Raw Drip

Many years ago, my mother, like countless mothers throughout history, cursed me.  She said the magic words all mothers have muttered to their offspring at some point or another, “Just you wait. You’ll see what it’s like to be a parent some day and then you’ll understand.”

I’m starting to understand.

All the ridiculous stories my mother-in-law tells about getting pulled over for speeding while wearing a nightgown because she had to rush some kid to school and didn’t have time to dress, or the one about walking out of daycare with the handbag of the woman who’d been standing next to her slung over her arm, only to be accosted by the police when she returned later for her own handbag – these are things that happened to her because she had children.  Before she had children, I’m sure she was a perfectly normal, intelligent woman moving her way through life.  After – she was a panicky, disorganized mess barely able to remember her own name, let alone the names of her three children.  I’m no statistician, but the relationship between these two circumstances seems undeniable.

My downhill slide began well before I actually gave birth to Adam.  The demands of gestation alone took their toll on me, sapping me of my energy and my ability to concentrate.  After Adam was born the brain cells that were destroyed in pregnancy didn’t seem to be replaced with new ones.  Within weeks of giving birth, and still in a fog of new-motherhood craziness mixed with extreme sleep deprevation, I loaded my visiting mother-in-law, and sister-in-law into my SUV for a little shopping trip.  I looked in my rear view as I backed out of the garage, but it was only the horrible crunching sound of metal on metal that roused me from my coma-like state.  FYI, your husband’s new Mini Cooper will be difficult to see in the rear view of your SUV, so you may want to check and see if he’s parked behind you BEFORE you back out of the garage.  If it hadn’t been for the fact that Dick didn’t want to be a single-father with a newborn, I’m fairly certain I would’ve ended up in divorce court over that one.

The decline continued with the birth of Tabitha 13 months later.  A few months after Tabitha was born, Dick asked me for the key to our safety deposit box at the bank.  I went to the designated key box in my desk drawer only to find that the key was missing.  When Dick called the bank and learned that they charged $200 for a locksmith to drill the lock, I began a week long odyssey of searching boxes, drawers, and file cabinets – all to no avail.  Growing desperate to access the necessary paperwork, reluctantly, Dick and I agreed to the locksmith fee and kissed our Ben Franklins goodbye.  A few weeks later, as we were packing to move, I couldn’t resist the urge to continue looking for the key, one last time.  I opened the key box and there it was – the safety deposit box key.  All this time, it was there – the silver key taped to the lid of the box.  If only I’d remembered that it was a silver key and not the brass key I’d been looking for…

Now that the kids are older and I’m older, the frantic pace of life with children has destroyed any remaining shreds of my dignity.  In recent months I have:

• given the wrong Xmas gift to the wrong person and misplaced another Xmas gift (still haven’t found it)
• worn a shirt wrong side out without noticing until I took it off
• poured myself a cup of coffee, forgotten where I put the cup, and then poured myself a second cup of coffee
• paid the cable twice but never paid the gas bill
• called one of the children by the dog’s name
• forgotten the children’s names and referred to them as “you two”
• forgotten that my glasses were on my head
• forgotten that my keys were in my hand
• left the house wearing two dramatically different shoes

In a most deep and profound expression of my withered state, I’ve fallen into my mother’s speech patterns now, as well. I’ve found the words davenport, lollygagging, and gallivanting are invading my conversations with the children.  Even worse, Dick stopped me the other day as I was about to insert the word “the” in front of the name of a store, as in The Walgreens. That’s just classic looney-mom behavior.  

This morning I realized that my journey to the dark side was nearly complete.  Searching for my laptop, Adam looked on as I frantically overturned cushions and crawled under beds.  Just as I was about to give up and call Dick, Adam burst out laughing.  

“What?  What’s so darn funny?  Why don’t you try helping me out instead of lollygagging!”

“Mommy, you’we siwwy.  Youw waptop bag is on youw shouwdew.”

