Category Archives: Articles Archive

When my daughter was younger we needed to keep her away from the cleaning supplies under the sink. (For those of you without children who may think that we parents are overly worried about these things, just know this: the same child who turns her nose up at a glass of grapefruit juice because it is “too sour” will happily guzzle down a whole bottle of Pine Sol if given the chance. Don’t ask me why: I don’t understand why college students drink Jägermeister either.)

And so, to keep Clementine from doing Drano shots, we had a special trick. No, we didn’t put child locks on the cabinet. (We tried, but they—along with the toilet lock, the door jamb protectors, and the fridge lock, ended up completely defeating us. The only child-proofing device that ever worked for us were those little things you stick in the outlets so that kids don’t stick a fork in there. And yeah, if given the chance, they will also always stick a fork in there. Again, don’t ask me why.)

We also didn’t put a security gate up in the kitchen. (If you’ve ever fallen over one of those things in the middle of the night, you’ll understand why.) No, we had a much better way to keep Clementine out of the cabinet: the Macarena Monkey.

The Macarena Monkey was a horrible little stuffed monkey her grandmother gave her. It was motion-activated; whenever you got anywhere near it it would start to dance and sing the Macarena. It was completely obnoxious, and not just because it played the Brazilian version of “My Achy-Breaky Heart”—it also smelled terrible. The awful song, the terrible smell and the fact that it had been purchased at a truck stop all made me suspect that it had originally been part of some South American drug smuggling ring. (“See? After we remove the cocaine we can sell it.” “Who would buy such a hideous thing?” “Americans.”)

And yet, despite its questionable provenance, we loved it because it terrified Clementine completely: she would scamper away in fear every time she heard it. Which made it perfect for under the kitchen sink.

Of course, all of this was years ago; I’d actually forgotten all about the Macarena Monkey until recently, when I spotted a tiny little boy busily going through a cabinet and told his mother our old secret. She was intrigued by the idea of it, but questioned whether if had been the monkey or the song that had scared Clementine the most. It was an interesting thought: the monkey had been so awful that it had never occurred to me that it might just have been the song doing the dirty work all along. Then I realized that, in the years since, although Clementine has never shown any other distaste for monkeys, she still loathes bad music—and that’s when I saw the possibilities.

Let’s say I catch Clementine smoking out behind the middle school one day: all I’ll have to do is dance up to her singing “Hey! Macarena!” and she’ll be a nonsmoker for life. The same thing goes for high school. Forget about her ever getting the chance to “park”—I’m sure it will only take one time for her boyfriend to look out the car window and see me bouncing up and down to the beat, slapping my hands on my hips and shoulders, and that romance will be history.

And who knows? I might even still be able to use it when she’s an adult. It’s not like I have to worry about the Macarena ever becoming good (although I might have to worry about it being outlawed). So, if one day you come out of the voting booth and hear “Hey! Macarena!” don’t be worried. It’s just that Clementine has decided to vote Republican.

The other morning was a typical day at our house: I brushed Clyde’s rainbow-colored hair, adjusted his purple tutu, picked a small piece of lint off of his skin-tight “Got Funk?” t-shirt and sent him on his way to school. My husband sat back and watched all of this silently: it was only after Clyde was on his skateboard and out the door that he dropped his head in his hands and said, “What are you trying to do to me?”

“What?” I replied.

“You know what. A tutu?”

“It’s Tuesday,” I explained. “At Marshall, everyone wears a tutu on Tuesdays.”

“Everyone?” he pressed.

“Well, almost everyone.”

He wasn’t falling for it. “All of the girls, you mean.”

“Well, yeah,” I admitted. “All of the girls. And Clyde.”

He sighed. “That’s what I thought.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I assured him. “It’ll all work out.”

And it will. True, Clyde does like his tutu and his Rainbow Brite hair. But he also likes his skateboard, BB gun, and post-apocalyptic video games. He’s a demon on the soccer field, merciless in wrestling matches, and fearless on his bike. But he also loves dancing with Ballet Folklorico and playing the violin. His ideal job right now would probably be concert violinist/super hero/pizza tester.

