourteen pound tom cat, so he can’t very well climb on my tummy and make biscuits, lest he rupture my spleen. So he settles for my right armpit. I generally don’t mind because I exercise a lot and my shoulder and upper arm muscles get pretty sore. Plus, he was declawed after he turned my sectional sofa into a cat condo at the young age of four months, so his little cat fingers are strong but not sharp. A little cat massage helps work out those kinks.
He picks the right side of my body because my husband sleeps on the left side of the bed. My husband does not like his sleep disturbed by overly affectionate cats in the middle of the night, and Moshe is fully aware of this. One time, when my husband came to bed late, Moshe decided to start loving on me. My husband knocked him out of the bed and said, “Bitch, please,” which made us both to laugh for a good twenty minutes, because where did that come from?
Anyway, Moshe was working hard at my armpit, and I didn’t move. His moments of affection don’t last that long, so it’s better to be still and wait till he finishes. Otherwise, he has to start over again, and I rather just get it over with. I lay still, and he pumped his little paws in my armpit, just purring and kneading and happy as can be. Then he made the weirdest noise, sort of a half meow/ half yowl, almost like he was in pain, and everything stopped.
Yes, I thought it was creepy too. He got out of my armpit and started sniffing around on the bed in the general area where his backside was. Satisfied, he curled up and fell asleep next to me. I wasn’t about to turn on the lights and see what happened because that would have been an acknowledgement that something had indeed happened. Also, turning on the light would have alerted my husband to the possibility that something happened, which was not a good way to end the evening. I tried to put the whole thing out of my mind, and I too went to sleep.
The next morning, neither my husband nor I nor the cat discussed what may or may not have gone down in the bedroom the previous night. In fact, I am kind of hoping my husband doesn’t read this blog. I don’t want him to think I enjoyed it or anything, or that I plan on letting it happen again. Although, I have to admit, my shoulder felt great the next day, even if I did feel a little cheap and used.
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