Squeak’s Squeals

I received an email from Roo’s second grade teacher.  She says Roo is “very disorganized, unprepared for class and frequently off task.”  While my initial response was ‘be grateful you don’t live with her,’ I opted for a slightly more gentile approach to the actual reply.

So, we now send a notebook back and forth everyday (cheesily titled “My Travel Book” by a teacher who doesn’t want to single Roo out and make her feel different from the other children… I personally think a couple days of making her feel different might be the kick in the pants she needs to get her crap together… but what do I know?  I’m just her mother… it’s not like I’ve had seven solid years of dealing with her behaviors and habits or anything…. ).

Regardless of how I feel about the hippie-dippy, politically correct, happy horseshit nonsense they try to force feed the kids in school, I still have to play along or risk being branded a “bad parent” and frowned upon for my child-rearing techniques.

So, every night, I sign the damned notebook and Roo and I discuss its contents and “how it makes her feel”…. it’s a load of utter crap.  Not to sound like some horrible, insensitive, evil bitch of a mom, but I don’t really CARE how it makes her feel.  If the teacher says to clean your desk, you need to clean your desk.  Period.  End of discussion.  We do not need to attend therapy to discuss what emotional stresses are causing her to not clean her desk.  I can tell you exactly why she doesn’t clean her desk… it is the same reason she doesn’t clean her room… she doesn’t want to.  And as long as the fear of punishment doesn’t exist, she will continue not doing what she should be doing.

Why DOES she clean her room?  What prompts such miraculous behavior?  She is afraid she’ll lose her .mp3 player or won’t be allowed to stay at a friend’s house this weekend.  She is afraid I’ll get mad enough to crack her rear-end and have a go at her room myself…. accompanied by a trash bag.

Maybe I’m too ‘old school’… maybe I’m just more bitter and jaded than I realize… maybe it is my mother’s constant ’shit happens, deal with it’ attitude reborn… but one day these kids will be out in the world with no one to coddle them, no one to care if they’ve had their feelings hurt, no one willing to discuss how something makes them feel.  And they’ll have to survive.

When Roo is 16-years-old, donning a brown visor and a nametag and scrubbing the machine-gunned diarrhea of a sweaty, middle-aged, fat man off the bathroom wall at McDonald’s, no one is going to consider her feelings.  No one is going to care if it makes her feel like less of a person.  They will only care that the job is done.

And when her shift is over and she comes home in tears, I’ll dry her big blue eyes, hug her close and whisper softly, “Shit happens.  Deal with it.”

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I stopped by WalMart’s handy-dandy Tire and Lube Express department this morning to have a headlight replaced (I’ve been a padiddle for the last two weeks…  And calling a three hour wait for a bulb change “Express” is blatant false advertising, but that’s a rant for another day).

Today’s rant involves musical talent - or the lack there of.  You see, while I was patiently waiting for the line up of work release convicts to finish with my car (one guy had “FTW” tatooed on his forearm… while I am fully aware of what this means INSIDE the prison system, I prefer to believe he’s just a REALLY hardcore gamer), I stopped by the handy-dandy McDonald’s-in-WalMart… because nothing says ‘white trash’ like eating at a restaurant INSIDE a WalMart.  “Hoowee, Charlene!  I is gonna take you someplace REAL special fer our first date… an affer dinner, we can splits us a apple pie!”

Ok, back on topic - I ventured into the white trash Hell within the white trash Hell and orded up a fish combo (cuz nothing says ‘fine seafood‘ like a deep fried slab of fish on a bun).  I picked a little two-seater table and proceeded to dip my first mushy-assed fry in ketchup (no complaints here, I LOVE mushy-assed fries).  It was then that I saw it - across the distance of the entryway, on the opposite side of the 900-year-old people greeter, under the uber vents that blast you with the only shot of hot and/or cold air you’ll get while you’re in the store, on a poster inside the little You’re-Stealing-Our-Shit sensor panel.  Dost mine eyes deceive me?  I blinked hard and looked again.  Nay, nay, mine eyes dost not seem to beist deceptive.  Nevertheless, I looked down at my fries, trying to rend from my mind the image now burned to my cornea.  No!  It cannot be!  Fate would not be so cruel!  This is not proof of a just and loving God!  I looked up again, just to be certain.  And, alas, it would seem as though my childhood has come back to haunt me.  For there, before my very eyes, was a sight I had last beheld in 1994.

It was a piece of my life, my youth, my childhood that I had hoped would remain packed away in my mother’s attic right next to the shoe strings, pillow cases, nightgowns, framed posters and t-shirts bearing their name.  But Noo-ooo-oooo!  They have to come back FOURTEEN years later for a “reunion tour” and remind me just how lame I used to be (which is considerably lamer than I am now, which is truly saying something).  Regardless, the rumors are true, the nightmare is real: The New Kids on the Block have reunited.

And calling themselves “Kids” at this point in their lives is really very, very sad.  For everyone.  I realize “New Men on the Block” makes them sound like a bunch of dirty perverts, but New Kids!?  Seriously?  Maybe they could rename the ‘band’ “Midlife Crisis on the Block”….  I’d be much more down with MCOTB.