And it was.  As Adam laughed and pointed at me, overtaken with laughter achieved at my expense, I dug deep into my mourning, misunderstood soul and said the dreaded curse words to Adam – “Some day you’ll be a parent and then you’ll understand…”  

Putting your underwear on wrong side out – $0.  Knowing your curse words are going to work like a charm – priceless.

In this crappy economy job security is a concern for all but a few of us.  For the first time ever, I feel Dick’s job is actually much more secure than mine.   That’s good news since he makes a lot more money than I do.  At least my skills are flexible (i.e. generic) and my income is largely the difference between eating canned versus fresh veg.

The more I think about it, the more I think losing my job might not be the most tragic thing to happen to me.  I’m not really cut out to be corporate material, anyway.  I’m too cynical to tow the party line and disdain anything that smacks of real responsibility.  My idea of being a strategic thinker is planning what I’m eating for lunch while I’m finishing my breakfast cereal.  Besides, life is too short to be spent locked away in a cubicle.  If I get laid off , I think I’m going to have to pursue one of my many “dream jobs”.

Being highly insecure, I’ve mentally set aside several jobs that I think could be “dream jobs” for me.  I had to choose several because I’m terrified that if I actually pursued any of these jobs, I would suck at them or not love them enough to become good, thus turning them into a nightmare.  But of my stash of dream jobs, there is one that I think I might have a natural talent for, that I would really love doing, and that doesn’ t require me to do much more than I do already - which is be my acerbic self.

What is this perfect dream job you ask?  It’s to work for my favorite ecard source – Someecards.com.    Ever since Dick introduced me to their site, I’ve felt a kinship with the artist/authors.  I think my bitter, highly inappropriate perspective requires that I work with a group of like-minded individuals and the someecards people are just my gang.

Inspired by this week’s someeacards newsletter, I decided to take a stab at designing some of my own ecards.  I call them Bitch-ecards (and yes, I know that’s weak and contrived).  Check ‘em out.  And, if you’re looking to hire a bitter, highly inappropriate person to write for you please consider the following as an audition for a spot on your team.

Samantha’s Bitch-ecards

For the kids…

For on the job…

For your spouse…

For after the lovin’…

Crappy image quality aside – what do think?  Should I pursue my dream job, or keep my day job?

In honor of this historic day, my family and I decided to pay tribute to America by doing what every American family with young children has probably done at one point or another; we ate dinner at a local fast food establishment.  Not only did we do this in honor of our American heritage, we also did it because it’s been really freakin’ cold here for the past few days and the kids really needed to expend their pent-up energy before some sort of black hole developed, instantaneously destroying all matter in the universe.  

For us, the choice of fast food dining establishments is easy – it’s Chick-fil-a (CFA) or nothing.  Not only is the food pretty decent, but the larger part of the appeal is the very clean, kid-friendly indoor play area.  Of course, there’s also the added allure of “Kids Eat Free Tuesdays” which features free kid meals with an adult purchase, face painting, toys, and balloons.  

Kids Eat Free Tuesday has become a ritual for our family and, over the past several months, has evolved into somewhat of a weekly reunion.  Week after week, we see the same fellow parents living out their own Tuesday night ritual by gathering to eat cheap chicken nuggets, socialize,  and let their kids play in a contained, highly padded environment.  

I find the Tuesday Night crowd to be somewhat reminiscent of high school.  I’ve noticed that certain cliques have formed amongst the group of regulars.  Like a little “Breakfast Club” rip-off, our Tuesday Night Club features a reliable cast of characters straight from the classic John Hughes flick – including the jocks, the nerds, the preppies, the drama geeks, the punks, the metal heads, and our uniquely southern addition, the bible beaters.  On Tuesday night, rain or shine, the members of these groups seek out their like kind, congregating around broad spans of tables pushed together.  The most elite groups gather around the coveted tables near the glass-enclosed play area with the other groups spreading out to the sides and the outcasts largely hanging out around the rear of the restaurant, near the restrooms.

