Ironic Mom

It’s the advent of Christmas Card Season, when things other than bills grace my mailbox. Whenever I get a Christmas card, I go through the Kubler-Ross stages of emotions, from denial (It’s not Christmas again, is it?), to guilt (I really should send Christmas cards), to bargaining (If you’re going to send me a card, shouldn’t you write more than just your name?), to depression (It’s a photocopied letter, sent by an acquaintance in her thirties).

Christmas letters might be fine for those who are retired: my mom writes a decent one (this year’s missive includes her experience driving through a tornado, told in a detached voice).

When we middle-aged folk write Christmas letters, though, they tend to fall into three categories:

The Bragster Version: From sports skills and grades, to the age kids walked at and their height, the Bragster Christmas Letter offers a report card of success. We readers get to compare how inadequate our own kids are. It’s hard for me to use my kids as an example for this, since they’re poster-children for average. They can’t read, they can’t tie their own shoe laces, and they can’t do cartwheels. But here goes:

The Great Bragster Race

The Pretend-It’s-Your-Kid-Writing-The-Letter Version: This version, told from the point of view of children who can barely utter two-word sentences, is at its worst when kids are newborns. Who knows what they’re thinking? So let’s put words in their mouths.

Put-words-in-your-kid's-mouth version

The Cutesy-Font Version: I’d like to start a movement to ban cutesy fonts. Nothing says I’m-still-nine-years-old like a pink curlicue font with hearts floating about the letter “i”.  Throw in Santa stationery and I’m hurling the leftover Kraft Dinner I ate for breakfast.

The Gag-Me-with-a-Spoon Version

This year, though, I’m proud to say I’ve reached Kubler-Ross’s final stage of grief: acceptance. I’m going to summarize 2009 in a Twitter-inspired Christmas card letter. Feel free to post your own 140-characters-or-less version in the comment section. Without further ado, my year in review:

Ballrm dancing lessons w/ hubby sucked. Parents sold farm. Vivi/Will started KG, separate classes. New blog. Still teaching. Happy Holidays.

It’s the end of Black Friday. From corporate America’s perspective, this means today was the biggest shopping day of the year, offering retailers a chance to jump from a deficit (red) to a profit (black). From a parent’s perspective, however, Black Friday means the opposite: bankrolling Santa’s shopping spree will send my VISA card into a one-month hemorrhage; I’ll still be taking care of the oozing debt when the $10 batteries die for the fifth time.

Let me get this Christmas shopping thing straight: I have to buy my kids a present from Santa for a staff Christmas party, another present from Santa for the actual day, stocking stuffers from Santa, and a present from their dad and me. My VISA and I are seeing red. As in red like Santa.

It wouldn’t be so bad if I could find quality toys that were affordable. But one look at this year’s list of Best Toys of 2009 reveals that Santa’s quality control experts were on a twelve month coffee break.

Here Are the Top 5 Toys of 2009 That Really Suck:

1. Fisher Price Smart Cycle Extreme. Okay, instead of taking your kids for a run around the park, going sledding, or playing a game of soccer, you can sit them in front of a DVD on an exercise bike and count their calories while you drink a latte. Now I’m all for preoccupying my kids while I do something else (like write this post), but an exercise bike for kids is clearly a sign of the apocalypse. What next, the mini-Martini mixer? Rumour has it that before the corporate bigwigs named it the Smart Cycle Extreme, they contemplated calling it the Junior Couch Potato.
2. Elmo Tickle Hands. There’s a reason why Elmo wasn’t on the original Sesame Street. He’s annoying, as androgynous-squealing-fur-balls tend to be. This year you get the opportunity to pay the same amount as a full-size Elmo and receive only the hands. Plus, one of the hands is made of cloth, meaning you actually have to make the sound effects yourself. And the price? Ouch, that tickles.

    

   

   The Original Elmo, after his hands were taken

3. Read more…

So yesterday was Celebrate Your Unique Talent Day. Apparently it’s an annual holiday. I don’t know who celebrates it, but I’m guessing their friend-count on Facebook might be in the single digits.

As I alluded to in an earlier post, one of my useless claims-to-fame is that I can sneeze like Donald Duck, a “talent” that not only stops conversations, but also sends people to wash their hands in our H1N1, whose-saliva-is-on-me world. If that isn’t bizarre enough, I can sing Amazing Grace to the tune of The Lion Sleeps Tonight as well as to the theme song from Gilligan’s Island, both perfectly off-key. Nothing I’m going to add to a resume, that’s for sure.

