I can still hear her screams in my sleep.
Before Sophie was born, most of the cards we received were oversized, unfeeling, painfully tasteful cards from other childless boomers or the insurance company. Makes me feel all warm and mushy inside just thinking about the prestamped-in-gold signatures.
Today, our refrigerator looks like the pediatrician’s bulletin board, each friend’s holiday photo more elaborate than the one before it.
The Mommy Wars have sealed it as far as I’m concerned: Next year, it’s Dad as the Grinch and daughter as Cindy Lou Who, complete with a teacup Krazy-glued to her scalp.
Now there’s another buck or two hundred in the therapy jar.
I was thinking about all this as I stood with my daughter, watching her blow out birthday candles that were poked haphazardly into the frosting instead of placed in heirloom sterling silver holders like freak boy’s were over at the next table.
Maybe it was time to simply say no and jump off this silly, mad carousel of competition.
“Mommy.” My daughter looked up at me with shining eyes while Chuck E. himself held her tiny hand in his enormous, and somewhat matted, paw. “Can we have a backyard party next year? With just cake and ice cream and pin the tail on the donkey? Nothing fancy, just me and five or six of my best friends?”
Oh, I’m sorry. That’s not what she said. What she said was, “Where’s my pony? That boy over there said he’s getting a pony today. I want my pony!”
“I’m sorry, honey,” I said a little too loud. “Only children who are adopted can get ponies for their birthday.”
So sue me. Sometimes it’s just more fun to be naughty than nice.
2
“AND WHAT DID YOU
Have for Breakfast, Dear?”
Tell the Preschool Nazis You Had Waffles and Eggs ’Stead of Juicy Fruit and a Coke, Okay?
All these weeks, on the short drive to the preschool, I’ve dutifully unwrapped a Nutrigrain bar and tossed it into the backseat to my four-year-old. Sometimes, I’ll even unwrap one for myself. Studies have shown that it’s very important for families to eat together.
This was all fine until a couple of days ago when I learned that, during “circle time,” my daughter’s teacher likes to ask the children, “Now, what did you have for breakfast this morning? Remember, everyone, it is the most important meal of the day.”
Well, shit.
I felt embarrassed, ashamed, unworthy. Who knows what propaganda the other kids are spreading? Are they reciting menus of fluffy omelettes, homemade jams and jellies, turkey bacon and hand-squeezed juices?
“Teacher always asks us what we had for breakfast,” my daughter said casually, while popping a nutritious and fruit-juice-flavored SweetTart into her mouth.
I damn near drove off the road.
Okay, let’s not panic here. I mean it’s not like we haven’t been down this road before. Of course, our road is strewn with cheeseburger wrappers and half-empty containers of nugget dipping sauces.
I’m used to fudging the truth with the granola moms at the playground. One time, when my kid opened her lunchbox to reveal a Lunchables, I got a look from a mom with hairy armpits who would have been no less horrified if she’d seen my kid pull out a baggie full of white powder and a small mirror.
She flung her monkey arms wide and grabbed her own munchkin lest he see the vile Lunchable and start craving “pizzas” made out of white crackers and “pepperoni-flavored” type product.
Yeah, I know the stuff is crap but some days we just don’t have time to go get a nutritious meal at the drive-thru.
Besides, I get addled at the fast-food drive-thru, especially if I’m ordering for a bunch of people. You try to get the orders right but then they all start screaming stuff in your ear.
“No mayo!” “Make sure that bacon’s well done!” “Wait! Change that barbecue sandwich to a grilled chicken, but no honey mustard and get some pickles on the side so Buford Jr. can do that scary Mr. Pickle Eyes thing he does for the young’uns.”
My voice gets louder with every change until I find myself screaming stuff into the speaker like “Okay, forget all that! Buford Jr. wants a burger, no ketchup, and some tater tots.”
Here’s a tip: They don’t know who Buford Jr. is.
Usually I just give up, burst into tears from the pressure, and settle on a big orange drink and a box of cookies.
