Kelly Poe Wilson

“How come we never have any food in this freakin’ house?” says my daughter, Clementine, standing in front of our open fridge. (Warning: sounding like you’re living inside a badly “dubbed for TV” movie is one of the perils of sharing a house with a twelve year-old. Thankfully, she hasn’t started saying things like “Let’s go get those funsters” and “son of a biscuit”–yet.) Slamming the refrigerator door closed, she stomps away. Curious, I wander over to the maligned appliance and look inside; just as I suspected, it’s full of food–just like the cupboards behind me.

In fact, we have so much food (thanks to my habit of never making a list when I go to the grocery store, but rather blindly tossing the same items in week after week) that last Halloween, when six of us decided at the last minute to go to the haunted house at the adult center, the “three cans of food” admission price was not a problem, (although perhaps the fact that we all paid in refried beans and tomato soup was). In any event, the Halloween raid didn’t even make a dent in my hoard, which made it all the more curious that Clementine should choose our kitchen as her platform from which to lament the lack of victuals.

I’ve been in college–I know what an empty cupboard looks like. I know what it’s like to scrape together your last thirty cents (after you’ve bought that week’s beer, of course) to buy a package of generic macaroni and cheese, only to realize after you get it home that you’re going to have to mix it up with water, because your roommate ate the last of the margarine (true, it was their margarine–but still). I am also well aware that the judicious application of Tabasco sauce can render almost any meal edible, if not palatable.

Still, I suppose that I did learn all these thing while I was actually in college, and not before, which proves that poverty really is the best form of on-the-job training for life I know. And I suppose I should be grateful that it looks like my kids are going to have to wait until college to receive that training, as well. After all: I had friends who were unfortunate enough to know well before they reached college age that you don’t actually have to cook ramen to eat it–that simply running it under the warm tap water of a gas station restroom was enough.

I should be grateful that Clementine knows none of these things, and yet it’s still hard to take when the lack of easy food options (food that can be picked up and shaken out of the box directly into one’s mouth) equals no food in her opinion.

I could point all this out to her, but somehow, the phrase, “You know, there are kids with the munchies in college,” fails to deliver the same kind of emotional punch as the “There are children starving in China” of my youth. (Although, coincidentally, the response to both is the same: “Well why don’t you send it to them, then?”)

Instead, I stick with pointing out the fact that if someone chooses to voluntarily narrow their circle of “acceptable” food down to cheese crisps, noodles, and (Yoplait Custard Style Vanilla-flavored) yogurt, then it becomes very easy for them to be “out” of food.

Not that it ever really gets through: despite our over-flowing cupboards, for Clementine, every day will always be like the Irish Potato Famine, but with yogurt. (“Shiver me shillelagh, and what good is this strawberry-flavored yogurt going to do me, then? I’m starving, here, man!”)

That is, at least until she gets to college and finds out that even strawberry-flavored yogurt can be eaten, in a pinch. Providing, of course, there’s enough Tabasco sauce on it.

The other day my son, Clyde, walked out of his room, inserted a finger into an orifice (it doesn’t really matter which orifice, except to say that it was one of his own), examined the contents on said fingertip, and then wiped everything on the couch. All while I was standing right in front of him, which leads me to believe that this is such a regular occurrence that he never even considered trying to hide it from me.

After haranguing Clyde for a few minutes (and making him wipe down the couch), I preceded to walk past my daughter, Clementine–who was sitting in the dining room eating a bowl of cereal–and into the kitchen. There I found a milk and cereal puddle that stretched so far out along one counter (and even to unknown realms, such as underneath the toaster oven), that I am sure that had Captain Hazelwood been piloting a large bowl of cereal instead of the oil tanker Valdez, Prince William sound would have looked only slightly worse than the mess on my counter.

After I similarly harangued Clementine about that mess (“How do you know it was me?” she asked with a mouth full of Rice Crispies), I retreated into my room and put my head underneath a pillow, hoping to avoid any more evidence of what I had been suspecting for some time now: I live in The Filthiest House in the World.

