Sh*tty Mom

  At a wine bar. Fun. Ha.

  End it once and for all by taking your friend up on her offer. Say “yes.” Bring your two-year-old daughter and make sure she didn’t nap. Unleash the dogs of hell that is a toddler meltdown. Let your child’s cries etch new neural pathways to the pain center in your friend’s brain. Let your friend see your life now. Loud. Exhausting. Embarrassing. Endless.

  She will never suggest it again.

  Remember: It’s OK to say, “What part of ‘No, I have a kid, call me in eighteen years’ don’t you understand?”

  Guide for Noms Who Just Won’t Go Away

  So you’re the Nom we’ve been talking about. The Nom who can’t take a hint. The Nom who won’t let her best friend completely abandon her for Baby Island. Even though that pal of yours took Sh*tty Mom’s advice and let her two-year-old ruin your fancy, single-people wine tasting.

  Your tenacity is admirable. You have a good heart, and quite frankly, she doesn’t deserve you. And she isn’t done trying to crush your spirit. All you can do is be prepared to entertain her baby the next time you insist she bring him out to lunch. Try to fit at least one of these things in your stylish, small clutch:

  * A box of crayons. Kids are always ready to draw. And one day, just because, sign your credit card slip with Burnt Sienna.

  * Coins. They’re fun to stack, fun to count. Also fun to swallow, so they aren’t good for a small baby.

  * Wipes. Kids like to wipe things (except their nose when it’s runny). Bring a small container of wipes and your table will gleam.

  * Keys and a smartphone. If you forgot everything listed above but you still have keys and a smartphone, you are set. The baby will love the keys and his mother will love the smartphone.

  SECTION EIGHT

  YOU

  AREN’T

  PARANOID,

  EVERYONE

  DOES

  HATE YOUR

  BABY

  * CHAPTER 33 *

  Tantrum at a Tar/Wal/K/Sam’s/Mart/Club/Get

  (or Sears)!

  Kids let you know it’s coming. Their eyes grow dead and dull, like a killer’s. Their limbs jerk, and their sticky hands begin frantically searching for hair to pull. They start shouting, “No!” and “I can do it by MYSELF.” You have only seconds to decide: Do you finish up what you’re doing, or leave?

  It depends where you are. Should other people be subjected to your kid’s tantrum? Not at a movie, restaurant, or church. Basically, any place with a cover charge. (And tithing is a cover charge—to God.) Don’t be a dick and ruin someone else’s good time. Yes, it sucks, but it’s temporary. Before you know it, your awful toddler will morph into a sullen teenager that will refuse to be seen with you.

  Then you’re home free.

  However, if you’re at the mall or any store that sells kids’ stuff, it’s your call. Absolve yourself of guilt. Stores are trying to attract your child’s attention. They want her to terrorize you until you are too tired to fight back. They arrange their shelves so that she will repeat “I want” a hundred times in a row until you sigh “All right” and buy her the doll, the action figure, or the Snickers bar.

  Stores get what they deserve.

  Target and Walmart ought to have alarms that moms can sound when they spot a warning sign. Ideally, a winged Target Team Member would fly you, your child, and your full cart to the parking lot. As you buckle in your kid, the Target Team Member would ring up your purchases, then put them in the car. And, while we’re fantasizing, it would be nice if all tantrums occurred at a Victoria’s Secret. To let their customers know that lingerie has consequences.

  You may feel you ought to leave before your business is taken care of.

  “Everyone’s looking at me and thinking I’m a terrible mother,” you fear. Well, you are right. They are. But what those people don’t know is that you are providing a service. Your child is a PSA on parenthood. Because of you, condom sales are skyrocketing. The mall’s office supply store is experiencing a run on Sharpie pens, bought by young women who will use them to write “Take BC pill!” on the back of their hands. All so they don’t become you: a trapped, helpless thing at the mall. Your child is contributing to the local economy. Pat her on the back—once she stops arching it. If people won’t think you’re a terrible mom, they will think that motherhood is a terrible thing.