Is he confused? No: he’s eight. When his sister was his age she wanted to be a Princess Veterinarian. (I was never quite sure if that meant she wanted to a veterinarian and a princess, a veterinarian employed by princesses, or a veterinarian for princesses. That last one doesn’t seem so far fetched if you look closely at pictures of the British royal family. Especially Princess Anne: talk about a horse face.)

But then, everything changed: these days she wants to be an anarchist. (Or maybe it’s “the Antichrist.” Either way—anarchist or Antichrist—she’s closer to being that than to being either a princess or a veterinarian.)

Still, despite this proof that all children (or at least ours) come out of their “girly” phases eventually, I can understand my husband’s point, especially as it would seem that Clyde had only just begun his flirtation with the Princess Lifestyle. (The tutu and rainbow-colored hair is a fairly new obsession—before that he was a straight-up jeans and Spiderman t-shirt kind of guy.)

And yet, despite everything, my husband insists that no matter what happens, he’ll be okay with it. Eventually. As he is fond of saying, “I’ll love Clyde no matter how he turns out—I just hope I don’t have to.” His determined acceptance of the whole thing is actually kind of sweet—so much so that I have been putting off telling him the truth about Clyde’s tutu love. This is a little but inexcusable, since I learned the truth myself the very first day after I picked Clyde up from school after Tutu Tuesday. Bracing myself to hear the worst, I asked him how it went—and his answer told me everything I needed to know.

“It was great,” he had replied, grinning from ear to ear.

“Really?” I pushed. “Didn’t the other boys tease you?”

“Maybe a little,” he replied. “But that was okay, because”—and here he gave me a conspiring glance—“you know what?”

“What?”

“The girls? They loved it.”

I guess my husband can stop worrying now. And I can start.

Last year, when I found out that my daughter, Clementine, had a student teacher from Turkey in her class, I was thrilled. Not only would that give her the chance to learn a little bit about other cultures—world peace here we come—but, also (and most importantly) it would give her the chance to learn not to mess with her mother.

Here’s my reasoning: since I have a friend who spent several years teaching in Turkey I was pretty sure that I could learn to say something completely embarrassing in Turkish by the end of the year. (And by embarrassing I mean embarrassing to Clementine; my ability to embarrass my own self is not hampered by little things like linguistic differences.)

He was reluctant at first (“Are you sure you want to say that to someone you don’t know?”), but finally, after much encouragement—and haranguing—I had my Turkish phrase:

Göt chok sijack. Or, in English, “You have a nice ass.”

I didn’t plan on actually using it, you understand: it was just a threat. With the above embarrassing phrase in hand (or rather, mouth), all I had to do for the rest of the year was threaten to use it any time Clementine gave me grief, and voilá, she would rein it in. “That’s fine,” I’d say. “I understand that you don’t want to (clean your room, put away the dishes, stop strangling your brother). You do understand, however, that the next time I go to school I’ll be saying ‘göt chok sijack’ to Mr. Sul, right?”

As far as threats go, it was very effective—her behavior improved significantly over the course of that semester. Right up until the last day of school, when Clementine, obviously having prepared for this all year long, walked up to Mr. Sul and said, “My mom has something she wants to tell you.”
Now I know that, as the older and wiser one, I could have said something like “Thank you for teaching my dreadful child;” “Have a nice summer;” or even “How are you?” But at that moment, confronted with having to say something, my mind drew a blank, and all I was able to stammer out was—you guessed it—“göt chok sijack.”

Of course the joke was on Clementine, because far from being offended Mr. Sul and I ended up laughing about the whole thing; he even introduced me to his American born wife, who supplemented my meagre Turkish with another phrase, “Amana koiyum,” which means, loosely, “I am having an inappropriate relationship with your mother.”

Which, finally, brings me to the real the topic of this column. Your mother. Or rather, yo’ mama.

You remember yo’ mama jokes, don’t you? “Yo’ mama is so fat she has her own zip code.” “Yo’ mama is so ugly that when you was born, the doctor slapped her.” And so on. Well, here’s the thing: they’re back. Or maybe they never left. Maybe, like athlete’s foot fungus, they just hang around middle school locker rooms, waiting for new hosts. And if that’s true, then they’ve found their hosts in this year’s crop of middle schoolers.