Having lived with my fair share of college room-mates, I never thought I would be in serious contention for this title once again; after all, I had finally moved out of the house with the room-mate who considered his frequent brushes with lice infestations to be “just a part of doing business.” And the room-mate who considered the toilet and the clothes hamper to be interchangeable. Thinking back, I now realize that, as disgusting as those room-mates were, at least they had the decency to try and hide their atrocities from me–at least a little bit.

A room-mate, when he takes a swig from your jug of milk, changes his mind mid-swallow and then spits the whole mess back into the jug–will at least turn his back to you, so that there is some doubt. (“Did you just…” “Did I just what?” “Never mind.”). A child, on the other hand, will do it right in front of you, and when confronted will respond with a defensive: “What?”

Perhaps I’m just being naive, but I like there to be some mystery in my life–especially when it comes to things that are disgusting. You tell me studies have shown that my kitchen sponge has more germs on it than the inside of my toilet bowl? Keep it to yourself. You say the average candy bar contains approximately 3.8 bug parts? Lalalala, can’t hear you.

I’ve heard it said that you know the romance has gone out of a relationship the first time you realize your partner is unashamed to trim his nose hairs in front of you; I would take it even further, and argue that it is when you realize your partner is unashamed to do it in front of you over the kitchen sink, or something similar.

I guess that means the romance went out of my relationship with my children on day one, because there has certainly never been any part of their “toilette” that they have ever hesitated to share with me.

Here’s the thing: I know that the world is a disgusting place, filled with disgusting people (I live with two of them). I’d just rather not have it brought home to me so viscerally, nor so often.

I guess I’m just one of those people who would rather not know that you dropped my toothbrush in the toilet–or, worse yet, that you dropped in on the kitchen sponge.

The other day my son, Clyde, walked out of his room, inserted a finger into an orifice (it doesn’t really matter which orifice, except to say that it was one of his own), examined the contents on said fingertip, and then wiped everything on the couch. All while I was standing right in front of him, which leads me to believe that this is such a regular occurrence that he never even considered trying to hide it from me.

After haranguing Clyde for a few minutes (and making him wipe down the couch), I preceded to walk past my daughter, Clementine–who was sitting in the dining room eating a bowl of cereal–and into the kitchen. There I found a milk and cereal puddle that stretched so far out along one counter (and even to unknown realms, such as underneath the toaster oven), that I am sure that had Captain Hazelwood been piloting a large bowl of cereal instead of the oil tanker Valdez, Prince William sound would have looked only slightly worse than the mess on my counter.

After I similarly harangued Clementine about that mess (“How do you know it was me?” she asked with a mouth full of Rice Crispies), I retreated into my room and put my head underneath a pillow, hoping to avoid any more evidence of what I had been suspecting for some time now: I live in The Filthiest House in the World.

Having lived with my fair share of college room-mates, I never thought I would be in serious contention for this title once again; after all, I had finally moved out of the house with the room-mate who considered his frequent brushes with lice infestations to be “just a part of doing business.” And the room-mate who considered the toilet and the clothes hamper to be interchangeable. Thinking back, I now realize that, as disgusting as those room-mates were, at least they had the decency to try and hide their atrocities from me–at least a little bit.

A room-mate, when he takes a swig from your jug of milk, changes his mind mid-swallow and then spits the whole mess back into the jug–will at least turn his back to you, so that there is some doubt. (“Did you just…” “Did I just what?” “Never mind.”). A child, on the other hand, will do it right in front of you, and when confronted will respond with a defensive: “What?”

Perhaps I’m just being naive, but I like there to be some mystery in my life–especially when it comes to things that are disgusting. You tell me studies have shown that my kitchen sponge has more germs on it than the inside of my toilet bowl? Keep it to yourself. You say the average candy bar contains approximately 3.8 bug parts? Lalalala, can’t hear you.

I’ve heard it said that you know the romance has gone out of a relationship the first time you realize your partner is unashamed to trim his nose hairs in front of you; I would take it even further, and argue that it is when you realize your partner is unashamed to do it in front of you over the kitchen sink, or something similar.