Even if I get the orders right, there’s that awful question looming.
“Would you like to make that a combo?”
Well, heck, yeah. I guess. I mean, should I? What do you think?
While others sizzle in line behind me, I’m weighing the benefits of upsizing against the guilt of starving children in sub-Saharan Africa in case I can’t finish it all. If they ask if I want the two-for-one peach turnover special, we could all be there for days.
Back at the playground, the hairy mom was making quite the show of producing bagfuls of fresh grapes, which I have seen before in stores but never knew people actually bought. Monkey girl loudly mentioned that she was baking her own bread these days because of studies that showed many commercial bakeries had rat doo in their mixing machines.
While her bird-legged kid sat miserably munching a bag of dehydrated green peas from the hell food store, I popped a can of Pringle’s like it was Champagne.
The moms I could handle, but teachers? That’s something else altogether. Teachers have always intimidated me. When I arrive for parent-teacher conferences, I spend the whole time shifting from foot to foot, twirling my hair, staring at the floor tiles, and mumbling “yes, ma’am” to women fifteen years younger.
“Honey,” I said, finally, “what did you tell the teacher when she asked about your breakfast?”
There was a deadly pause.
“I told her the truth,” she said simply.
“Well, who the hell told you to do that?” I shrieked.
“You did! You said to always tell the truth. Don’t you renember?”
I take time to be charmed for a nanosecond by the cute way she always says “renember” but then I realize that she has betrayed me to the authorities. I am so busted.
“Hmmmm,” I said, running through a thousand possibilities that might be more impressive than yesterday’s one-fourth of a Powerpuff Girl waffle and roll of Lifesavers (again, a fruit derivative, am I right?).
“Why don’t you tell the teacher that you had two scrambled eggs, a bowl of real oatmeal—the kind you have to cook on top of the, uh, you know, stove—two slices of whole wheat toast and a glass of soy milk?”
My kid laughed so hard a SweetTart flew out of her nose.
“Mommy, we don’t eat like that,” she said, howling.
Suddenly, I recalled a fascinating documentary on the morbidly obese I had seen on TV recently.
“No, but we should,” I said with actual conviction. “And, starting tomorrow, or maybe the day after because tomorrow’s going to be really busy, we will.”
She’ll have to help me renember, though.
3
“SORRY I CAN’T MAKE IT
to the Recital”
I’m Planning to Poke Myself in the Eye with a Sharp Stick That Night
Unless you want your kid to spend the whole summer drooling into his Xbox and scratching his naughties, you better have a plan for keeping the lil punkin busy.
Having grown up in the country—yes, so far out that you had to ride a pregnant mule to the mailbox just to make sure you’d have a ride back home—I didn’t know much about summer camps so it was a bit of a shock when I realized all my mom-friends were sending their daughters to ballet camp.
Some of these kids were still pooping in their pants but this didn’t seem to matter to the moms. They acted as if three-year-olds taking ballet was as normal as executions in Texas and, Lord knows, I didn’t want Sophie missing out on what one assured me would be “just the most important cultural opportunity of her whole, entire life is all.”
I’m a
little lazy about these things so I just signed up the princess where all her friends were going and where, I was assured, they didn’t dress ’em up like little ladies of the night in those French ho can-can outfits.
I made the teacher solemnly swanee that, come recital time, Soph wouldn’t be looking all Jon-Benet with a sequined bra, big hair, and Maybelline. That stuff just creeps me out, along with those hideous kid pageants where three-year-old boys wearing mullets and miniature tuxedos compete for Wee Master Southern States Universe.
To tell the truth, the ballet school “directress” sniffed at my makeup worries and said they had a strict no-makeup policy and she casually mentioned that the recital wouldn’t last longer than thirty minutes total. She proceeded to yammer on about how the staff was full of ballet teachers with master’s degrees in movement (who knew?) and how they were all trained at Juilliard and had been on Broadway or touring nationally for years and they’d all danced for kings and queens and presidents.
