Kelly Poe Wilson

Some parents like to let their children know when they are going over the line by addressing them by their full names–all three of them. (Or, if one of your parents is a pop star, all sixteen of them. Maybe this is why the children of celebrities grow up to be so messed up: by the time their parents get through “Fifi Trixiebelle Superhero Moxie Coca-Cola™…” they’ve already forgotten what it was they were scolding them for).

This has always seemed a tad unwise to me. For one thing, what if, in a Pavlovian sense, you’re setting your kids up for a lifetime of cringing every time they hear their own middle names? And, considering that sometimes children are names after older relatives, what if you’re also sabotaging your child’s relationship with that honored family member? After all: what kid would want to hang out with dear old Aunt Gertrude if every time she heard the name she had to fight the urge to duck? The main problem I have with the “full name scold,” however, is that there already exists a perfectly good way to let kids know when you are upset with them: yelling.

Don’t get me wrong: I try not to yell. I try to be reasonable. I try to be calm. But then, after all my attempts at reasonable and calm have resulted in zombie-like stares of noncompliance, I yell. At least with yelling I get a reaction–proof of life–even if it is in the form of an exaggerated eye roll, a lurching out of whatever piece of furniture was being bonded with pre-yell, and an aggrieved, “Geez Mom–you don’t have to yell.” (Which is ironic, since the very fact that they were mired in inactivity up until the point I finally lost it and yelled proves that yelling is exactly what I do have to do.) The truth is, without the yell I would barely register on their consciousness–I would simply be another flyspeck on the Gameboy of their life.

In fact, before the yell they are usually so catatonic that I almost worry about their hearing–or, at least I would–if it wasn’t for the fact that each of my many calm and reasonable entreaties actually do elicit a form of reply: the hated “just a sec.” In the world of yelling, “just a sec” is such a standard precursor to the yell that it is almost as if we were doing some sort of “call and response” series in a church: “Clean your room”; “Just a sec”; “Right now”; “Just a sec.” Aliens watching first a Catholic service and then chore time at my house would probably be left wondering when we were going to get to the “amens.” (Or, conversely, they would think that in our religion , instead of saying “amen,” the high priestess yells.)

So why must we perform this domestic liturgy? Why can’t we cut out all of the middle stuff, and get right to the action? The answer, I think, lies in something my husband once told me way back when we were first dating. I asked him why it was that, despite repeated rejection, some men seemed to find it necessary to hit on every single woman at a bar. He looked at me as if I was kidding, and then answered, “Because, one night, one of them might say ‘yes’. And then all those ‘nos’ become worth it.”

Maybe that’s my children’s rationale as well: someday, worn down under the weight of a hundred “just a secs”, I will be too weary to even yell, and instead will simply get up and do it myself–suddenly making all of those “just a secs” worth it. Somehow though, the idea that child psychology and male psychology are all but interchangeable does not set my mind at ease. But then, that’s a subject for another column.

When my daughter, Clementine, had a friend sleep over the other night, my husband mentioned to the parents that he and I would be watching Jackass 2 later on that evening. Although he didn’t really think Clementine and her friend would be interested in watching it, he thought that it was best to make a full disclosure of the evening’s activities. As it turns out, this was a good thing: the parents were dead set against their child having anything to do with Jackass 2 (they said they were worried that if their son saw the movie, he might try and imitate the stunts).

Later on that evening, after I had watched the movie, I thought back to that comment and all that it implied. While part of me wondered just where, exactly, they thought their son was going to find either an obliging horse, an arena full of bulls, or even a box of questionably smelly fake “beard” hair, another part of me wondered if they’d really understood what this movie was all about, or whether they had just issued their Jackass fatwa solely on the basis of Jackass 2 being an “R” rated movie.

Not that there is anything wrong with that–if I was any kind of a parent myself I’m sure I would probably want to keep my children from watching “R” rated movies, too. The problem is, though, that with the current ratings system, an “R” rating is just about meaningless. Take a movie like Jackass 2, for example: how does this movie–its only “crimes” being language, nudity and some really gross scenes (see: Horse, semen, referenced above)–get a “restricted” rating, while a movie like The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland–a movie so soul-searingly bad that I was afraid that if I continued to watch it my internal organs were going to get up and leave the theater without me–pick up a “G”? I mean, really: sure Jackass 2 featured a graphic scene of a guy taking a dump on a three-inch toilet, but in The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland, Elmo sang. A lot.