I guess that means the romance went out of my relationship with my children on day one, because there has certainly never been any part of their “toilette” that they have ever hesitated to share with me.

Here’s the thing: I know that the world is a disgusting place, filled with disgusting people (I live with two of them). I’d just rather not have it brought home to me so viscerally, nor so often.

I guess I’m just one of those people who would rather not know that you dropped my toothbrush in the toilet–or, worse yet, that you dropped in on the kitchen sponge.

This is a column about my children. It’s supposed to be funny, although I’m not making any guarantees. (I suppose I could offer to refund you your money if you don’t find it amusing; however, if you actually paid for this free copy of Flag Live, then I am sure that you are much too busy running the Treasury Department right now to worry about trifling little things like refunds.) Anyway, I feel that it is necessary make the nature of this column clear because it seems that–for many of you out there–I am not so much a humor columnist as an ombudsman.

This is apparent from the number of times that I have been approached recently by people telling me, “You know what your next column should be about? Gas prices.” Or the lack of movie theaters in town. Or the fact that the corner market no longer sells their favorite brand of cigarette. If the person making the suggestion seems even slightly sane, I’ll usually point out to them that high gas prices are neither funny, nor do they involve my children. (Unless, of course, they have some kind of an inside scoop on how my kids are involved in a super secret oil cartel involving President Bush, the Saudi royal family, and Legos. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that my daughter, Clementine, is somehow involved in all that. Maybe it’s just a preteen thing, but lately she always looks like she’s up to something).

Of course, on the other hand, if they do not seem sane, I’ll just smile and say something like, “Sure, sure–thanks for the tip.” And then I’ll run.

Who knows–maybe it’s not so much that people see me as an ombudsman; maybe they just think that since I’m just sitting around typing all day anyway, I might as well do something useful, like bang out a letter to the editor for them–and sign my own name, of course. (They wouldn’t want to sign their own name–people would think they were nuts!).

I’ve often wondered whether other Flag Live columnists have this same problem: does Jim Hightower get people coming up to him on the street saying things like, “You know what your next column should be about? The fact that Kelly Poe Wilson’s son, Clyde, absolutely refuses to wear socks, even in the wintertime.”

Even if he doesn’t, I’ll bet he still gets plenty of other suggestions. As Balzac once said, “It is as easy to dream a book as it is hard to write one;” and the assumption that it is the idea (and not the actual hair-pulling, head-clutching, fingernail-scraping, physical process of writing) that is the hardest part of the writing process seems to be fairly universal amongst non-writers.

Even my own father recently suggested to me that we should “collaborate” on a screenplay (“I’ll provide the ideas; you just do the writing”), a suggestion remarkably similar to saying that we should “collaborate” on dinner: “I’ll pick the dish, and you cook it.”

Of course, some writers–such as Dave Barry–seem to make audience participation a regular staple of their columns. (“Let’s look in the old mail bag and see what people have sent us this week.”) Then again, it seems like most of the suggestions and tidbits that Dave Barry gets sent actually are funny, which certainly doesn’t hurt. Of course, maybe that’s just because he’s done a better job than me at demonstrating that his column is supposed to be funny. In fact, I’m pretty sure that he’s never received the response that I once got when I tried to explain to someone that I couldn’t write a column about their missing cat because, tragically, it just wasn’t very funny, and my column is supposed to be funny.

“Oh, is it?” they replied. “I hadn’t noticed.”

Driving a car with two kids in the back seat always makes me think, “It’s Hammer Time.” Not because their incessant whining makes me want to stop at a bar and hammer some beers (although that is often the case), or because I would like to take a hammer to all their beeping, humming and buzzing electronic devices that compete for my attention (ditto), but because we can’t seem to drive more than forty feet down the road without M.C. Hammer’s classic 80’s anthem popping into my head. Although the version that I hear goes “Nunh-nunh-nunh-nunh, nunh, nunh–Don’t Touch Me.”