When I was a six, my sister dragged out a tape player the size of a poodle and recorded me hosting a Gong-Show style program. (We were farm kids with little to do in the winter).  If you’ve blocked out memories of The Gong Show, you can watch the clip below, featuring The Unknown Comic . It’s worth it to see a young Steve Martin on the judging panel, or to see the show whose “sardonic outlook continues to influence many unsympathetic talent and reality shows,” according to my research assistant, Wikipedia. If that’s not reason enough, then check out The Unknown Comic’s shoes.

In my own six-year-old version of The Gong Show, I gave talents to my family members and rated them. My dad’s skill was hammering and he pounded his way to a score of 7 out of 10. My brother’s talent was “blowing stinks” (you guessed it: farting); he got gonged, as in big time, wind-up, hit-the-gong-as-hard-as-you-can gonged. Not sure what my sister’s skill was, but it was no doubt pretty good. My mom’s special talent was curling, as in the sport, and she received a 10. And there you have it, my worldview at age six. (By the way, if you’re not suitably bored at this point, watch this video on curling; if you’re still not bored enough, go curl).

In honour of Celebrate Your Unique Talent Day, I asked my five-year-old twins to share what they believe are the unique talents of each of us. According to Vivian, her talent is drawing cats and flowers, William’s good at silly dancing, and Mommy excels at loving and cuddling (I believe this was a thinly-disguised attempt at kissing-up since she desperately wanted a treat). Daddy, according to Viv, is really good at watching basketball on TV. And she’s right, he’s is really good at it.

William then weighed in on the debate. He declared that he was good at playing computer games (insert bad-parenting-guilt here). Vivian, he claimed, was great at playing blocks. He confirmed that watching TV was Daddy’s specialty. As for me? William says my talent is sitting. Freaking great…sitting…I can hear the gong already, while I’m seated on the chair sneezing like Donald Duck. Voted off the island.

Happy Belated Unique Talent Day. If you don’t have one, perhaps you can practice for November 24, 2010.

My 5-year-old twins desperately want a pet. They’d love a cat, but they know their father is seriously allergic to any fluff ball. So they’ve settled on a dog. I try to avoid this debate about pets, because the odds are pretty even. When my husband’s home, it’s two against two; when he’s out, we might have quorum but Vivian and William have a definite majority.

"Two legs good, four legs bad"

(cc) Olaszmelo, used under a Creative Commons ShareAlike License

I don’t want a dog because I don’t want more work. I’ve already taught two kids not to pee on the floor: been there, done that. I’m still working on the don’t-lick-your-plate thing, especially when company’s over. To attempt to silence the issue, I’ve used the Distant Future Strategy; in other words, I’ve told them they can’t get a dog until they’re ten years old. I’m banking on them forgetting about it over the next five years. That’s unlikely, though, given that I first informed them about this arbitrary rule last year, and they still remember. About every second day, one of them says, “I wish we were ten, Mom…”

They’ve taken the dog-theme to heart. A couple of weeks ago, I caught them playing fetch with each other. Days later, William barked and licked his sister. (Evidently, I need to expand the don’t-lick-your-plate rule to include people). After being licked on the leg, Vivian responded by saying, “Nice doggie.”

In this relentless pursuit of getting a dog, Vivian and William have adopted a clever marketing tactic: if you can’t close the big sale, go for a bunch of smaller ones.

Today, they harped about fish and hamsters. Their dad said, “I’ll give you half a hamster. If you keep it alive, I’ll give you the other half.”

The kids looked at him, horror-stricken.

Hamster, Part A and Part B

Adapted from (cc) Anita, used under a Creative Commons ShareAlike License

“How would we get half a hamster?” William asked.

“Carefully,” said his dad.

“Dad, we can’t keep half a hamster alive,” Vivian said, “it’d be dead.”

“You’re right.”

SPCA people, he was kidding. I’m almost sure.

With increasing frequency, I find myself starting sentences with a phrase I thought I’d never say: “When I was your age…” Yup, nothing says you’re old like those words, which have been uttered by old people since the Industrial Revolution.

Usually, “when I was your age” serves as a cop-out for my cheapness. I say things like, “When I was your age, I only had two shoes” (commonly known as one pair), or “When I was your age, we only had four channels, and one of them was in French.” (Of course, it was the French channel we rural kids turned to when we wished to see nudity, which was whenever our parents left us home alone were out of the room. Love the French.).