A few years ago, when the movie The Aristocrats came out, there were a lot of comments from the movie-going public about how a movie like The Aristocrats clearly showed the limitations of our current movie ratings system: even though this movie did not feature a single exposed nipple, loaded gun, rotting zombie corpse or mountain of cocaine, it was still deemed so foul by the MPAA that it wasn’t even given an “X.” And yet Racing Stripes, which came out the same year–and which featured the horrifyingly awful spectacle of Dustin Hoffman supplying the voice of the wise, old, zebra-counseling donkey (in an effort, one can only assume, to financially ensure his continued supply of “exposed nipples and mountains of cocaine”)–got a “G.” (Personally, I would rather watch Marlon Brando do just about anything with a stick of butter than to have to endure the sound of the same voice that once said “Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me,” braying the words, “B-b-b-elieve in yourself.”)

I think the time has come for a new ratings system to emerge, one that more accurately reflects the cinematic pitfalls that movie trailers so often conceal. This would be especially helpful for children’s movies, which in general tend to be so bad that the highest praise I can usually bring myself to give one is that it “didn’t suck.” The new ratings system, however, would warn people about a movie like Racing Stripes by giving it a “D” rating (for dull), or about a movie like Mary-Kate and Ashley Go (fill in the blank) by giving it a “V” (for vapid).

And movies like Jackass 2 and The Aristocrats? They would clearly get a “FASBNFSO” (Funny as hell, but not for sleep overs).

Years ago, my friend Jesse told me about a humbling experience she’d had while climbing Kilimanjaro in eastern Africa. Now, while Kilimanjaro is considered to be quite a challenging trek–difficult, but doable–it wasn’t the hike itself that she found humbling: it was the guide. It seems that somewhere around the third or fourth day, Jesse came to the ego-shattering realization that her middle-aged climbing guide intended not only to do the entire hike wearing the same ratty old bathrobe and bedroom slippers, but also while chain-smoking cheap unfiltered cigarettes along the way.

This meant that, for Jesse at least, the usual feelings of pride and accomplishment experienced after a successful summit bid were instead replaced for her by a sort of nonspecific disgruntled chagrin; after all, it’s hard to really appreciate a major life victory when you’ve only gotten there by following in the footsteps of a man who could easily have been Archie Bunker’s Tanzanian twin.

Now, while I can’t quite match that story, I do think I can finally appreciate what Jesse must have been feeling on that trek; even though I don’t have a bathrobe-wearing mountain guide, I do have something equally obnoxious: my son, Clyde.

It all started on our last trip down to the Valley, when, perhaps due to an excess of oxygen in my blood, I decided that the time was right to take the entire family on a little hike. After consulting several maps and guidebooks I decided that, because of its unique geographical profile (in other words, it was closest to our hotel), Camelback Mountain would be the hike for us. Besides, our guidebook (printed, I later noticed, in Great Britain) described this particular hike as “easy.”

Now, I don’t know if “easy” is British slang for “almost completely vertical,” or if they’re still upset about the War of 1812, but what I do know is that, had I been given proper advance warning as to how difficult this hike would actually turn out to be, I would have never started my five-year old up the trail. And, on another note, had I known what a vastly superior climber he was to me, I certainly would have never let him finish it.

As I huffed and puffed my way straight up the side of the mountain, I didn’t really mind the Camelback regulars who sprinted past me with a cheery “lovely day, isn’t it?”; after all, these were people who looked like they could crack open Brazil nuts with their butt cheeks. And I also didn’t mind being passed up by grey-haired firemen; they hiked this mountain all the time for rescue training, and besides, at least they were sweating. What I did mind, though, was being handily passed by a five-year-old who spent the whole trip heartily singing.

It wasn’t fair: even though his legs are half as long as mine, and even though his lungs and heart are half as big, Clyde casually strolled up the near vertical face, all the while singing a little ditty he made up about how “some people go up, some people do down, and that’s how you share the moun-tain.” There wasn’t a drop of sweat on his dusky cheeks, or a single little blond hair out of place. If he had known how, I’m sure he would have been whistling.