  If you refuse to cave in, look in your purse. Do you have food? No? Can you take some off a store shelf and pay for it when you get to the cash register? Do that. Then buy a Sharpie pen from the office supply store and write “Bring food!” on the back of your hand.

  Remember: Spanking, while cathartic, merely increases the noise, and you can’t beat your kids for being tired or hungry. Save the physical abuse for something special, like when they crash your car or get into your liquor.

  When Your Child Observes That the Woman Standing in Your Checkout Line Appears to Have Stopped Dieting in 2004

  If your kid isn’t tantruming in the store, he’s embarrassing you by pointing to larger shoppers and saying, “Mommy, that lady is fat!” It’s important to note that your son is not trying to be a jerk—he’s just shouting what you and all the other grown-ups are silently thinking. Kids are nature’s profilers.

  What can you do?

  You can’t tell your kid not to notice if someone is big, tall, short, bald, hairy, white, or black. They will grow up to be terrible police officers, ineffective fiction writers, and horrible at telling jokes about three different types of people who simultaneously walk into a bar. But kids do need to know that it is rude to call a person fat to their face. For God’s sake, make sure they’re out of earshot.

  Part of socializing in a Western culture means lying, constantly. Not only do you not tell a woman she is fat, you ask her if she has lost weight. Especially if it’s clear she has not. Does your friend, who just got divorced, look awful? Insist she’s never looked better and demand to know her secret. Some thoughts must stay in one’s head, caged like animals, until they can be let out. This is how deals are made, legislation is passed, and treaties are signed. Wait until the old man excuses himself before you talk about his hunchback. Wait until the president of Iran leaves the U.N. before you say, “If that guy thinks we’re gonna let him build a nuclear bomb, he’s crazy.”

  * CHAPTER 34 *

  Stop Looking for a Great Babysitter and Settle for One Who Shows Up On Time

  If you are in the market for a babysitter, you either just had your first baby, or your old sitter quit. You gotta break someone in, fast.

  * Do not trust your friends. No one gives up a good sitter. If a “friend” recommends hers, rest assured it is her “C” sitter. Her backup’s backup. It’s the sitter that eats food labeled “do not eat” and turns the channel even though the DVR is recording, so that three minutes into the season finale of Breaking Bad, you will be watching Teen Mom. You are getting someone else’s sloppy seconds. Meanwhile, her “A” sitter, the one who shows up on time and never minds if you’re home late … that sitter is a secret, like a teen pregnancy in the ’50s.

  You are on your own. You are Scarlett O’Hara after Rhett dumped her on the way to Tara. Helpless Melanie is nursing in your wagon, and your reins are steering a dying nag through Yankee-held territory.

  * Scope out your neighborhood. Is there a clever-eyed thirteen-year-old, or an empty-nested fifty-year-old? Pick wisely, because this person will spend hours in your house, unsupervised. She may find your tax records or stumble upon your vibrator(s). She could take pictures of the scissors on the changing table and tweet them to CPS. You leave yourself open to ruin.

  * Post an ad on Craigslist. Before you open the first response, decide how important it is that the sitter know the difference between “their” and “they’re.”

  * Gender profile. Illegal? Yes. But this is not a federal job, it’s babysitting. No one will know. And while no one’s saying that a man should not be allowed to babysit, Sh*tty Mom is saying that men on Craigsl
ist should not be allowed to babysit. What if he clicked on “childcare” only because he got no response from “men seeking women”?

  * Lower your standards. It would be great if sitters got down on their knees and engaged their charges. But seeing as how your kid bores you, it’s a stretch to think the sitter will enjoy sitting on your floor, playing LEGOs. In fact, if she’s anything like the great 1970s babysitters of our youth, she will play with your kid until you’ve backed the car out of the driveway. Then she’ll drop the toys and let your kid watch TV while she talks to her boyfriend for three hours.

  Just as the good Lord intended.