I used to think that it was because we had a small car, even though when we had a small car we also had correspondingly small children. Then we got a car wide enough to have a pull down armrest (or, as I like to think of it, “no man’s land”) in the back seat, and if anything the fighting got worse. (We also tried having them in two completely different rows once when we were on vacation and rented a minivan, with even less success.) I’m beginning to think that the only way the design of the car would make a difference in the “Don’t Touch Me” department would be if we had one that was designed by the Jetsons, with modular pods angled out from the body of the car like eye stalks on a bug.

Even then I have no doubt that they would eventually be able to figure out some way to hold their breath, zip through the void of space, pop up in the other child’s pod, touch them, and then scoot back to their own pod–all before I realized what happened. I know this because even in the confines of a regular automobile I have decided that you would need stop-motion photography to be able to determine who was touching whom.

This is because the “Don’t Touch Me” game is one of the most complicated games that humans have ever invented. Chess? Forget about it: nobody plans their moves farther out than a “Don’t Touch Me” player.

For example, look at the moves of a typical drive/game (in the tradition of chess and extreme sporting, all moves will be referred to by their IADTM–International Association of ‘Don’t Touch Me’–sanctioned names).

The Pawn’s Revenge. Player one places her elbow on armrest; player two responds by seeming to move away, while simultaneously inching his foot over towards player one; player one, thinking player two is neglecting to protect his territory, slides her elbow over even further so that it is now hanging off of player two’s side; at this point player two kicks player one with the back of his heel while at the same time angling his ribs into player one’s elbow. In the ensuing commotion player one is caught with an angry look on her face, while player two quickly affects the posture of someone who has been pierced through the side with a lance. Point: player two.

The Queen’s Denial. Player one starts the game by seemingly refusing to play; instead, she leans as far back as possible, up against the door, seemingly entranced by the new Twilight podcast on her ipod. Player two then does everything in his power to engage her: he leans on the armrest, lies across the armrest, rubs his buttocks on the armrest (this drawing a strong rebuke from the referee in the front seat). Eventually, player two gives up and turns away–at this point player one reaches across the divide, viciously pinches him, and then returns to her previous position. Player two is then rebuked again by the referee for causing a ruckus by screaming. Point: player one.

So far, the score is one all–except of course for the driver. Their score is zero–just like always.

Not too long ago, I was sitting in Pay ‘n Take when someone brought up the subject of disgusting internet videos (ok: it was me). I had just read an Esquire interview with George Clooney, where the reporter had shown George some of the “facts” that were available about him on the web. (I especially liked George’s reaction to the “George Clooney is gay, gay, gay” page: “I’ll take the first two, but I resent that last ‘gay.’”). At one point, perhaps bored with looking at stories about his subject, the reporter had shown George what he felt was the most disgusting video out there–it was so bad that George ended up calling his publicist over so that he could watch it with them; obviously he wanted to see the reaction of a professional BS artist.

What I was lamenting in Pay ‘n Take was the fact that even though the article had given the name of the video, I still hadn’t been able to find it online; at this point several twenty-something guys sitting at the bar all started urging me to cease my searching: they knew the video that I was referring to, and to a man each declared “You don’t want to see it. It’s too disgusting.”

This got me to wondering about the subjective nature of a word like “disgusting.” Although I did, in the end, quit looking for it (I think I looked up Mika on wikipedia instead), I was still intrigued by the idea of something being “too disgusting to watch.” “Too disgusting” for whom? Certainly not for a mother, because, when it comes to disgusting, no one is better able to handle it than a mom. Take puking, for example: no one deals with puke better than we do. I’m trying to think of some of the other options: a Las Vegas street sweeper, a chambermaid at the annual bulimia conference, an elementary school janitor? True, they’re probably pretty good at handling vomit, but then again, they should be: they’re getting paid to do it, and if they really get tired of it, they can always just punch up their resume and find a (presumably) puke-free occupation somewhere else.

