Kelly Poe Wilson

This column is usually written on Monday mornings; given the “special” nature of my family, ideas are generally not a problem–although, every now and then, an entire week will go by without any ideas at all. That was why, as I went to bed on a Saturday night not long ago I found myself in the unique position of wishing for an idea sometime soon. As they say, be careful of what you wish for: the very next morning I woke up with pink eye.

Of course I got it from my son, Clyde, who had been sent home from daycare the week before with a slightly red right eye: one antibiotic prescription and 24 hours later he was back at school, none the worse for wear. As for myself however, things played out a little differently: my eyes became so puffy and swollen that my husband started calling me “Rocky” and saying “Cut me Pauly, cut me” whenever he saw me; it soon became obvious that, yet again, what had manifested as a minor childhood ailment in one of my children was destined to become a major adult trauma for me.

If only I had remembered what had happened with my last bout of childhood illness I would not have been so surprised this time around: a few years back, when Clyde brought home a case of impetigo, not only did it put me in the hospital for three days on IV antibiotics, but it also caused my face to break out in nickel-sized pustules. (It is perhaps a testimony to the fact that old dogs can learn new tricks that my husband, upon seeing enormous whiteheads covering my face, limited his comments to: “Um, did you know? You’ve got a little something right there.” It’s good to know that seven years of husband training had not been in vain.)

Even with that preview, however, once again I was not prepared for the startling and immediate effects of another “benign”childhood illness, not the least of which was the effect it would have on other people. Take, for example, the first sign of the coming storm: a pair of bright red eyes. While I discounted these visible symptoms as a somewhat trivial inconvenience–certainly nothing that would stop me from picking up the food for Clementine’s upcoming birthday party–I neglected to foresee the effect a pair of the brightest red eyes this side of a Cheech and Chong movie would have on other people, especially when combined with the pushing of a shopping cart full of Sweet Tarts, Pringles, chocolate bars and tater tots. Of course I ran into someone I knew–on her way to teach Sunday school, no less–and of course it wasn’t until she started to walk away that I made what must have been for her an immediate connection.

“Wait!” I shouted after I had realized what she must have been thinking. “I’m not stoned! I have pink eye!” Surprisingly, she just kept walking: if anything, I think she walked a little faster.

It got worse. As the day progressed my eyes went from being just red to red, watery and gunky. (It was at this point that even ten years of husband training failed him, and my husband said, “Um, did you know? You’ve got a little…my God, that’s disgusting.”) By the time the guests for Clementine’s party had arrived I looked so awful that he wasn’t even trying to fake it anymore, and in fact was talking openly about getting a digital camera so he could sell pictures of me online. (“There’s fetishes for everything, right?” he kept saying. “Surely there’s some pink eye porn site out there that would pay big bucks for these babies.”)

As I went to bed that night humiliated and miserable, at least I knew that come the next morning, a Monday, I would have plenty to write about. And I would have, too, if only for one little thing: by the time the morning came around, I could no longer see the keyboard.

The last time I was in the hospital was when my son, Clyde, was six months old and my daughter, Clementine, was five (they’re now four and nine); and even though several years have passed since then, I still lovingly refer to those two days in the hospital as “my time in the spa.” Really, it was lovely: people brought me trays of food (ok, my first dinner consisted of pureed gristle, but at least it was gristle that had been pureed by someone else); I had complete control over the remote (although the nurses did make me turn off the TV after the seventh episode of Law & Order one night); and, even though it was January, for once I could be nice and warm without worrying about the gas bill (of course, with a temperature of 104, I had been plenty warm at home as well). But by far, the thing that elevated my hospital stay into a pampered spa-like experience was the fact that for the first time in nearly five years I got to sleep in a bed all by myself.

I know what you’re saying: what difference does it make if you get a hospital bed to yourself when the nurses are coming in and waking you up every hour? And, while I suppose that is true, I do have to say that the difference is this: to the best of my knowledge, not once did a nurse ever wake me up by climbing into bed with me and peeing on my leg. (Although, as I said before, I had a pretty high fever, so who knows if my recollection of events is completely accurate. Still, given the professionalism exhibited by the nursing staff under all other circumstances, I’m willing to go out on a limb and reiterate my previous contention: at no time during my hospital stay did someone come into the room and pee on me.)

This cannot be said of my bedroom at home.

At one time, my goal was to have Clyde out of our bedroom and into his own bed by the time he was three; after that deadline passed,(with no appreciable movement towards success) my goals were correspondingly revised downward: first to having him spend the majority of the night in his own bed, then to having him spend a few hours there, finally to having him just agree to touch his head to his own pillow briefly sometime during the early evening. In the end, however, my goal was reduced to one little point: even though as far as I am concerned Clyde can now sleep in any bed he likes, for as long as he likes, I would appreciate it if he would at least agree to get up and go pee in his own bed.

Amazingly, at this point in our relationship that’s all I ask anymore; I’ve resigned myself to every other aspect of “co-sleeping” (more commonly referred to as “no-sleeping”): waking up clinging to the edge of the futon like an opossum to its mother; never having a blanket cover anything above my waist (so as not to smother the shorter members of the bed guild); even having my buttocks occasionally used as hand warmers–everything, in fact, except the nightly golden showers and their accompanying forlorn little cries of “I peed!”