“Yo’ mama is so ugly she’s . . .really ugly,” says Clementine’s best friend, to which she replies, “Oh yeah? Well yo’ mama is so ugly that she’s . . . even uglier.” (Okay, they haven’t quite got the hang of it yet, but they’re trying.)

I know that, as a mama (and as someone whose emotional maturity has moved beyond single digits), I should be appalled at these jokes, but somehow I just can’t.

Because, as I learned from Mr. Sul, (and his wife), nothing transcends culture like an inappropriate reference to someone’s ass—or their mother.

It may not quite be the road to world peace, but it’s a beginning.

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man I put away childish things.” – I Corinthians 13:11.

My son, Clyde, is going to turn nine this summer, and while this doesn’t necessarily mean that it is time for him to “put away childish things,” it does mean that he should probably start giving some serious thought to reining in some of his more overtly “childish” actions. In other words, it means that it’s probably time for him to stop standing naked in front of the TV when his sister is trying to watch “Doctor Who.”

It also might be time for him to stop having long conversations with people when they are on the toilet. And time to stop refusing to flush after he has been on the toilet himself—especially on the grounds that his “product” is just too impressively impressive to flush. (“But look: it’s like a bunch of little people down there. It’s a crowd! A poo-poo crowd!”) I guess that what it really comes down to is that, while it might not quite be time for him to “put away childish things,” it may very well be time for him to stop acting so damn creepy.

The problem is that when he was younger these things didn’t seem all that creepy—at one time they were actually kind of cute. (Disclaimer: to me, they will always be kind of cute. But, then again, I am his mother.) Still, motherly prejudices aside, I realize that what may seem cute in a little boy can easily become creepy in a grown man. And if not exactly creepy, then certainly 40-year-old virgin material. The thing is: how do I convince Clyde of that?

I’ve tried telling him straight out, “Dude, chicks don’t dig it when you talk about your poo-poo,” but this approach doesn’t seem to work. For one thing, he knows very well that “chicks don’t dig it;” his very own test subject—his thirteen-year-old sister, Clementine—lives under the same roof as him. And if that, by some chance, wasn’t enough to tell him exactly what “chicks” do and don’t dig, then her habit of screaming “Get away from me, you perv!” at the slightest provocation would clue him in for sure. (Actually, she shouts it at such a volume that I’m pretty sure everybody in the neighborhood now knows what “chicks” do and don’t dig.)

In fact, that’s probably why he still does it. And while part of me appreciates that there s a certain amount of satisfaction involved in fine-tuning your chick repellant skills to the point where just a mischievous look can send your sister bolting off of the couch and into her room, another part of me is not so sure that this is really a skill you want to bring with you into adolescence.

And so, as much as I’ve enjoyed the show (and who doesn’t appreciate a good game of “Annoy the Older Sister”?) I feel like the time is fast approaching when I may need to think about maybe putting a stop to all of it. Which is why, lately, I’ve been trying to get him to move forward just a wee little bit.

This means that as of now I remind him to flush every time he leaves the bathroom. And it means that I also remind him not to try and engage people in conversations when they are in the bathroom. But most of all it means that I am now constantly reminding him that it is imperative that he “put away his childish things” around his sister. Especially when “Doctor Who” is on.

The other day, while I was spelunking through Clementine’s backpack in a futile search for a permission slip that her teacher assured me had already been sent home twice before, I came across a heretofore undiscovered vein of lost permission slips. Pulling out my trusty pick, I fearlessly set to work, and after a few short hours was rewarded with permission slips for not one, not two, but three upcoming field trips. (On a side note: can somebody please explain to me why, when filling out permission slips, I have to put the exact same information on both sides of the paper? Because the only reason I can think of for doing it that way is in case one side of the paper becomes completely illegible due to bloodstains, and, if that’s the case, then no, you don’t have my permission to take my child on your field trip.)