Watching him gambol merrily up the mountainside, it was then that I remembered my friend Jesse’s trip, and suddenly I understood the disgruntled chagrin she had felt all those years before on Kilimanjaro. The only solace I could take was that, at least in my case, it was all to be expected–it is the natural order, after all, for the old to be succeeded by the young. Still, it is awfully galling to be shown up by a five-year-old–especially one who is singing. Oh well–at least he wasn’t smoking.

I’ve always loved the Greg Brown song “One More Goodnight Kiss,” especially the line where he sings, “The scariest thing I’ve seen, is the death of Halloween/No treats for the children, just all these grown-up tricks.” And yet, even though I love the sentiment behind that line, I always thought that the line itself was a little premature (in other words: the reports of Halloween’s death were greatly exaggerated). After all, my kids still went trick-or-treating every year–even on those nights when Halloween fell on a school night, or (Heaven forbid) a Sunday. In fact, Halloween is one of those holidays we plan our vacations around: we would no more miss Halloween and the chance to trick-or-treat our neighbors than we would miss the 4th of July parade and the chance to mock the Republican candidates. (Come on–his name was Korn; did he really expect to march through a town like Flagstaff unscathed?)

Recently, however, in the middle of planning an upcoming October trip, I realized that this might take us out of town for Halloween this year–and I hardly turned a hair. The fact is, in all the ways that really matter, Halloween is dead. Oh, it’s not dead for the girls who want an excuse to wear lingerie in public and get smashed (even though I’m sure I speak for every man in America when I say, “Honey, you don’t need an excuse”), and it’s not dead for that guy who likes to go to Halloween parties in his street clothes and tell everyone, “This is my costume.” (And, judging from the number of bobbing orange blobs on the lawns of some of the nicer neighborhoods, it’s especially not dead for the people who manufacture $200 inflatable lawn ornaments.) But for the kid who wants to put on one of his dad’s old shirts for the “instant hobo” look, or the one who cuts eyeholes in his mom’s 800 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets for the ghost of Martha Stewart look (and then uses the pillowcase for a haul bag), Halloween may as well be dead.

We only got five trick-or-treaters this year. Five. It was a beautiful night, our yard was done up in spooky magnificence (no giant inflatable pumpkin, though), our “come hither” porch light was on, and all we got was five lousy trick-or-treaters. It’s not as if we live out in the boonies somewhere–we live downtown, the place where people who do live in the boonies take their children trick-or-treating. The saddest part is that this was practically a good year: some of my neighbors have even started giving out full-sized candy bars, both because it’s just as easy when the numbers are that small, and also to potentially increase their share of next year’s return customers. Heck, at five it’d probably be just as cheap to give out cartons of cigarettes (thereby at least assuring myself a return clientele up through the college years), but that’s not really the demographic I’m trying to catch. I want the eight to twelve year olds who are totally psyched to be out trick-or-treating on their own for the first time, the ones who are absolutely determined to stay out until their pillowcases are dragging the sidewalk, no matter what.

Unfortunately, that’s a market niche I’ll probably never get to see again, because those kids are the ones who are at all the “Harvest Festivals” all over the city. (Harvest Festivals, of course, being the new, “safer” alternatives to trick-or-treating. What’s next? “Spring Festivals” to protect kids from the dangers of eating too many Peeps™ at Easter time?)

But then, as people are always so quick to point out to me whenever I start to fuss, “things are different these days,” and, “maybe you were just lucky when you were a kid.” Maybe I was. After all, I got to go trick-or-treating.

My daughter, Clementine, is now in the fourth grade. This is significant because, despite the fact that when you get to be my age everyone can’t wait to tell you that “40 is the new 30,” in the preteen world things are reversed, and “10 is the new 12.” What this means is that instead of being able to postpone all of those dreaded mother/daughter “big talks” for a few more years (by which time I was hoping they would be available as a podcast that she could download and listen to at her leisure), I now have to start thinking about delivering them immediately.

Fortunately, my plan for the big “facts of life” talk has been in place for years now: hand her a new copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves and tell her that if she has any questions she should feel free to text me. Unfortunately, beyond that I’ve got zip. For instance, for the really big talk, the one where I explain to her that–despite all of our shouts of “sisterhood” to the contrary–despite all of the marches we may march in together, all of the bras we may burn in tandem, and all of the “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” buttons we may exchange, sometimes a girl’s worst enemy can start out by being her best friend. Call them “queen bees” or just call them “the in crowd,” but some girls just seem born to bully.