I know: even though he’s now four we could still put Clyde into some sort of a pull-up, but having done my “happy to be free of the diapers dance” nearly a year ago when he potty-trained, I find the thought of this extra expense rather daunting. After all, crossing diapers off of our monthly budget meant we could finally start buying good beer again, which in many ways helped alleviate the whole “sleeping through the night” problem for us all. After all, no one could be expected to make it through the night with a bladder full of Old Milwaukee.

Before I even had children, I dreaded the dramas of parenthood: the arguments over curfews; the disagreements about what constitutes “appropriate” attire (as someone who wore a pair of Tevas on her wedding day–albeit a new, blue pair of Tevas–I sometimes feel slightly hypocritical about forbidding the wearing of flip-flops in the snow, but forbid it I still do); even the standard childhood accusation of: “you like him/her best” filled me with a certain degree of trepidation. By far, though, the parenting drama that I dreaded the most was “the talk”.
(Actually, there are several “talks” that I dreaded: the “sex” talk, the “drug” talk, and the “why is ok for you to sneer at that woman in the SUV when you drive your car two blocks to the library every time it’s a little windy?” talk). To my great relief and surprise, however, I found that the last two talks really could be covered by the “Do as I say, not as I do/Because I’m your Mother, that’s why” umbrella, and, as far as the first one is concerned: not only has it never come up, but at this point I am beginning to doubt that it ever will. After all, why would I ever need to explain something to my children about which they are so obviously well informed already?

Ok, so they probably don’t know everything. (Even I don’t know everything; for instance, I still can’t believe that after all these years they’re inventing new stuff–anal bleaching?). But, anyway, obviously they already know enough stuff to make the whole “birds and the bees” talk completely obsolete. Think about it: if they didn’t know at least the basics, how else would you explain the fact that they never, ever let us sleep alone?

In fact, my children are so diligent about making sure that there are always at least three people in the bed that I sometimes wonder whether or not this behavior was indoctrinated into them at an early age at some secret training camp they attended on the sly. (I can see it now: first they were pulled aside in Jumping Bunnies and told how to attend the next secret meeting of the parental separation society: “The time and location,” they were informed, “ will be hidden on a piece of paper deep in the bottom of the cat litter box; maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon; dump it out daily from now on just to be sure.”) Then there was the meeting itself:

Supreme Leader: Ok troops–you know the drill! These people are never to be let out of your sight! They are never to be left in a bed without at least one incontinent child sleeping between them at all times! Is that clear?

Foot Soldier: But I’m tired of sleeping with them. They snore. They smell funny. They eat hummus and then forget to brush their teeth…

Sergeant: Pull yourself together there–don’t you remember what happened the last time we let them have a night alone (looks significantly at nearby baby, drooling on a Lego tower)–hey! Those are mine!–anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, we don’t want another mistake on our hands, do we?

Front Line Troops: Sir! No Sir!

You could, of course, argue that if this were true then no parents (myself included) would ever have more than one child; this, though, would be ignoring the fact that in some cases, cases where parents are especially persistent (or sneaky), reinforcements need to be sent in. Maybe one, maybe a dozen: it all depends on the parents. (In our case, age, sleep deprivation and late night hummus have all taken their toll: all it takes now is two children to keep us apart–one to cover the bed, and one to cover the couch). Which reminds me–there is still one part of “the talk” they probably haven’t heard yet: the part about, if they ever want to have anything to “talk” about, lay off the garlic based dips after 10 pm.

So the other day I’m walking through the parking lot at Wal-Mart with another parent, and–wait a minute, you say–you went to Wal-Mart? Ok, look, here’s the deal: it wasn’t my idea to go to Wal-Mart; it wasn’t my idea to hammer another nail into the coffin of free enterprise, fair trade and honest wages–it was the other parent’s (hereafter referred to as O.P.)–honest. In fact, I was so ashamed to be seen there that not only did I tell my daughter, Clementine, to avert her eyes, but I also told my spare daughter, Aiyana, to under no circumstances tell her mother where we had been that day. The hard truth though, was that I wasn’t the one who was driving that day, so what could I do? Well, besides bitch and complain, of course, which is exactly what I was doing–using a few of my favorite, choicest expressions, I might add–when I felt the kick.

It was one of those sly, walking-along-the-side-of-you kicks, so subtle that I wasn’t even sure I had felt it. It was with a certain level of disbelief, then, that I asked the O.P.( the only other adult–and therefore the only person with legs long enough to pull off such a maneuver): “Did you just kick me in the ass?” This question was immediately answered with another kick. “What the hell–” I started to say, but was interrupted by yet another boot to the rear. It was then that I noticed that his son, a boy about Clementine’s age, was eagerly soaking up every swear word that had left my mouth: he couldn’t have been working harder to commit those words to memory if he had been trying for a perfect score on the vocabulary section of his SAT. Of course I thought to myself, I’m not supposed to swear in front of other people’s children.