Anyway, when the confetti of the excavation finally cleared I noticed that one of the permission slips was for a trip to the NAU ropes course, which is one of those team-building exercises that emphasize trust, problem-solving, and overcoming your fears. They usually also involve some kind of above-the-ground element like tight-rope walking. I haven’t done the NAU one, but I’ve done others like it, and personally I’ve always thought they were kind of cool. Which means, of course, that to Clementine and her friends, they are completely dull. (“Walking a tightrope twenty feet up in the air? B-o-r-i-n-g.”)

The ironic part is that she and her friends have been creating their very own ropes course ever since the snow started to melt—and, judging from how often they show up at my house soaking wet, creating a spectacularly unsuccessful one.

Blame it on Rio (the Rio de Flag, that is). The normally dry drainage that runs right through the middle of town (and right behind Flagstaff Middle School) is now, thanks to this year’s Snowpocalypse, a raging torrent. (Well, moving at least.) Which means that several of the usual routes to school are now underwater. Which means that my poor daughter, and her equally poor best friend, (already forced to walk nearly half a mile to school—“But why can’t we take the bus?” “Um, because the bus stop is farther away than the school?”) are now forced to walk an additional twenty or so feet out of their way to get to school.

Their only other option is to risk a perilous crossing of the Rio via a series of smaller and decreasingly less stable dry branches balanced precariously over the top of the fast moving water. Hmm: guaranteed safe (and dry) passage via sidewalk, or sketchy high wire crossing via unsafe bridges of unknown origin. I wonder: which way will they choose? (Actually, I already know: the Law of Watery Attraction states that, when given a choice of how to proceed, a child will always choose the wetter of the two options. And, for the purposes of this Law, please note that the term “child” can apply to anyone up until the age of fifty or so.)

So yeah, they’ll go out of their way to walk through fire (or rather, freezing water) to get to school, but put a harness on them and guarantee their safety and suddenly it becomes “boring.”

Who knows: maybe that’s just the price we pay for creating such a litigious society for them to grow up in—already at age thirteen they believe that nothing approved by an adult can possible contain enough real risk to be exciting. So can we really blame them that, when given the choice between a sanctioned “ropes” course and a sketchy DYI course of their own invention, they choose the homemade model?

Actually, as the person in charge of doing laundry, yes, I can.

The Easter Bunny didn’t come to our house this year. There were no colored eggs, no jelly beans, no bags of green plastic grass—there wasn’t even a chocolate rabbit. What there was instead was cold, hard, cash. That’s right: this year I bought my way out of Easter.

It’s not that I have anything against Easter—out of all the rituals the Christians stole from the Pagans, Easter is probably my favorite. After all, it fits right in with my own personal religion, which is to celebrate anything that involves chocolate, alcohol, or pork products. (If I could find a religious holiday that combined all three I would not only convert, but would probably start going door to door to proselytize.) And yet, despite the fact that Easter comes very close to meeting all three of my requirements (it needs more drinking), this year the whole thing just sort of snuck up on me.

I don’t know why—it isn’t as if I didn’t get plenty of warning: just as the first few crocuses pushing their way out of the snow tells you that Spring is on its way, the first few Cadbury eggs popping up at the checkout stand do the same thing for Easter. And even if you somehow miss the eggs, and the towering bags of Easter candy, you can always figure it out yourself using the secret Easter formula (Easter always falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox—and you thought the Pope just threw a dart at the calendar).

Still, even with all of that advance warning, Easter caught me by surprise this year. And so, faced with the unpleasant prospect of running out at the last minute and getting a bunch of corn syrup disguised as food, I had three choices: I could pretend that I had suddenly become health conscious and say I was refusing to buy candy out of principle; I could pretend that I had suddenly become principled and say that instead of spending money on our own Easter this year I was making a family donation to a rabbit rescue fund, or, I could tell the truth.

Surprisingly (for me), I told the truth. Not the truth about the Easter Bunny (that cat left the bag years ago), but the truth about Mom: she just wasn’t into it this year. For Clementine, this was no big deal: unless a holiday involves a personal visit from Billie Joe Armstrong, she’s really not that interested. For Clyde, however, it’s a different story. Clyde is all about the holidays. You name it: Cinco de Mayo, Labor Day, Columbus Day—he’s down for a party. (Which makes it even odder that he is the only child I know who doesn’t know when his own birthday is: all he knows for sure is that it is in the summer. I could fix this pretty easily, I know, but the schemer in me wants to leave it alone. After all, it’s not like, at age eight, he really needs to know when his birthday is. It’s not like he is going to be carded.) And so I bribed him.