Forget about sex–this will be the hard talk: after all, everyone eventually recovers from the embarrassment of their first sexual encounter; no one ever quite gets over the first time they were bullied by the girls who used to be their friends. The sheer weight of the emotional baggage involved makes this a hard subject to approach rationally; even thinking about it happening to your own daughter can bring out a sort of primal rage, the kind where your field of vision actually goes red around the corners and you know that if called upon you could lift up an entire car, let alone eviscerate with your bare hands the little girl who has sent your daughter home in tears.

A few years ago I read an essay in Brain, Child magazine by a woman who confessed to taking aside the girl who had been bullying her daughter about her clothes and informing her that her own shoes were “really, really ugly.” (Ah, yes: age and treachery will beat youth and innocence every time.)

Even though I thoroughly enjoyed this story for its “oh, snap” moment, I also recognized (as did the author) the potential difficulties involved in permanently functioning as a sort of verbal bodyguard. For one thing, some of those little girls are really mean–it probably wouldn’t help matters if I ended up being the one to burst into tears. For another, I’m just not that interested in going back to the 4th grade (I already know who won the Civil War). That only leaves my husband’s plan, the one where he suggested that at the first sign of bullying he would simply go find the girl’s dad and beat him up.

Of course, there’s also the possibility that, despite “10 being the new 12,” I’m still jumping the gun, and I should hang back and wait to see how Clementine handles these things on her own. After all, this is the same girl who, in kindergarten, after hearing my advice on how to deal with a boy who was teasing her about her short hair (“tease the little four-eyed brat back”) responded with, “You know Mom, I’m not like you; I like people.”

Just in case though, I think I’ll get my husband a punching bag to practice on; I can always pick it up when I’m out ordering my new copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves.

As I may have mentioned before, my son Clyde wanted to be a cowboy for Halloween last year. Let me emphasize again that he wanted to be a cowboy. It was his choice. It wasn’t because I spent the month of October in such a drunken haze that I barely sobered up long enough on the night of the 31st to realize it was Halloween, tie a bandana around his neck, draw a handle-bar mustache on his face with an eyebrow pencil, and call it good. He wanted to be a cowboy. I feel that it is necessary to make this clear because everyone knows that the cowboy costume is one of those classic last minute Halloween costumes, the kind that are usually put together by drunken (or, if we’re being PC, “forgetful”) parents. Come to think of it, all of the “bandana and eyebrow pencil” themed Halloween costumes belong in this category. The Gypsy–bandana on head, skinny eyebrow pencil mustache on face; the Pirate–again, bandana on head, but this time use the eyebrow pencil to black out one tooth (apparently, the only difference between a gypsy and a pirate is their dental plan); and, of course, the Hobo–bandana on a stick, five o’clock shadow on face.

But, as I mentioned before, inebriation on my part wasn’t the rationale for Clyde’s costume: he really wanted to be a cowboy. And yes, while he may have had the standard issue bandana around his neck and handlebar mustache on his face, he also had the nonstandard issue cowboy boots, cowboy hat, cowboy rope, and, most importantly of all (to Clyde at least), cowboy gun. This despite my suspicion that the percentage of cowboys in the Old West who actually carried “sidearms” is about the same as the percentage of white suburban “gangsta rappers” who actually carry “Glock 9″’s.

However, as far as Clyde was concerned, when it came to “real” cowboy costumes a gun was de rigueur–to be without one would be like dressing up as Lindsay Lohan and forgetting the “Property of Betty Ford Clinic” t-shirt: it just wasn’t done. And so, despite my personal misgivings about the authenticity of “cowboy guns,” I acquiesced, and set out in search of a “real fake cowboy gun.” Three hours later I was ready to admit defeat: who knew that toy “cowboy guns” were so hard to find? Sure, there were plenty of regular toy guns to choose from–water guns, laser guns, disc-shooting guns, nerf-launching guns– but everywhere I looked there was not a single real-looking “cowboy gun” to be found. I was starting to think that unless either Clyde changed his costume to “cowboy from outer space” or I agreed to a three day waiting period, Clyde was out of luck.