As I munched my greasy sammich and sipped my fountain lemonade, I tried desperately to avoid looking back at the poster, but to no avail - it was like a train wreck.  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t pull my gaze from it.  Even now, as I hide in the secluded safety of my own office, I still see them… old and married, but none donning wedding bands…. some pudgy, some balding, some obviously, flamingly gay… why, God, why!?!  Of all the skeletons to bring forth, why THIS one!?  Does anyone else have a mental image of Jesus waving his arms to “The Right Stuff” “Hangin’ Tough”*?  Or is it just me?

You’ve noticed, I’m sure, that I’ve added an image of the wonderkins as they are today.  This is the exact poster that caught my eye across the Wally World lobby.  Just one question: Is that really a V-neck wife beater?  Pimpin’.

Some things are better left in pieces.  Boy bands would be at the top of that list.  And to the New Old Geezers… so long and thanks for ruining my square fish.

You'll find more disturbing flashbacks at humor-blogs.com.

Have you ever sat at home - wide awake at 6 o’clock on a Saturday morning - and felt the itch?  The fierce internal need to go out and do something childish and stupid?  It’s like an urge for a mini midlife crisis (or in my case, since I refuse to count myself among the mid-aged, a mini PRE-midlife crisis).

I went through this a few years back - before meeting the Neanderthal - while facing the impending damnation that is and/or was my 30th birthday (oh, vile, evil day of despair - I still wear black to mourn the loss of my youth).  Anyway, it manifested itself as a serial dating binge - it was something insane, like 30 dates with 25 men in three months.  Then the Neanderthal popped into my life and it all stopped.

But the itch has returned.  The need to do something completely, utterly stupid is slowly taking over any conscious attempt to subdue the desire.  And, no, I don’t mean that I am desiring to date 25 more men (puhleez!  Once is enough, people!  Honestly, how many men can one woman tolerate before she snaps?).  What I mean is I just want to do something reckless and stupid like I would have done ten years ago - perhaps spending a weekend in an alcoholic stupor (one weekend is all it would take… my body simply can’t process that crap like it used to), or maybe grabbing the girlfriends for an improptu road trip with no map, no plan and no destination (ah, the good ol’ days), maybe a costume party in an outfit no one should actually wear in public (last time this happened, the GFs and I went as a pimp ‘n hoes…. holy cleavage, Batman!  I was so proud of my alabaster orbs).

Regardless, my point here is that there is a fire burning deep in the darkest recesses of my bowels and slowly working its way through the rest of my body where I will be overcome by the craving, the thirst - nay, the insatiable hunger - to spend a weekend living free and wild (and probably half naked).  Well, here’s hoping when I finally succumb to my fevered lust for immaturity that it is (1) blog-worthy and (2) without police intervention.  w00t!

The girls go wild at humor-blogs.com.

My children. Oh, my children. I love them. I do. Very much. More than life itself, even. But the bottom line: I really don’t like them much at all. Except when they’re sleeping. Then they’re angels.

For those of you who have not yet experienced the joys of child rearing… well…. buyer beware. For those of you that have…. it’s nice to know I’m not alone. I believe Denis Leary said it best, “…immediately, when they hit age five, your life becomes about peace and quiet. You just want the fighting to stop.  Can’t we all just get along!?…” Can I get an ‘Amen!’ for Brother Leary?

I am pretty much convinced at this point that my children are indeed trying to see just how far they can take things before someone dies - them, me, the neighbor, a random groundhog - doesn’t matter who or what… so long as someone or something is dead when it’s over.

It’s as if I tucked them in one night - all cute and sweet and innocent and wonderful - and I awoke the following morning to find my house in the midst of a hostile takeover by a race of bipolar, mutant midgets.

Honestly, how many times should I really have to repeat the line, “No, you can’t have scissors,” before it sinks in?? Two, you might say. Perhaps five. Or ten. Or twenty-five. Oh, nay nay, my friends. It is a line that must be spoken, like a broken record in an abandoned building, one hundred and seventy times - elevating vocal volume every five repeats until finally you start to feel your skull crack (for I firmly believe arguing with children causes your skull to crack, which in turn allows tiny amounts of brain matter to seep out under your skin where it congeals and forms the lumps and lines that society perceives as ‘wrinkles’ while simultaneously making one utterly, ridiculously stupid). At this point, you just scream it, “NO! YOU CAN’T HAVE SCISSORS!” Just a note to those non-parental types out there: If the neighbors couldn’t hear it, you didn’t yell it loud enough.

Oft have my dreams wandered to a magical place in my head where the walls are all covered in massive pads of Velcro… and all children’s clothing is covered in opposing pads… where anytime, anywhere… you can stop, bend down, pick them up, stick them to the wall… and walk away. And they have mute buttons - hidden where they can’t reach them. And when they are whining, crying, kicking, screaming… throwing tantrums enough to make a colicky newborn stop and go, “Damn! What the f*%k’s HER problem!?”….. you can push the magic button and silence prevails. Ah, yes…. to dream…. though fleeting it may be…. And so it goes… that we live in our little dorky, parental bubbles where life is happy and quiet… and children are well-mannered, well-behaved and always clean…..

But alas, the time has come for me to leave the safety and security of my personal kid-free bubble and start the screaming over again…. this time it’s, “No, you can’t use super glue!” Let the fun begin! Whee!

Yeah... they're funnier than me over at humor-blogs.com.