Look, I explained, here’s the deal. Are you willing to trade Easter—all of it: eggs, candy, little plastic toys, the whole thing—for one tangible piece of merchandise? In other words, are you willing to be bribed?

His answer was a resounding ‘yes.’

Which is why Clyde and I celebrated Easter by going to Target and picking out a new PS3 game. It doesn’t have any rabbits. Or chocolate. Or even eggs. On the other hand, it does have lots and lots of zombies. And it even has a two player option, so that we can kill them as a family. And really, isn’t that what the holiday is really all about?

You may remember that a few weeks ago I wrote column about how my daughter, Clementine, started calling me a fascist, and how I finally called her out on the whole thing by demanding that she either prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was, indeed, a fascist, or else come up with some other epithet for me. You may also recall how she quite handily proved that I am, in fact, a fascist of the first order. Well, if you don’t remember it, I can assure you: she certainly does.

Which is why ever since that column came out I have been searching for the perfect thing to call her in return. (Before you start sending me your suggestions, let me add this: I am looking for something similar to call her. Something equally inscrutably insulting. And, above all, something printable.)

And so, this morning, when I tripped over the backpack that she had left lying in the middle of my bedroom doorway, my first thought was actually relief. Finally, I thought, now I know what to call Clementine. (Okay, maybe that wasn’t my first thought. But it did come along eventually.) Yes, gazing about at the archipelago of Clementine’s personal effects that littered my house from one end to the other, I finally knew just what to call Clementine: an Imperialist.

That’s right, I said it: Clementine is a dirty rotten Imperialist.

I looked it up just to be sure, and there it was, in black and white—Imperialism: the policy, practice, or advocacy of extending the power and domination of a nation, especially by direct territorial acquisition. That’s Clementine all over again.

In fact, now that I think about it, she’s always been something of an Imperialist. Of course, in her early days it wasn’t so bad: back then she was just interested in acquiring neighboring territories—those sparse, barren lands that she considered “unpeopled.” (In other words, lands occupied by her little brother, Clyde.) And her process of acquisition was more along the lines of benign neglect than a direct overthrow: she would simply let the contents of her own room bubble out of her doorway and creep across the hall into Clyde’s room, until eventually there wasn’t even a way for Clyde to access his own territories. (At that point I would usually step in and grant Clyde a permanent easement so that he didn’t end up as a refugee in my room.)

As she grew older, however, her Imperialism became more overt, and soon she was establishing colonies all over the world (of my house). First there was the Bathroom Invasion, then the Dining Room Table Incursion, and, eventually, the Couch Conquer. However, since none of these invasions affected me directly, I was willing to let them slide; after all, she did promise to quit claiming new territory (right after she claimed the Sudentenland—er, I mean the couch).

But then it happened: she invaded the Fatherland (and the Motherland, too!). I came home one day and found schoolbooks and papers strewn across my bed, strawberry hulls under my pillow, and a half-empty quart-size yogurt container on the floor. And I knew the real invasion had began.

Then, when I went to return her territorial markers to her room, it became clear to me why she was attempting to expand her reach: poor resource management, short-sighted stewardship and the inability to make a bed had obviously been the ruin of her own homeland. And so, faced with the choice of either changing her ways or eking out a subpar existence in a wasteland filled with cracker crumbs and dirty socks, she had taken the third way, and instead decided to go forth and conquer (and subdue) new lands.

It’s kind of like “Avatar,” but without all of the blue cat people. And with a lot more dirty socks.

So my husband and I were doing our taxes the other day when we had an experience that probably doesn’t happen to most people filling out the long form: we laughed. And not just a chuckle or a snort, either—I’m talking about a full-on run-to-the-sink-and-spit-out-your-coffee-before-you-spray-it-everywhere type laugh. We laughed.

And before you ask: no, we weren’t giggling over the farm investment earnings form (we’re not that big of nerds). Or the foreign employment form. Or even the gambling wins and losses form. On the contrary, the form that caused us such amusement was the worksheet for taking the child tax credit, specifically, question number two: “Does this person provide at least half of their own support?”