  Remember: Oh, to be a babysitter, and live in a world where “Do Not Eat” means “Please Eat,” and “Be here at eight” means “Text me at 8:10 to say you’re running late.”

  * CHAPTER 35 *

  Yes, the Babysitter Is Judging You

  It was just yesterday that you were fourteen years old, out with your friends on a Saturday night. Looking at magazines, listening to music, making out or getting felt up. Curfew was approaching, and you’d call your mom, begging her to let you out past ten … just this once. She’d say no and you’d close up shop. Pull David’s hand out of your bra, button up your blouse. You’d get home five minutes late, and your mom would be sitting on the couch, waiting for you. Pissed. You’d stomp off to your room and plot life after your eighteenth birthday. You’re gonna stay out all night. Every night. For the rest of your life.

  Hell, yeah.

  A few decades have gone by. You’re a mom now. A woman. You’ve had jobs, paid rent, made a baby. For that alone, you deserve some goddamn respect. And now you’re out on a Saturday night. Date night. You’re wearing heels that hurt and the bottom half of your legs are shaved. Dinner was great. The wine is working, your man looks hot, and this place has a band. It’s close to ten P.M. You ain’t done yet.

  Oh yes you are.

  Your teenage babysitter just replied to your text. No, you may not stay out past ten. She has a track meet tomorrow morning. She’s seeded first in two events, and she told you that when she took the job.

  “pls b home at 10 like u sed”

  You get back at 10:15. She and her mother, who’s picking her up, are waiting on your couch. Waiting for your buzzed self. You apologize profusely and pay her till eleven, but it’s not enough to wipe the pissed look out of their eyes. You’re a jerk who doesn’t put her kids to bed and comes home drunk.

  And late.

  Like prostitutes, babysitters are paid cash to do things that you do for free. And they don’t even have to pay out to a pimp. They hold all the cards. All you can do is minimize their judgment and the guilt you might feel for going out.

  * You are allowed to leave your babies. Movies must be seen, karaoke must be sung, and dinners must be had with the husband or that tall guy from Match.

  * Use more than one babysitter. And make sure they don’t know each other. Select from a different age bracket, class, race, religion, and ethnicity. Rotate them. If you’re going out four nights in a row, bring in at least two babysitters.

  Multiple babysitters are good for the kids’ emotional IQ. They’ll learn how to talk all kinds of women into letting them stay up past nine. Kitchen cabinet politics—it’s how presidents are made. The child who is adept at persuading an Asian teenager, a white grandma, and a middle-aged African-American into letting her blow through bedtime will grow up into the adult who rules the world.

  Remember: Whatever you do that requires a babysitter is no one’s business.

  * CHAPTER 36 *

  Motherfucking Babies on the Motherfucking Plane

  You are trapped in an awful place (a plane) with awful people (passengers) who will hate you even though it’s not your fault they can’t afford to charter a private, child-free jet.

  1. Babies are supposed to cry on planes.

  Their eardrums are popping and they don’t have the manual dexterity to perform the “hold your nose” trick. Crying is an appropriate response to pain, at any age. In fact, the babies who should be demonized on a plane are the ones who don’t cry. What kind of baby sleeps through inner-ear pain? A terrifying baby! A dangerous baby! A baby with ice in its veins and a heart made of rocks. Yes, you may be suffering now, but remember: A baby who cries on a plane will not grow up to suffocate you in your sleep.

  2. Make an effort to soothe your baby.

  Feed, bounce, sing, and read. Check the diaper. You know the routine. The odds are that none of it will work, but your diligence makes you look good, and the real problem here isn’t your crying baby.…

  3. The real problem: other passengers.

  Aside from a few understanding grannies, you will be reviled from the moment you pre-board the plane. Hipsters will roll their eyes, and businessmen will start pounding gin and tonics like they’ve been cast in Mad Men.