A mother, on the other hand, is an unpaid puke professional. She has to be: from the time when her children are infants and she has to be able to determine whether her baby is simply “spitting up” (a delightful euphemism–I don’t know why drunk people don’t use it more often) or actually “vomiting,” all the way up to the time when they are school-aged and have forgotten to do that week’s book report (“I think I should stay home today; I threw up”), a mother has to be an expert on puke. (My personal puke rule, by the way, is that to stay home from school you have to have puked twice; anyone with a moderate imagination can make themselves puke once. Puke twice and you’re either really sick or you deserve to stay home so you can work on your novel.)

Some people would have you believe that it is motherly instincts that make woman so adept at handling the puke thing–your overpowering love for your child renders their every action a delight to your senses. Whatever. I say it is simply the result of desensitizing: get puked on enough and it just doesn’t matter anymore. I know this is true because I have been puked on by kids I didn’t even know, and still had the same blase reaction: it just doesn’t matter. Actually, that’s my theory about all those disgusting internet videos as well–I think that they were all actually made by mothers who have figured out a way to turn a profit on their cast iron “mothering” stomachs. Either that, or the world is even more full of freaky people than I thought.

Last month I read a small little blurb in the Phoenix paper about a Tucson school photographer who was found dead in a hotel room in Nogales; there was no trace of the thousands of pictures he had taken for the Tucson Unified School District that year. I know, I know, but before you even go there, I have something to say: I have an alibi. Really.

My antipathy for school photographers is well known, and goes back to my own school days, and to the truly dreadful photographs they took of me. Because my mother always bought them, I would have to look at those pictures hanging on our living room wall all year long, each one a perfect study in the art of looking stupid. There was the one from 4th grade, where the photographer bellowed out “Say ‘I love Fonzie!’” and then clicked his shutter just as my lip curled back in a disdainful sneer; there was the one from 7th grade, where I tried to look enigmatic but only managed to look like I was trying to put 2 +2 together in my head, and not having much luck at it; and, of course, there was the one from high school, where the photographer must have decided that he could save a few pennies on the lighting by using the shine off of my forehead and nose instead.

But even the pain of thirteen years of bad public school photography couldn’t prepare me for the pain I feel now, as an adult, when it is my children who are the ones being photographed. Because now, not only do I have to look at these washed-out, grainy portraits–I have to pay for them, too. And not just once, but over and over again, several times over the course of one year, at least. (The photographers must have picked up on the fact that most parents can’t even remember if they brushed their own teeth that morning; the chance of them remembering in the Spring that they already paid for a set of pictures in the Fall is negligible, at best.)

True, I could always opt out of the whole picture thing; as the Mom who already sends her kids to school with their lunches dripping through the bottom of newspaper bags, mismatched socks, and stubby, chewed-on pencils recovered from the couch cushions, it would surprise no one if I also didn’t pay for school pictures. And, with Clementine, this is actually an option: like me, she also harbors an intense hatred for people who–for any reason whatsoever–demand that you smile. (Consequently, in all of her school pictures she is showing all the enthusiasm of someone getting their mug shot taken–sober.)

These pictures are easy to deny. But Clyde’s? Clyde gravitates to a camera like a plant to sunlight. Even as an infant he had the uncanny ability to pull himself together in the most trying of circumstances so that he could flash a beaming smile at the lens. In fact, a little while back he had a small part in a local play, and I–thinking about what I would have wanted (had someone somehow tricked me into being in a play)–assured him on the day of the performance that he “didn’t have to worry about a thing–I hadn’t told a soul.”

He was crushed. “You mean no one is coming to see me?”

“Um, yeah,” I replied. “That’s good, right?”

Wrong. And so, Clyde–the boy who can’t remember to wear socks when it snows–of course remembers exactly what those big blue envelopes mean when every other kid in his class gets handed one–and he doesn’t. Which is why not purchasing them isn’t really an option–or at least, it wasn’t an option, until I found out exactly just what could happen to a school photographer, and their photographs.

I’m just saying.