It was really my fault that we laughed: I read the question out loud to my husband. After we had both recovered sufficiently enough to speak he had asked me, “Is there a box underneath it marked ‘Hell no’?”

“No,” I replied, “there’s just a plain ‘yes’ or ‘no’.”

“Hmm,” he said, “Well, if that’s the only option, then I guess we’d better go ahead and check it.” And then we went back to filling out the forms.

Suffice it to say, that was the last time that evening we laughed.

But the absurdity of the question—does this person provide half of their own support—stayed with me, as did the absurdity of only receiving a $1000 tax credit per child. What, exactly, is a thousand bucks supposed to cover? Shoelaces? (We go through those by the gross: when keeping your shoelaces tied is still one of the great mysteries of your life, it doesn’t take long to walk a pair of shoelaces to death.)

I know, I know: after thirteen years I should be better versed in how expensive kids are—but, in my defense, I have to say that when my kids were younger things really were different. In fact, until my kids were in school I never understood what people were talking about when they complained about how expensive children were—what, I thought, was supposed to be so expensive about having children? They eat hardly anything, wear hand-me-downs, and don’t even need their own seat on an airplane. A dog costs more than kids do. Then my kids got older, and everything changed.

While they still eat practically nothing (well, one of them, at least: Clyde, AKA “The Merciless Eating Machine,” is a subject for another column), that doesn’t mean that they don’t still cost a fortune to feed. That’s what happens when you live with someone who takes the entire bag of tortillas into her room, eats one, and then leaves the rest sitting out to get dry and hard. Or pours a bowl of cereal (making sure to give the floor gods their tithe) and then leaves the milk on the counter for the next six hours. Or opens a can of refried beans, heats up two tablespoons, and then tosses the rest of the can into the trash.

And while they still wear hand-me-downs (when I can get them), there aren’t enough children in the entire world to hand down the jackets and gloves that would be needed to replace the ones they’ve lost this winter. (I have a feeling that not all of the color that appears in my yard this spring will be from the crocuses and daffodils.)

The days of flying in our laps are over, too. Which means the price of every trip must be multiplied by four. For what I pay for airfare these days, I could fly first class solo—and don’t think I haven’t done the math to check that one out.

Still, I suppose I should be grateful that they are even worth a thousand bucks once a year. Yeah, right: now that’s a laugh.

It was while reading the newspaper the other morning that I finally found the validation I craved.

“See,” I said, gloating in triumph as I shoved the newspaper underneath Clementine’s nose, “now you have to admit it.” Unfortunately, a bowl of cereal was already underneath her nose—as well as under her forehead, mouth, and chin (have I mentioned that Clementine is not a morning person?)—and so cereal flew everywhere. I cleaned up the mess, then held the (now dripping) newspaper out again.

“Admit it,” I said. “Go on. Just admit it.”

She opened one eye and glared at the headline briefly before sinking back down to the table again. “Fine,” she mumbled, “I’ll admit it. You’re not the craziest Mom in the world. There. I said it. Can I sleep now?”

“Sure,” I said. “For thirty more seconds. Then it’s time to leave for school.” And then I tucked the newspaper article about the home-schooling, gun-toting, survivalist Mom away for safe keeping; you never know when you’ll need to prove your sanity to your children again.

Well, not exactly sanity. More like a lesser degree of insanity. That’s okay: after a while you take what you can get. Like, for instance, the validation that comes from reading about other “interesting” Moms. Because here’s the thing: if my kids think that I’m crazy because I ask them to finish one box of cereal before they open up another one, what must they think of the woman who makes her children share a bedroom so that her “spare” bedroom can be converted into a giant pantry filled with hundreds of boxes of cereal they’re not allowed to eat? (Why my own cereal rules? Because otherwise the first box will never be finished. For some reason, in my house at least, the last five pieces of cereal in the box somehow become sullied and impure; they are the runt flakes of the cereal world. The whole grain Nerdios. And, as such, it seems that they will not be eaten, but will instead languish in the bottom of the box forever unless I insist—completely non-crazily—that they be eaten first.)