Fortunately, before it came to that I finally found him a “real cowboy gun” in the far recesses of the local drugstore: a pearl-handled chrome-plated six-shooter no less, one that not only looked real, but, thanks to the fact that it was also a cap gun, sounded and smelled real as well. The only thing that stopped it from looking completely genuine was a bulbous piece of bright orange plastic on the tip of its barrel; when I suggested to my husband that we could remove this, however–to give it a more realistic look–he patiently explained to me that the reason for the orange tip was so that it wouldn’t look real, and so that Clyde wouldn’t get shot when he pointed it at some patrol car on Halloween night. He then added that getting Clyde a cap gun was possibly the dumbest thing I’d done since the previous Halloween, when I’d bought him a toy sword and then wondered why all of the neighborhood kids kept running out of our yard bleeding.

Some people. This year I think will stay drunk all October.

I do not like to be cold. You might think that this would make Flagstaff a strange place for me to live, and normally you would be right. Fortunately, however, I have a secret weapon that keeps me warm in all but the fiercest of weather: I wear clothes. Now, while I’m sure that some of you reading this are shaking your heads and saying “well, duh,” I’m equally sure that there are others of you who are instead shaking your heads and saying, “Hmm…maybe I should give that clothing thing a try.”

You know who you are: the women who are still wearing their stylish skirts and high heels, or the men who are still clinging stubbornly to their cargo shorts and flip-flops–even when there is 3 feet of snow on the ground. You are the ones who scurry out of your heated cars and mince your way into the coffee shop, somehow trusting in the gods of all things automotive that you will never have to walk (or rather, mince) more than ten feet at a time.

The reason I know all this is that, once upon a time, I was just like you. I was a mincer. Not that I have ever been accused of wearing anything stylish. No, the sad truth behind my perennial nomination for Frostbite Victim of the Year was much more mundane than a misguided sense of fashion. I was a mincer simply because I was stupid.

Looking back, I find it hard to explain my rationale for wearing a t-shirt in a blizzard–denial, perhaps. In any case, I’m sure you saw me: I was the one who walked around so hunched over from the cold that I looked like a warning for osteoporosis. I was also the one mincing along in the shorts with long underwear underneath, and the one in Birkenstock sandals and wool socks. (I don’t know why I thought wool socks would protect my scantily-clad feet; in order for the wool to function as a deterrent to Flagstaff’s usual post-storm icy slush I would have needed to strap an entire sheep to the bottom of each foot instead.) These were fashion faux pas that trump even Flagstaff’s famous “dirty hair and ugly shoe” look recently derided by a certain New York Professor Who Shall Not Be Named (although how anyone who comes from a city that thinks “tightly clenched buttocks” are a fashion accessory can malign another city’s look is beyond me).

Now though, I know better: I put on a down jacket, fleece gloves and a pair of Sorrels (or at least their Target equivalent) just to get the paper off of the porch. And now, when I walk through Flagstaff in the winter time, I do it fully upright. I fancy I look much like the “end” picture in one of those charts that show the evolution of man, especially since, mincing along behind me, for all the world like one of my less-evolved simian cousins, is my half-naked daughter, Clementine.

As you can imagine, being trailed by my own little throwback is somewhat galling to me–not because I’m afraid people will think my family is devolving, but because watching Clementine mince along behind me in a t-shirt is a painful reminder of just how clueless I used to be. It’s like watching a clip of “My Dumbest Moments Caught on Tape–Live!” with Clementine standing in as a younger me. (All she’d need is a Flashdance sweatshirt, an asymmetrical haircut and some blue mascara and the scene would be complete.)

With fathers and sons, they say it is the sins that are revisited. That would be fine with me–sins I can handle. But with mothers and daughters it’s a whole different set of issues: from the first spiral perm onward, it’s the stupidities that get revisited. Or, in our case, re-minced.