At the end of all that, I just stared at her in amazement. “You really mean it? The recital won’t last more than thirty minutes?”
Toward the end of camp, we invited all of our closest relatives, friends, and neighbors to the recital. Guess what? Not a single one of them could come. Most said they had somewhere they had to be that day. When I pointed out that I hadn’t told them the date yet, they said they had company coming or were planning some major surgery (“Which organ? Uh, I dunno. Heart, liver, brain, one of the big ones.”) so the whole month was pretty much shot to hell.
I didn’t blame them. I once went to a dance recital that lasted eight hours, no lie. You can only take a dozen or so five-year-olds tap-dancing to “The Good Ship Lollipop” before you’re ready to dig up Shirley Temple and demand an explanation. What? She’s still alive? Well, whatever.
At dance recitals, we get upset and outraged because everybody yaks until their own kid is on the stage and then they get all haughty. Talkin’ ’bout: “What is wrong with you, you mo-ron? America-Sue is up there dancing her precious heart out and you pick this time to tell everybody about how your redneck cousin who’s too poor to own a house or a car tried to kill his self by running his moped inside his tent with the flaps down. I mean, do you mind?”
I dropped my daughter off at her first day of ballet camp, grateful that a neighbor had given her a pink leotard, tights, and ballet shoes for her birthday. Being clueless, I’d just assumed they ran around in Pooh T-shirts and light-up sneakers for the first few years.
At the end of the first day, she ran toward me, clutching a picture of a ballerina that she had colored completely in red, face and all. Was this repressed rage or was her hair scrunchie just too tight? While I fretted about this, Soph reported that they “sangded songs,” “playeded games,” and “danceded some.”
I likeded the sound of that.
Still, ballet wasn’t enough to fill up a summer and that’s where T-ball came in.
Having had zero success in organized sports myself, I was naturally apprehensive.
T-ball? On a team? With uniforms?
As it turned out, the princess was old enough, by just one day, to sign up. We considered this a good omen.
The first practice was an eye-opener. When the coach told his team to run a couple of laps, Soph said she didn’t feel like running. I kneeled at eye-level, my voice a mommy-mix of calm authority and blubbery begging as I pictured the money spent on a bat, balls, glove, and sign-up fees disappearing faster than a Chilly Willy on a hot sidewalk.
When I pointed out that every other member of the team was running laps, she asked me if every one of them ran off the side of a cliff, should she do that, too. I don’t know where she gets this crap.
“Just remember,” I hollered when she finally took the field, “there is no ‘I’ in team!” Lame, but it’s the only coachy phrase I knew and her daddy was still at work.
Just before her turn at bat, she balked at wearing the required batting helmet.
“Hell-o,” she said to the coach, sounding like a size 6X Valley girl. “Someone else has worn this before?” She finally relented but only after we called for a delay of game so I could make her ponytail poke out of the back attractively.
It didn’t take long to see that our team would need some work. In the outfield, they looked up at passing airplanes, down at blades of grass, basically anywhere but at the batter. One little boy spent the whole game practicing his running style. “Here I am as Peter Pan!” he shouted to his father, who promptly buried his face in his hands.
When a ball rolled past Soph, she eyed it without moving, then returned to digging a very deep hole behind the pitcher with the toe of her shoe.
T-ball isn’t the big leagues. In professional baseball, you hardly ever see the second baseman burst into tears over a passing bee or a runner getting tagged out because she paused just short of first base to sing, “Who built the ark? No-ah, No-ah!”
Our team improved dramatically after a couple of brothers who looked way older than the age seven cutoff mysteriously signed up. One of them, I swore, had a pencil-thin mustache.
We won the first game according to my husband, who was actually keeping score.
“It’s just for fun,” I chided him, hefting my lawn chair into the trunk.
“We’re not here to have fun,” he said. “We’re here to win. If we win, we will have had fun.”
And from the backseat: “Daddy, how did my ponytail look when you were doing the video?”
The whole ballet-T-ball summer swirl made me realize that there’s a lot of money to be made in kids’ camps.