Regardless of my impeccable reasoning, however, my “cereal box finishing demands” have classified me, in my children’s eyes, as crazy. But now, the next time it comes up (and it will, I’m sure), I can just pull out my handy “Survivalist Mom” article and say, “Well, what about this mom? She makes her children sleep in bunk beds so that she can fill up an entire room with cereal. Who’s the crazy one now?”

“You are,” they’ll reply.

“Ah, but who’s the craziest of them all?”

And they’ll be forced to admit it. “She is.”

I’m telling you, this article is golden. Besides the cereal room, there’s stuff in there about how she’s downloaded all of their textbooks onto a kindle (“Just because there was an apocalypse doesn’t mean you can get out of learning long division.”), and how she makes her kids spend their weekends practicing their rifle shooting so that when society collapses they’ll still be able to get fresh meat.

My only problem now, though, is how to keep the newspaper clipping pristine—nothing deflates your argument faster—and says “crazy” louder—than having an old, yellow newspaper clipping. I know: I’ll keep it in one of their baby books—they’re practically empty anyway. That way I can still pull the article out years from now and ask “Who’s the crazy one now?” Of course, by that time they’ll probably just back away slowly and whisper, “Not you Mom—not you.”

That’s okay—as long as they’re still finishing each box of cereal.

When your kids are younger, the words you most dread hearing in the middle of the night are “I had an accident.” (Come to think of it, those are the words you most dread hearing when they get older, too—the only difference being that when they’re younger those words are usually followed with “Can I sleep with you?” as opposed to “And the police want to talk to you.”)

Usually, though, for a brief period (in between bed-wetting and joy-riding) there will come a time when you can relax; when you know that the worst thing you will wake up to in the morning is “Mom, the cable’s out.” Well, maybe you can relax: me, I still lie in bed at night dreading those four little words, only in my case they’re not “I had an accident;” they’re “I had a dream.”

Look, don’t get me wrong: I love my son, Clyde. I love listening to him talk, and I love hearing about his day at school. But my god, if I have to hear one more play-by-play about what he dreamed last light I might end up hanging myself. I can’t help it. I’m a writer. That means I like my stories to have a narrative flow: a beginning, a middle, and an end. I like there to be character, conflict, and resolution. I like there to be a point to it all, and barring all of that, I like there to at least be a scene with a shirtless Rob Pattinson.

But Clyde’s dreams contain none of those things. (At least, they don’t contain the first few things—I can only assume there’s no naked Rob Pattinson running around, but maybe I’m just in denial). Instead, his dreams contain a lot of “And then this one guy—the guy I told you about—did I tell you about him? He’s a general. He drives a tank. And then he says to his tank—because his tank can talk, and it’s purple, and one time. . .”

Usually, at some point in Clyde’s dream monologue (somewhere around the second or third hour), he’ll turn to me in exasperation and say, “Are you listening?” and it’s all I can do not to scream out “No! I’m not, because what you’re saying is really, really boring.” But I don’t. (Usually.) Because I know that one day he’ll grow out of this stage, and that then I’ll miss these interminable recitations. (Probably.)

But here’s my fear: what if I don’t? What I mean is, what if I never get the chance to miss them, because they don’t go away? It’s possible: Clyde really likes theater—what if he eventually turns his three hour non-narrative dream rambling into some kind of off-off-off Broadway show?

I can see it now: An Evening With Clyde. And there’ll I’ll be, trapped in the front row as Clyde performs an interpretive dance explaining how he really feels about Modern Warfare 3. Or he’ll open up a box of spaghetti and slowly pull out each piece of pasta, snapping it in half as he describes one failed love affair after another. Or he’ll hand out mirrors and ask the audience to look at their tongues for three hours while he talks about what it means to “talk.” (Can you tell I have a problem with theater? You try growing up in a house with an older sister who’s also a theater major and we’ll see who emerges unscathed.)

Still, I know it’s not fair to Clyde for me to jump to conclusions; after all, he might not end up in theater at all. He might grow up to be a normal, boring adult—one who has really long, and really boring dreams. That he loves to talk about with other people. Especially, and unfortunately, me.