The other night I woke up out of a sound sleep to find that something cold and slimy was nestled in the palm of my hand. Standing next to me was my son, Clyde, plaintively asking “Aren’t you going to eat it?” I could see from the look of expectation on his face that how I responded to this question was going to make a big difference in Clyde’s happiness quotient, and so, without too much contemplation, I quickly swallowed the substance in my hand. It was salty. Satisfied, Clyde left, and I began to repeat the mantra “It was just a pickle, it was just a pickle…”

Actually, this was not entirely wishful thinking: on those nights when Clyde and his Dad make one of their fast food runs, Clyde–knowing how much I like pickles–will usually bring me the pickle from his cheeseburger. And I, knowing how much this gesture means to him, will usually eat it. Of course, usually when he does this I’m awake enough to realize what it is I’m eating, and usually, the pickle in question is delivered to me fresh enough off of the cheeseburger so that it is still relatively warm. Usually. Who knows what happened on this particular night. Maybe Clyde got distracted while dismantling his cheeseburger (he likes to eat all of the parts–cheese, burger, bun–in separate stages) and didn’t deliver my pickle until later. Maybe it was already cold by the time they got it home. Maybe–and this is the option I’d like to consider last–they didn’t get fast food that night at all, and what Clyde put in my hand wasn’t even a pickle. No–it had to be a pickle. Didn’t it?

Those of you without children must be wondering what kind of person would eat an unknown substance delivered by a questionable source (after all, this is the same boy who sees no problem with eating a piece of pizza he found under his bed a week after we last ordered it). You might even assume that I just have one of those borderline thrill-seeking/reckless personalities, that I’m the type of person who, in high school, made “cocktails” by swiping a quarter inch of liquor from each bottle in the liquor cabinet and then mixing them all together, or who, in college, swallowed a whole bottle of unknown prescription medicine I found in my Grandmother’s basement “just to see what would happen.”

Those of you with children, however, will hopefully know the truth: that the same person who one day required a gallon of milk to be able to choke down a spoonful of peas can, seemingly the next day, blithely ingest substances of which the best thing even the most enthusiastic food reviewer could say is “that was probably a pickle.” This is because only those of you with children can understand how low, over time, your standards can become.

Of course, even if you don’t have children you can still think about all of the ways your formerly childless (and fun) friends have changed. Remember that guy who couldn’t even walk by dog poop without gagging? He’s now able to stick his hand all the way down a clogged toilet to retrieve a 79¢ toy car. And those people who prided themselves on being able to travel for months in foreign countries with only a small backpack between them? They now can’t even make it from the curb to the check-in counter without assistance.

The same goes for the person who once made a vow never to eat in any restaurant that had cloned itself all over the world. She now lives in a house with a happy meal toy collection rivaling the Smithsonian’s (if they have one). She has also been known to sometimes wake up with a pickle in her hand. At least, she hopes it is a pickle.

When my daughter, Clementine, was a baby, her grandmother sent her an ugly little stuffed gorilla. Not content with just being ugly, this gorilla also sang “The Macarena.” (And you thought that the kiss of death for that song was delivered in 1996 when Al Gore danced to it at the Olympics. It just goes to show you that, no matter how low something or someone has gone, it is always possible to break out the shovel and go a little bit lower. Case in point: O.J.)

Not that this particular toy could go much lower itself: not only was it ugly and stuck with one of the World’s Most Annoying Songs (top honors for that still go to “If I Said You Had A Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me”); but, for some reason it also stank like it had been dipped into a vat of kerosene. (It was this, together with the fact that it had been purchased at a truck stop, that made me suspect that the original purpose of “The Macarena Monkey” had been as the cover cargo for a shipment of Columbian cocaine. Yes, I believe that the monkey was a mule.)

By now you’re probably wondering why, if the Macarena Monkey was so ugly, grating, and above all smelly, did we keep it. The most obvious answer to that question is that it was a Grandma present, and you are statutorily required to keep all presents from mothers and grandmothers for at least one full calendar year, but the truth is that we kept it because of Clementine. Not because she loved it, mind you, but because she was terrified of it: the first few “hey-na-na-na-na’s” alone were enough to send her whimpering out of the room. This meant that the monkey was finally able to do what we never could: scare her straight.

