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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Welcome, all, to the next installment of the Sunday Confessional! This week, I would like to confess to the world at large that I use my children for my own entertainment. No, not your cutesy little “Awww…. she said fwapper instead of flipper!” entertainment. I’m talking the cute bordering on wrong, and sometimes crossing the line.

These are not things I teach my children with the intent to use them as jokes. These are things they pick up naturally over the passing of time. These are the reasons I dread public outings. These are the same things that make me cringe when I get a phone call from the school. These are my angels at their finest:

#10. Starting off the countdown is Roo at the age of 4, who, when asked why she continued to ingest the gold she found while nasal mining, answered, “Boogers taste like chicken.”

#9. She is followed closely by JellyBean with, “I said put me down! NOT THERE!!!” Uttered while over the shoulder of the Neanderthal and upon the realization he was putting her to bed.

#8. JB is on the rise with the classic, “Wow, Mommy! You have a big butt!”

#7. It’s Roo again. This time inquiring, “Mommy, are you a sexy beast?”

#6. Roo holds steady with one of a mother’s most dreaded phrases, “When am I gonna get boobs?”

#5. JellyBean is tearing up the chart while screaming from her bedroom, “You can’t do this to a Princess!”

#4. Royalty holds fast as JB demands, “No, no, no! You’re supposed to say ‘Yes, Your Majesty,’ and bow.”

#3. It’s JB again with a shining moment of logic, “Everybody has a belly button - even fat people.”

#2. Roo comes back strong - and at the age of 2 - after feasting on her own diaper droppings and stating, “This chocolate is yucky.”

#1. It’s the 4-year-old version of Roo, rounding out the countdown, with the infamous, “My butt hurts. (Me: “Why?”) I stuck my finger in it.”

And there you have it, folks! The ten odd, disturbing and wrong phrases uttered by the curtain climbers which have caused me the greatest amusement. Or at least the ten which came to mind this evening. And you also have my confession: that I not only enjoy these little nuggets, but look forward to them for use as my own personal humor fodder.

Looking for more confessions from strangers? You’ll find them at Humor-Blogs.com.

6am, the alarm started its blaring, vindictive beeping. It’s Friday! The one day of the week the sound of my black, plastic, Wal-Mart nemesis doesn’t bother me quite so much.

I stagger out of my room, tugging on my bathrobe, and fire up good ol’ Mr. Coffee. All is perfectly normal as I set about my morning lunch-packing ritual.

Then Roo emerges from her room.

“Mommy! My nose was bleeding last night!”

“Really? Why didn’t you come get me?”

“I was too tired.”

My eyes flew open as my mind was flooded with images of what she may have done with the blood: on the sheets? On her pajamas? On the dirty laundry? Surely, if she was too tired to wake me up, she was too tired to get herself a tissue. Against my better judgment, I inquired as to exactly what she did about her nosebleed. I was not prepared for the answer.

“Well…,” she started. “I was really, really tired. And I didn’t have any tissues. And my sister said ‘No’ she wouldn’t get me one. And you were in bed. And it was dark. And my nose was bleeding. It was bleeding really, really bad. There was a lot of blood, Mommy. And I was scared in the dark. And no body was awake….”

“Roo! Just tell me what you did with the blood.”

“Well…”

“Tell me.”

“You’ll be mad.”

“If you knew I would be mad, why did you put it where you put it?”

“Cuz I was too tired.”

“What did you do with it?”

“It was dark and I was scared.”

“Roo, where is it?”

“Now, Mommy, don’t get mad at me, OK?”

“Tell me what you did and then I’ll decided whether or not to be mad.”

“But I don’t wanna get in trouble.”

“You’re gonna be in more trouble if you don’t tell me.”

“Fine. Well, come look.”

She opened the bedroom door and flipped on the light. I cringed at the thought of waking JellyBean, but I NEEDED to know what Roo did with her forensic evidence. It took a moment or two before I saw it, but when I did, it looked like a scene from SVU (god, I love that show). I glanced over my shoulder to make sure Benson and Stabler weren’t waiting to haul me down to the station for interrogation.

There, above the top bunk (Roo’s bunk), all over the wall, all over the blanket and all over my WHITE curtain, were dots, spots, spatters, drips, smears and fingerprints - all made in blood. The blanket is multi-colored, I wasn’t too worried about that. The wall is covered in that uber-washable Disney wall paint, I wasn’t too worried about that. My beautiful white curtains with the adorable pastel flower embroidered mesh panels, however, will NEVER be the same. No amount of bleach or stain stick is going to remove all the dried blood from her snot locker.

Now, I would like you all to observe a moment of silence in memory of my lovely curtains. Here’s hoping if Detective Stabler ever shows up at my door, it will be to ravish me, not to haul me in for a murder trial…. damn, that boy is H-A-W-T.

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Some days, I can’t help but look lovingly at my Neanderthal and wonder how I lived without him. Most days, I can’t help but wonder how he survived on his own for 11 years.

From his first waking moment, I am barraged with questions that cause me to cock my head to side and wonder if his IQ claim is in the negative range. My all-time favorite: “Honey, how do I make the stove work?” So, you are telling me that for ELEVEN YEARS you’ve never had to turn on a stove? Not once? Not ever? It’s not that difficult to figure out: turn the knob and by the magic of modern technology, you get heat! Amazing, isn’t it?

In one of his more brilliant moments, on a weekend I went to visit my mother, I was driving home when he called my cell. “Where you at?” came his shining inquiry.

“About 20 minutes away,” was my reply.

“Oh, OK. I’ll see you when you get here.” And he hung up.

I walked in the back door to find a literal TRAIL of dirty laundry - all HIS laundry - running from the laundry room, through the kitchen, across the living room and into our bedroom - socks, underwear, jeans, flannel shirts - strewn from one end of our tiny little concrete bunker to the other. When I asked him his reasoning for what was obviously a terroristic attack on our home (damn those laundry bombs!), he looked at me like I was stupid and replied, “Well, I was going to do some laundry, but you said you were almost home. So I left it for you.” We walked on his dirty laundry for a week before he finally realized that I was refusing to touch it.

And, oh, the effect he has had on my offspring! JellyBean - who will be 5 this May - came wondering through the living room with a bad case of the walking farts, little poot puffs escaping with every step. As she climbed onto the couch, she proudly announces, “Whoo! Did you hear that fart!? And, boy, is it sti-i-i-i-nky!” And this comes within 12 hours of her letting one rip in my face during a tickle fight yesterday afternoon.

What happened to my sweet, dainty, feminine little girl? She was tainted by Og the Neanderthal.

Oh, the pride that swells within me when I overhear the girls calling each other retarded pollocks! And how could I ever tire of belching contests between two little pink-clad angels? And who could forget the new, official definition of a “sissy”? According to JellyBean: “A sissy is a boy who wears dresses and makeup.”

Yes, Og has made his mark upon the impressionable young minds of my wee anti-ladies in training.

And so, in honor of my very own Og the Neanderthal and his personal catch phrase, I present to you the “Pat Yourself on the Head Award”. This first one is for you, baby. Any man who can be so amazing and sincere and so obnoxious and oblivious simultaneously, not only deserves an award, but he deserves to have it named in his honor.

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