  4. Buck up.

  One day, all of these douchebags will retire. They’ll crack open their IRAs and realize they didn’t save enough, having spent too much on things like airfare and plane booze. And what will they be forced to live on? Social Security. Which will be funded by taxes taken from the paycheck of your crying baby. Instead of shrinking in your seat, see your fellow passengers for who they really are: deadbeats who will spend their final years sucking on your baby’s teat.

  5. Tune out.

  Put on your noise-canceling headphones, open a tab on your Amex, and crank up whatever music makes you feel young again.

  6. But what about … Benadryl?

  Yes, Benadryl will put your baby to sleep, but where’s the fun in that? Can’t every problem in life be temporarily solved with a few drops of Benadryl? Why not call this book Booze and Benadryl, and be done with it? C’mon, let’s think outside the medicine box.

  OH, I DON’T NEED THIS CHAPTER BECAUSE I HAVE AN IPAD.

  Good for you. All your problems are solved. But guess what, sister? Batteries die, and planes get stuck on runways. For hours. And iPads don’t pack themselves. By all means, bring it, but like all sure things in life, count on it to fall apart when you need it most.

  Remember: These asshole passengers were themselves once asshole babies who ruined flights. And not the shitty flights of today, but wonderful flights with dressed-up stewardesses, free emergency-row seating, and a smoking section. They have some nerve criticizing you.

  Ways to Make Your Kid Stop Kicking the Seat

  Once, we sat in front of a mom who did not stop her child from kicking our seat, and the back pain lasted for days. Be a Sh*tty Mom, not an Extra Sh*tty Mom.

  * Take your child on walks up and down the aisle. He will burn energy, and you can confront your accusers, eye to eye.

  * Take off his shoes. If he does kick, it hurts his toes more. (And the person in front of you will hurt less.)

  * Sit on his feet. If you are heavy—even better. Make that baby weight work for you.

  * CHAPTER 37 *

  Miss Work Without Saying It’s Because of Your Sick Kid

  Your kid is sick, too sick to fool a teacher. He has to stay home. And you don’t live in Sweden or Denmark, where they’re cool with that. You live in America, where your employer can easily replace you with someone who has no kids. Or someone who has kids who don’t get the flu. Or someone who has kids with the flu and has no problem sending them to school.

  You have two options, depending on your marital or co-parenting situation.

  1. Make his dad do it.

  The odds are pretty high that staying home to care for a sick kid will hurt his career less than it will hurt yours. Sadly, the women at work love it when men are good fathers:

  Female coworker (Donna): “Oh, isn’t he wonderful! Stepping up and taking care of his children.”

  Female coworker (Kate): “Those poor kids, saddled with a mother who doesn’t care.”

  Donna: “What a shame. Maybe he’ll leave her one day, for the children’s sake.”

  Kate: “Well, if he does, he can bring that fine ass
of his over to my house.”

  Donna: “I hear that.”

  Which is the exact opposite of what happens when you are a good mother:

  Donna: “Oh, she claims her kid is sick. Please. Didn’t her kid get sick last year?”

  Kate: “Yes. I wonder if she’s making him sick. Do you think she has Munchausen syndrome?”

  Donna: “I don’t know, but if that kid of hers is gonna get the flu every winter, she should stay at home until he’s in college.”

  Kate: “Exactly. And maybe she can get that fat ass of hers back in shape.”

  Donna: “I hear that.”

  2. You stay home, but tell no one why.

  Actually, a good thing to do would be to travel back in time and tell no one that you even have a child. Especially if you are a single mom. No one wants to hear how hard it is, or how tired you are. That’s your problem, honey. To married moms and the single Noms, you are their worst-case scenario. They look at you and say, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

  NO ONE IS YOUR ALLY.

  * Men without kids don’t want to be reminded that children exist. In fact, most of them don’t want to be reminded that women can bear children. They are in the “whore” phase of their Madonna/Whore complex.

  * Men with kids don’t want to hear their own children whine for juice, much less yours.

  * Older women with kids are annoyed that you’re getting away with this. Back in the ’90s, they got mommy-tracked if they stayed home with a sick child. You have it so goddamn easy.