But there is one statement that I wish to shout from a roof top. It is: “When I was your age, the toys were better.” If you look at this year’s top toy list, you see cheap plastic crap; and, even though it matches the décor of my house, I am loathe to buy any of it for my five-year-old twins.

I miss the toys of my childhood, all of which my parents still have. Yes, they have a moderate-sized toy collection, a Narnia-closet leading to Fisher Price Land, that is renowned in their community. This closet contains classic, quality toys that last — even beyond 35 years at this point. Most of these toys are vintage Fisher Price; in other words, they were manufactured before the company was bought by Mattel, who brought it into chic-millennium-style by downgrading the toy quality to cheap plastic crap.

So, without further ado, I present my five favourite vintage toys from the 1970s:

1. The Little People.
   

   Fisher Price Little People, plotting

   First they were made of wood and then durable plastic (which actually isn’t an oxymoron). You can still buy Little People today but, you guessed it, they’re cheap plastic crap; they’re also the size of a mini-football so no kid will choke on them. While I loved the black and white dog, my favourite out of all the Little People was the angry boy. Who didn’t like that freckly kid who looked like someone just pissed in his Corn Flakes? I even chewed off his orangey-red cap in my own fit of anger. We both survived. That was in the bygone era when parents childproofed their kids instead of childproofing their homes. Back then, experience taught us important lessons, like not to lick ashtrays.

2. The Parking Garage. Even though no child uses the middle level, the garage is timeless. I spent hours putting the little gas nozzle into the little cars’ gas tanks. The pièce de résistance, however, was the elevator. It would carry the little cars up before releasing them down the slide. The entire garage was absolute fun, unless you got one of the Little People’s heads jammed between the elevator and the ground floor, but those guys were durable. It’s the Wile-E.-Coyote-Never-Actually-Dies theory of indestructibility.
3. The Village. Two items made the village legendary: the mail truck and the mail, six pieces of Flintstone-era letters, all deliverable through the door slots of different businesses. I loved the mail so much, I graduated to bigger postal dreams: using my parents’ slotted liquor boxes to sort various papers and envelopes into. Who needs an Xbox 360 when you have Fisher Price and empty liquor boxes?
4. Play Family Camper. The camper was the 1970 kid’s Russian doll set: first the truck, then the camper, finally the boat as the crowning jewel. It was finely accessorized, with a picnic table and a toilet. Parents loved this toy since children could shove all the Little People inside like they were refugees in a shipping container hoping for a better life.

    

   

   Googly-eyed Jack

(cc) brandi sims, used under a Creative Commons ShareAlike License

5. Jack-in-the-Box. The only item in this week’s Top 5 that is not a Fisher Price product is dear old Jack. This toy was made by Mattel before they jumped on the Make-Toys-So-Choke-Proof-They’re-No-Longer-Fun bandwagon. The Jack-in-the-Box hovers beautifully between fear and fun, scaring and scarring both children and adults. Mattel’s Jack (circa 1971) really jumped, sometimes clocking you on your chin. When Jack’s clothing eventually ripped, he became springier than ever. My parents reported that last month, Jack was temporarily freed. On the cue of “Pop Goes the Weasel,” Jack sprung out, sailed through the air, and landed six metres away. Fly, Jacky, fly.

So, to all those born after 1980, I say: When I was your age, the toys were better.

Today is Married To a Scorpio Support Day. That makes me laugh. Is there a support group for people married to bulls? I mean the astrological sign – not the animal or the basketball team — though I supposed being married to a large mammal would necessitate a support group too. 

Be Scared: A Fluorescent Scorpion

Fluorescent Scorpion, by Schristia

People born under the sign of Scorpio are supposed to be intense, obstinate, and persistent, and those are the positive characteristics, so no wonder why their spouses need a support group. Those three traits also describe every child, including my own Alpha and Omega.

Vivian and William are Geminis. Figures: twins born under the sign of twins. How unoriginal. According to the high science of astrology, my children display the following traits: they are versatile, lively, and responsive. Lively? Yes, just drop by my house at 6:00 a.m. on any day, especially weekends. Versatile? Yes, if 5-minute Jekyll to Hyde transformations can be evidence of that. They aren’t usually responsive, unless they’ve consumed chocolate, and then they turn into Tasmanian Devils on speed.

Now for those without children, Halloween is long gone, but for those of us with littluns, its effects are everywhere: from the candy wrappers under the couch to the standing broad jump competitions (with the edge of the dinner table serving as the starting line).