“Parents are sometimes a disappointment to their children. They don’t fulfill the promise of their early years.” (Anthony Powell)

I wish that I could pinpoint the exact moment in time when, in the eyes of my children at least, I went from being brilliant to barely being competent enough to be allowed out in public on my own. With my daughter, Clementine, it happened very early on: in fact, she was the only child in her kindergarten class who did not want her mother to stay with her the first day. (“You can go now,” she said to me at the door.) And it’s gotten worse from there: just the other week she wanted me to sit out in the car and wait for her during a three hour school function. (“Ok, you can come in if you promise to stand in the corner and not talk to anyone.” she finally allowed.)

I keep waiting for the same thing to happen with my son, Clyde–for the knob on his “parental mortification” sensor to be turned up to “eleven,” but so far, nothing. (Although, kind soul that he is, he might just be hiding his disdain for my imbecility better than Clementine ever did). Maybe, but I doubt it: by the time she was her brother’s age Clementine’s doubts as to my competence were too numerous to be hidden. Not only would she blink at me in disbelief at my explanation of the natural world (true, my reasoning that the sky is blue because the sky got first pick was particularly specious), but she would even challenge me on things that I could be expected to understand. Like writing. (“Look,” I’d say, “this word really is spelled with a “g”–it says so in the dictionary.” “In your dictionary, maybe.”)

Still, even though I may never know the answer to where it all began, at least I know the answer to when it will end: sometime after she has her first child. Oh, the mysteries that were solved for me after I had children! Like, “Why was my mother so mean?” became “How did I ever make it to adulthood without her killing me?” and “Why are my parents so cheap?” became “Did I really once use my mother’s credit card to buy a $60 pair of leg warmers, and live to tell the tale?”

Of course, it is entirely possible that Clementine will never have children (in fact, she currently insists upon it), which means that–in her eyes at least–my stupidity will continue on unabated until the day I die. If that is the case, then I will have no choice but to milk it for all it’s worth; after all, if I’m going to be treated like an idiot, I should at least have the option of behaving like one.

That means that when the day comes when I have to move in with Clementine (in her ultra-chic, child-free downtown loft) because I’ve spent all of my own money on the Home Shopping Network and Dial-A-Prayer, she can’t act surprised. Or when she has to drive me everywhere because I got so many tickets that I lost my license, she can’t complain. After all: what else would she expect with an idiot for a mother?

Come to think of it, I might start playing the idiot card now. Why should I get her that oh-so-expensive “twilight” hoodie she wants for Christmas, when all the “High School Musical 3″ ones will soon be 70% off? (After all, how can an idiot tell the difference between a vampire and a cheerleader?)

In fact, I might become so stupid that I forget to shop–or clean, or cook, or drive people to their friends’ houses–entirely. In fact, I might get so dumb that eventually the Republicans will ask me to run for Vice President. Now that would be mortifying.

I’ve always tried to encourage my children in all of their artistic endeavors. True, I have absolutely refused to allow finger paints to come inside my house, and I view playdo as something that has crept up from the depths of Hell, sworn to wreak havoc on the carpets of the world, but other than that–other than my complete unwillingness to put up with any kind of mess whatsoever–I have always been very supportive of art in the home. It’s just that, preferably, I’d like to support art in somebody else’s home.

When art projects do manage to get done in my house, I like them to be orderly: although I can appreciate in the abstract what Jackson Pollack was trying to express, I don’t necessarily want him to be painting at my kitchen table. It’s the same with my children: while I don’t go so far as to tell my kids that they must color inside the lines, I do tell them that they must at least color inside the page. As you may have guessed, this also means that finger painting, papier- mache, and anything involving glitter is also out, as well as any activity that involves pulling all the cushions off of the couch or stretching a sheet between two dining room chairs.

You might think, reading this laundry list of forbidden arts, that my children would grow up bereft of artistic outlets (that was what I thought, at least). But you would be wrong, because there is one form of artistic expression that even I can’t repress, one that, much to my chagrin, my son Clyde discovered all on his own. Performance Art.