From the long list of camps offered in our town, it’s obvious that anybody who isn’t a registered sex offender can offer one. All you need is some skill, any skill, a few fliers, and some Sam’s Club graham crackers. Once you got that, just sit back and watch the $145 camp fees roll in.
I’m tired of being the check-writer instead of the, er, writee. Think about it. The average camp has fifteen kids. That’s $145 per kid times fifteen kids, which brings us to a total of, er, carry the two, uh. Well, lucky for you I’m not teaching Math Camp, isn’t it?
Of course, the first step is deciding what skill you can teach a bunch of three-to-ten-year-olds. For me, that was the easy part. Next summer, I will teach a camp in Sarcasm.
Parents, by the end of the first morning, your child will advance from the tired world of “as if” and (shudder) “Not!”
You may think $145 is a little steep for a camp that doesn’t so much as offer a chance to beat an African drum or fire actual clay into shapes resembling fresh dog poo, but, hey, you’re paying for expertise here, not a bunch of silly supplies.
You say you don’t think sarcasm is a virtue? Okay, I hear you. Just don’t come crying to me if your kid gets his butt metaphorically kicked by one of the proud graduates of my Sarcasm Academy.
You probably have much more important things to attend to, anyway. I heard there was a big square dance and chicken bog extravaganza at the trailer park this week.
While teaching your children, I will draw on wisdom from the heavyweights of sarcasm such as Friends character Chandler Bing (“Could this summer camp be any more lame?”).
Remember: Like most summer camps, I’ll accept early deposits—cash only, please. If your summer plans change at the last minute, your money will be promptly and cheerfully refunded.
Oh yeah. That’ll happen.
4
“YOUR KID’S FEVER IS SO HIGH,THE OTHERS ARE
Standing Around Her with Marshmallows on Sticks”
How My Day at the Spa Went Up Shit Creek
Last August marked my four-year-old’s first foray into formal education, where, presumably, she would learn how to use words like foray. At first, the preschool experience provided loads of “me time.” While my daughter attentively studied one letter per week, I finally had time to get my roots done and eat lunch with friends in the kind of restaurants where there’s no changing table in th
e restroom, foods ending in the word fingers, or a menu that can also be worn as a hat.
My newfound freedom was short-lived because by week eight (the week of H as in “hacking cough”) Sophie had already had two colds, a stomach virus, an ear infection, and a mysterious rash. The Doogie working at the local “urgent” clinic—urgent being somewhat optimistic as we spent two and a half hours with the only reading material a breast self-exam pamphlet, which some funster had added nipple hair to—said the rash was “kinda gross.” We left before he could proclaim my daughter’s sore throat “gnarly.”
Out the door and prescriptions in hand, I shook my head sadly and realized that I could’ve been a great doctor, much better than Doogie. I had always planned to attend medical school but there was just one thing I couldn’t get past. I could not do ass work.
Every time I thought about helping and healing the sick, I felt a surge of pleasure until I reminded myself that there would inevitably be ass work.
Driving out of the clinic’s parking lot, I wondered, for the bazillioneth time why I couldn’t have just specified “no ass work” on my med school application if things had gotten that far.
The truth is, preschool diseases—all diseases—fascinate me. I’ve watched enough medical shows on The Learning Channel to easily pass the boards in a number of subspecialties.
Heart, lung, brain stuff, I would’ve been terrific, no doubt. But anything below the navel, well…
“You’ll need someone else if you want to show me your ass,” I would say, looking compassionate but firm in my starched white lab coat and serious-but-hip doctor glasses.
I know what you’re thinking: why not psychiatry or dermatology? Well, dermatology still offered the threat of a stubborn pimple on the ass. Unless, I could have opened a “Just Faces!” practice, like those vets who only do cats and small birds.
As for psychiatry, there’s probably no ass work per se but you have a bunch of whiny asses coming in all day long. Nope, too close to the metaphorical rectal region for comfort.
We’re Just Like You, Only Prettier Page 5