The Holy Grail

In the interests of controlling such chocolate-induced misbehavior, I placed the candy bowls on top of the fridge. This way, I could control the candy, kind of like a Pavlovian experiment involving kids: they behave; I reward them with candy. Well, this worked till they staged their own rebellion.

Last Saturday, while I attempted to sleep in till 7 (spot the mother of young kids), William and Vivian went downstairs for a snack. Normally, they come back with an apple or a bagel. This time, I dozed. I’d spent the past week getting up at 4 a.m. to write report card comments. Sleep had won.

When I awoke to silence, I trudged downstairs to find this scene: William was standing on the cupboard, passing chocolates to Vivian, who was using scissors to cut off the wrappers. It was an efficient assembly line that, if copied on a larger scale by automakers, would still have had GM in full production. Judging by Vivian and William’s chocolate-clown faces, they had a few unionized coffee breaks to enjoy the fruits of their labour.

The Monkey: Caged for a Reason?

A Portrait of a Monkey, by Samantha

Yup, they’re lively and they’re monkeys, almost literally. Born in 2004, the monkey is their Chinese zodiac sign. Although I only read horoscopes at airports and at Dim Sum, one look at these descriptors almost makes me a devotee.

 MONKEY:  These are the active signs of the zodiac… an inner spirit of lightning energy…come up with new ideas…love playing games… play tricks…insensitive … hard to settle.

Hard to settle? No kidding. I bet settling’s also hard for Scorpios, not to mention their spouses. So, to all who live with someone born between October 23 and November 22, “Happy” Married To a Scorpio Support Day. And if your Scorpio was born in the Year of the Monkey, good luck to ya. Really.

It’s report card season, that time when teachers churn out more euphemisms than the Department of Defense did when Bush was in power. I should know: I’m a teacher. And, like my colleagues, I can turn the phrase “should stop spitting on his notebook” into “would benefit from controlling his enthusiasm.”

Still, as useless as euphemisms may seem to be, they are preferable to dysphemisms, those cranky uncles with sharp tongues. Which student – or adult — wants to hear “Your writing sucks and you’re a lazy little shit”?  

What Teachers Want To Say

With all this doublespeak, there is a certain amount of interpretation needed when you read your child’s report card.  Here are three examples submitted by friends, taken from their kids’ actual report cards.

1. “She marches to the beat of her own drum.”  

Translation: She is a space-cadet and rarely follows directions. I do, however, envy her free spirit, something I – as a teacher – am not allowed to show).

2.  “He is a social boy who is well liked by his peers. He is starting to develop good listening skills.”

Translation (provided by my cousin, another teacher): He doesn’t shut up and he doesn’t listen either.

3. “To improve more, she would benefit from writing clearly.”

Translation: I can’t understand a thing she says. She is functionally illiterate. She needs to start memorizing this phrase now: do you want fries with that?

I recently finished 10,000 words of report card comments for my eighth and ninth grade students. With half my brain fried, I decided to write comments that demonstrate my kids’ personalities. To help you out, I’ve translated the euphemisms.

William is a student who has great potential [i.e. We actually worried he'd never smile]. He has occasionally shown a great effort [like when he challenged his sister to a spitting contest]. I am worried that he uses his sense of humour too liberally [like the time he peed on Minnie Mouse at home – on purpose].

Vivian is an extremely conscientious student [She needs a life, and she’s only five]. She would benefit from being more forgiving of herself; too often, she obsesses over inconsequential details [like the time she invaded her mother’s make up, spreading foundation evenly over the beige carpet].

 So when you open your child’s report card, go on a Euphemism Scavenger Hunt. Feel free to post your favourite phrases below. And remember, if the report card seems too good to be true, it’s likely fake.

1. “When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice safe playpen. When they’re finished, I climb out.” (Erma Bombeck)

I’m with Erma on most things, including the playpen – or its euphemistic cousin, the play yard. Like suburban homes throughout the Western world, my home comes equipped with a Time Out Chair. It was originally a spot for William and Vivian to plant their butts after they committed various offenses such as biting their mother or throwing a bowl of Cheerios at their father’s head. Now, though, I’ve co-opted it. “Mommy’s having a time out,” I say. “Leave her alone.”

2. “People who say they sleep like babies usually don’t have them.” (Leo J. Burke)

“Sleep like babies” has to be ranked highly on the list of World’s Stupidest Similes, beating out well-known clangers like “cute as a button” (since when are sewing notions cute?), not to mention comparisons requiring birth control, such as “multiply like rabbits.” When an adult sleeps like a baby, it means she’s got the flu or she’s drunk: Like a baby she aspirates, flails, and wakes up the entire household.