Actually, Clyde’s chosen artistic medium can best be described as part performance art and part temporary installation, and while it is not technically “messy,” it still manages to set off the “messiness alarms” inside my head. Clyde, it would seem, is on the cutting edge of what, for lack of a better term, I will refer to as The Bowel Movement.

In other words: he absolutely refuses to flush the toilet.

This is not due to forgetfulness on his part, nor any kind of general male cluelessness. He honestly just doesn’t see the point of flushing away a piece of work that he has put so much time and energy into creating.

“Mom! Mom! Come look,” he’ll shout at me from the bathroom, and I will dutifully troop in to see the latest masterpiece.

“Very nice,” I’ll say, torn between being supportive and being grossed out. “Now let’s flush.

“No! I want Daddy to see it.”

“Daddy won’t be home for four hours. Maybe you can just tell him about it.”

“It won’t be the same.”

No, it won’t, and won’t Daddy be all the luckier for that?

In all other respects he is a normal child: he doesn’t keep a tissue collection of his “favorite sneezes;” he doesn’t keep his toenail clippings in a jar; he doesn’t even keep the flowers he receives for his anniversary until they are all brown and spider-webby (oh wait; that’s me). He just doesn’t flush. Which, I suppose, isn’t all that bad.

Except that my only point of reference for this behavior is a former room-mate who used to take Polaroids of his “greatest works” and post them on the fridge with captions such as : “Three Bic Macs, two pounds of lil’ smokies and a Mountain Dew Big Gulp later…”

Still, I suppose it could be worse. After all, as I always tell myself after flushing Clyde’s latest masterpiece, he could have chosen a really awful form of artistic expression. He could have chosen Legos.

There are two phrases that come out of a child’s mouth that have been known to strike fear into the wallets of parents: “Oops” and “We should.” “Oops” because it usually follows such acts as stepping on a sibling’s glasses, dropping a retainer off the edge of the Grand Canyon, or leaving the cage door open when feeding the pet snake–all actions guaranteed to cost a parent money. (Not, in the last example, because you have to replace the snake, but because you have to replace the wall that the snake will eventually crawl behind and die). “We should”, however, is a trickier one; it doesn’t mean that money absolutely will be spent, but rather that whining about money is about to commence. Sometimes–usually–it also means that completely ridiculous whining about money is about to commence as well.

An example of this is when, after staggering through three airports, seven security lines, and a customs line that looks like the entire population of a Caribbean island has just deplaned ahead of you, your child turns to you and says in disdain, “We should really get our own plane.”

At first you ignore this comment, concentrating instead on swearing at the luggage cart dispenser, but the child persists. “Why don’t we?”

Finally, the luggage cart fairy grants your wish; you can now turn to the child and start swearing at them instead. “One, because I don’t know how to fly a plane, and two, because planes cost a lot of money.”

“You could learn.”

“True–but that doesn’t change the fact that planes cost a lot of money.”

“So use your credit card.”

Sigh. This conversation again. No matter how many times you try and explain it, your words will never have precedence over the magic trick they see performed every time you put your debit card into an ATM and money comes flying out. Still, you try anyway.

“I’d have to pay for it eventually. With money I still wouldn’t have.”

Now the child is rolling her eyes. She can’t believe how slow parents can be sometimes. “So get a job.”

“I have a job!”

“Then get a better one.”

Great; now she’s channeling your mother.

“Look, I don’t know how else to put this: we’re not getting a plane. I realize that this is a great disappointment to you, but what can I say? You go to war with the parents you have.”

“That makes no sense.”

“I know.”

Mercifully, the resentful silence lasts all the way through the rest of the airport, and you begin to think that maybe the “we should’s” have gotten left back at customs. Of course, as long as you’re fantasizing, why not include all of the other unwanted baggage that you might have left back at customs as well–like all that new vacation weight–because as soon as your child realizes that she still has to carry her own luggage the “we should’s” come swooping back with a vengeance, and she looks over at you with disdain once more, saying, with a sigh:

“You know, we really should get our own butler.”