Before the monkey, we were powerless over Clementine’s recalcitrance: if we told her to stay away from the wood stove, she made a beeline for it; if we told her to leave the outlets alone, she picked up a fork; and if we warned her away from the toilet bowl cleaner, she went to get her sippy cup. With the advent of the Macarena Monkey, however, she was suddenly biddable. All we had to do was hide the monkey behind the stove or underneath the sink (wherever she had been forbidden from), and then wait for the inevitable disobedience: as soon as she got near enough, the (motion-activated) monkey would, like some all-seeing emissary of divine judgement, launch into his song, sending Clementine scuttling away in terrified compliance. It was great. (Although, in retrospect, I wonder if her current disdain for anything even remotely associated with cleaning can be traced to some “toilet bowl cleaner aversion therapy” that went a bit too far).

Eventually, of course, the Macarena Monkey went the way of all flesh (and plush), and we had to come up with other, less successful methods for securing her compliance. Many is the time that I have mourned the loss of the monkey; in fact, I was beginning to doubt whether we would ever find its equal, when recently I realized that the replacement has been right under my nose for five years. He doesn’t smell quite as bad (at least not usually), and as of yet Al Gore has not danced to one of his songs, but the look of horror on Clementine’s face when she watches her five year-old brother, Clyde, dance naked across the living room is the spitting image of her long ago look of terror while watching the Monkey. Now if I could only find some way to make his image appear every time she left her bed unmade or tried to sneak a popsicle out of the kitchen, all my problems would be solved.

If she weren’t a fictional character, I might think that both of my children had once been Scarlett O’ Hara in their former lives. Remember that scene where Scarlett, fresh from escaping the burning of Atlanta, returns home only to find that her beloved Tara is merely a shell of its former, glorious self? And remember how, after being told that the only thing left to eat was raw turnips, she goes out into the field, digs up a turnip, and, clutching it in her fist, declares to the heavens: “As God is my witness, I will never be hungry again!”? Well, substitute, “walking home from school” for “escaping the burning of Atlanta”;“granola bar with icky raisins” for “raw, dirt-covered turnip”; and “standing in front of the kitchen cabinet and whining” for “digs it up” and it would be like Scarlett O’Hara and my children were twins. Or triplets. Whatever.

The point is, that, for reasons I have yet to fathom (and therefore must have something to do with fictional Civil War-era heroines), my children can conceive of no greater threat to their happiness than the prospect of being hungry. This is despite the fact that, as far as I can tell, they have never actually even been peckish, let alone really hungry: in fact, any time they have ever gotten even remotely close to it (say, on the trip from the living room to the kitchen), they have been saved by the quick intervention and application of one of the approximately 7.3 million “snacks” we have on hand in car, house, and/or backpack at all times, upon which they fall ravenously like a lion on its prey.

Of course, by “fall ravenously” I mean “take two bites”; after that the over-packaged, over-priced piece of advertising masquerading as a few calories is tossed unceremoniously into the trash, at which point another attack of “hunger” pains drives them to the cabinets once again. In terms of frequency, only hobbits could possibly eat more often than they do, but when it comes to quantity the analogy is closer to a hummingbird. Regardless, however, of which analogy is more apt–hummer or hobbit–the truth is that, despite whines to the contrary, I highly doubt whether true hunger is something that they have ever actually experienced.

This is a great tragedy: to my mind, there are few things that are quite as delightful as drinking when you are thirsty, sleeping when you are tired, and eating when you are hungry. Not only that, but there is nothing like hunger to bring out the master chef in us all: without hunger (and poverty), how else would we have ever learned that ramen noodles can be “cooked” using nothing but lukewarm tapwater, or that Bacos and catsup on a Saltine can be a fine substitute for a BLT?

Sadly though, this may be something my children will never know; how could they, with all the juice boxes, “snack size” cracker packets and “fruit chews” (a barely disguised naked jellybean) that are always at their command? These are people who, twenty minutes before Thanksgiving dinner is put on the table, will scrounge around in the back of the refrigerator for a yogurt; who pack a snack for a two block walk to park; who ask “what’s for lunch?” at 7 o’clock in the morning and “what’s for dinner?” at 3 o’clock in the afternoon; who think that a thirty minute soccer game (of which they played all of ten) must be followed by twenty minutes of “snack.” These are people for hunger, as it were, has never even really been on the menu.

Come to think of it, I take back what I said about Scarlett O’Hara; after all, her catchphrase was “tomorrow is another day”; for my children, it’s more like “tomorrow is another buffet.”