3. “The worst feature of a new baby is its mother’s singing.” (Kin Hubbard)

Of all my talents (I think I have three, if I count my ability to sneeze like Donald Duck), my most accomplished one is knowing what I’m not good at. The first item on my Things-I-Suck-At list is singing, followed closely by wrapping presents. Six years ago, in my pregnancy phase, I was placed on bed-rest. Bored – or in a delusional state – I composed a lullaby for my twins:

Good morning my children, how are you today?

Did the morning wake you, or was it the blue jay?

Let’s get you moving to see what this day brings,

For the sunshine is up and something something something.

Yes, the ending needed some work and the rest of it needed the great-delete-button-from-the-sky, but no matter. By week three of their post-uterus lives, Vivian and William would protest my singing, crying before I missed the second note. Bye bye lullaby and Idol aspirations.

4. “Like all parents, my husband and I just do the best we can, and hold our breath, and hope we’ve set aside enough money to pay for our kids’ therapy.” (Michelle Pfeiffer)

Good lord, Michelle. Not only were you the cover girl for People magazine’s first “50 Most Beautiful People in the World,” but you also have a sense of humour? So not fair. Not to mention the fact that my kids’ therapy fund – if I could manage to save beyond payday – would eat up 50% of my salary. Ya ain’t making me feel much better, Mitch.

5. “Having a baby is like suddenly getting the world’s worst roommate, like having Janis Joplin with a bad hangover and PMS come stay with you.” (Anne Lamott)

I email this quote to every expectant parent I find. It decreases the number of invites I get to baby showers. But maybe this is another simile that doesn’t work. I know many people who’d choose Janis Joplin as their roommate because she’d take medication and eventually pass out. As for a baby…

I was once one of those holier-than-thou women who – in spite of having no children – had very specific ideas on how to raise them.  I recounted many of these myths in So Much for My Kid Commandments.

The ideal that has crashed to the ground the hardest, however, is no TV in the house. My first problem with adhering to this principal was marrying a TV watcher: from NFL games to Apocalypse Now for the twentieth time, my husband’s ability to watch TV is legendary. My second problem is context: I have twins, work full time, and try to write. If I can’t plop my kids in front of Dora the Explorer, how am I supposed to find time to tap on my laptop?

So, I’m a convert. No sense raising children who’ll resent me because they have no TV. Anyway, they need an education in popular culture or they’ll miss the allusions. In twenty years, I’d like them to be able to debate whether or not Austin of The Backyardigans was a bastard child.

Yesterday, I had my own pop culture nostalgia after my cousin sent me a clip of the “Yip Yip Martians and the Phone” in honour of Sesame Street’s 40^th anniversary. If you don’t know the refrain to this, blame your parents.

Does it get better than that? Nope nope nope nope nope.

Instead of seeing TV as the anti-Christ, I let my kids watch cartoons and occasionally educate them about the evils of advertising. Yeah, the tail is wagging the dog, but whatever. This pseudo-education is easy enough since my kids now love Teletoon Retro, which has commercials across the audience spectrum. What other station gives you Barbie ads followed by commercials for First Response Early Pregnancy Tests?

Even though my son can’t remember to wipe his own butt, he can remember every line from commercials. His favourite is the Slap Chop Man.

Yup, five-year-old William can be heard spouting out lines like “You love salad, you hate making it” and “Fettuccine, Linguine, Martini, Bikini.” The one that’s bound to get him hauled to the principal’s office is “You’re going to love my nuts.”

And so begins the education. As a teacher, I should have this pedagogy thing down. But I don’t. Still, I manage to imprint the refrain “Do we need that?” into my kids’ growing brains. When the Slap Chop commercial plays for the umpteenth time that hour, I say, “Do we need that?”

William, not missing a beat, yells, “No, we don’t need that! We have knives!” That’s my boy.

Later, my refrain continues. After the Baby Princess Doll commercial, I ask, “Do we need that?” Vivian says no like she’s a born-again Naomi Klein.

It’s going well, but like most teachers, I don’t know when to shut up. So I prosthelytize. “You’re right. We can’t buy everything. If we bought everything, we’d have no money, no house.”

Vivian, eyes still on the TV, says, “Save money, live better.”

 “Where’d you hear that?” I ask.

“TV,” she answers. Sure enough, it’s Walmart’s freaking motto.