The jocks are popular, loud, fun and generally identified by their sports gear.  They are typically accompanied by children still dressed in their sports uniforms and they spend a lot of time talking “game” with each other.

Nerds usually present as the parents who come in toting their laptop computer.  Their children are often socially awkward and spend all their time asking intelligent questions about the design of the playground equipment or crafting origami figures out of the paper sacks accompanying their kids meal.

Preppies are easily spotted by their flawless dress, usually in a full-on business suit.  They arrive with sons still bearing neat sweater/oxford shirt combos and daughters still in tidy designer dresses and tights, long after most of our daughters have removed their tights, flinging them carelessly over the backs of nearby dining chairs.  They read the Wall Street Journal while their kids are busy socially ostracizing the other children on the playground.

Drama Geeks are those parents seen with offspring still in costume & make-up from their latest dress rehearsal.  A more disturbing variation of the Drama Geek type, the Pageant Geeks are also known to prowl the Tuesday Night Club.  They arrive with daughters who make Joan Rivers look subtle in her make-up application.  One word for these parents: scary.

Punks & Metal Heads often blend together in a sea of general rebelliousness.  Usually wearing torn jeans and t-shirts, with children in like attire, these parents are the loud, tattooed, swearing, trouble-making types that are always drawing the ire of the Jocks and Preppies, usually for making a scene when one of the Preppies’ toddlers pushes their kids on the jungle gym.  

The Bible Beaters are usually on their way back from, or about to head to, a church function.  Typically, they are toting a bible, quoting scripture, or telling clean variations of dirty jokes as their eerily happy, well-adjusted children play nicely with the other kids.  

Amidst this bizarre time-warp of behavioral predictability & stereotyping, there is irony to be found.  To my disbelief, it’s my high school social outcast husband, Dick, who seems to move effortlessly across all the various social strata.  Not only can he talk game with the jocks, he speaks hard-core business with the Preppies, understands and speaks tech with the Nerds, and makes polite, snappy banter with the Drama Geeks, Punks, Metal Heads and Bible Beaters.  Unlike the chronically awkward person he always was in high school, Dick is a well-liked guy – a real mover & shaker in the CFA social scene.  He moves deftly through the throngs of  Tuesday Night goers, high-fiving and trading good-humored barbs with his Clique-fil-a homies, as I gather ketchup packets and napkins.

How can it be, that Dick has evolved beyond the confines of all the cliques to become friends with, literally, everyone? While I’ve only grown more isolated and judgmental in my older age – finding that my tolerance for B.S. has nearly evaporated post childbirth – Dick’s only managed to broaden his appeal.  How did my title of “person everyone likes” suddenly take a back seat to Mr. Popularity?  Where did I go wrong?

Of course, there is the possibility that I haven’t gone wrong.  Maybe I’ve just grown up enough to see all the cliques for who they are – people who are still too awkward to move outside their comfort zone.  It seems the all too human desire to fit in isn’t just for the younger set.  In an odd twist of fate, I’ve become the outcast, only this time I chose to be one. Rather than trying to fit into all the cliques – an exercise in frustration – my (gasp) 37 years, have taught me to just make peace with myself and enjoy the ride.  Ironically, the same self-confidence that made Dick a social outcast in high school makes him popular as an adult.  Go figure…

In deference to the ritual and doing my part to help end the global economic crisis, next Tuesday I’ll join my family and the rest of the Tuesday Night Club at the local CFA.  I’ll sit back and I’ll watch my former social outcast husband move effortlessly through every social caste.  As I do so, I’m sure I’ll be bemused, yet again, at the ironies of aging.  I’ll look upon the ritual unfolding in this social microcosm knowing that there’s no persona sexier, more irresistible, or more all-American than that of the self-confident man – or woman – and I’ll be grateful to be one and to be married to one.