This has been a hard lesson for me to remember, especially since I gave up on toning down my language in front of my own children years ago. My New Years’ resolution, in fact, is to swear more, or at least to swear more creatively. (This, I think, was influenced by a year end blitz of British movies). Don’t get me wrong: I still don’t countenance swearing by children (mine or anyone else’s). But swearing because of children makes perfect sense. After all, it’s only fair that the choicest language belongs to adults, since we’re also the ones who are stuck with the choicest tasks like paying taxes, being drafted, and arguing with insurance company representatives. By the same token, it’s also only fair that adults are the only ones allowed to call the politicians who pre-empt The Simpsons certain words–among them a word that Lenny Bruce so aptly recalled as “a ten-letter word describing any woman I would like to someday meet and possibly marry”–since these same adults are also, by default, the only ones who get to use words like: “Don’t worry, I’ll get the check” and “You take the last piece of pizza–I’m sure there’s a can of lima beans back here in the cupboard somewhere”.

Still, even though I don’t necessarily agree with them, I can understand the parents who are adamantly against swearing in front of their children, and, if I had believed that the ass-kicking parent in question at Wal-Mart was one of these stalwarts then I would have received the kick(s) with a little more grace. This, however, was not the case: on the contrary, it’s not just that this O.P. doesn’t swear in front of my children, it’s worse: he pseudo-swears in front of them, using anemic, near-beer linguistic dodges like “effing”. Personally, I would rather my children listen to Howard Stern for 12 hours straight than be led down the slippery slope of insipid fakery that comes with words like “effing” and “shoot”; after all, isn’t it really just a short hop from fake swearing to eating Vegan Carob Chip cookies and smoking clove cigarettes? Once started on that path, who knows where they’ll end up. It might even be–God forbid–the parking lot at Wal-Mart.

I am not a Scrooge.

OK–even though typing those words once makes me feel like I should be hunching my shoulders, furrowing my brow and flashing dueling “peace” signs, recent accusations to the contrary (you know who you are) make it necessary for me to repeat it: I am not a Scrooge. Really, I love Christmas. I love the cookies, the lights, the cookies, the parties, the cookies, wrapping presents, the cookies, addressing Christmas cards–did I mention the cookies?–I love almost everything, in fact, that Christmas has to offer, except for one little thing: the tree.

There. I said it: I don’t like Christmas trees. Oh, I like the idea of a Christmas tree; I like traipsing out into the woods with our trusty saw and even trustier Thermos of heavily-spiked coffee (and cookies). I like pulling out all of the old family ornaments and explaining once again that the reason we are hanging up half an ancient toilet paper roll with four pieces of glitter stuck to the bottom is that I can still remember when my sister and I made those ornaments, and yes, it really is supposed to be Snoopy dressed as Rudolph, thank you very much. I even like sitting out next to the tree late at night or early in the morning and watching all of the colored lights flashing on and off in the dark like some arboreal distress call. I like all of these things, and yet, really, I don’t like Christmas trees; or, to be more precise, I don’t like post-Christmas trees.

Is there anything more pathetic than a Christmas tree once all of the presents have been opened? Let’s be honest: like a turkey carcass the day after Thanksgiving, or a party girl the morning of New Year’s, a present-less Christmas tree is just living on our sufferance until it is finally time for it to be kicked to the curb. It is the very essence of potential wasted: whereas before Christmas you might look at that tree and think of all the possibilities: maybe Grandma and Grandpa hid a college fund in one of those envelopes; maybe your spouse took the subtle hint (catalog opened, item number circled, phone and credit card close at hand) and got you that sexy nightgown you have been eying; maybe you even took his not-so-subtle hint and got him that iPod. After Christmas, however, all possibility is over: not a college fund, but a 1700 piece Lite Brite set; not the sexy lingerie from Victoria’s Secret, but a flannel granny gown from J.C.Penney; and instead of the iPod, just another package of tube socks.

I know: none of this is the Christmas tree’s fault, but somehow, my disappointment and the Christmas tree’s presence always seem to go hand in hand. (Or limb in limb–whatever.) Of course, the tree isn’t helping itself any when immediately following the Big Day it begins to wantonly throw dry pine needles all over the place. (Although, actually, this is one of a Christmas tree’s habits that I can relate to–after all, if someone pulled me from out of my home in the middle of the night, dragged me off to their living room and then crucified me in the corner, I would probably throw stuff at them, too–the kind of stuff that makes stepping barefoot on a pine needle in the middle of the night seem downright pleasant).

The thing is, like so many of my quirks, my Christmas tree animosity was never a problem until my children got older ( for years they thought it was normal to drag the Christmas tree out to the curb by 9:00 am Christmas morning). Now though, thanks to their age and the accusations of certain of their friends’ parents (again, you know who you are), they have started campaigning to leave our tree up later in the season. There’s even been talk of January. January! All I can say to that is: bah humbug. Oh, and once again: I am not a Scrooge.

The other week, in a moment of temporary insanity, I took my children hiking. Now, faithful readers of this column might remember the last time I took my children hiking: the whining; the begging; the final, feeble stagger back to the car. (The kids didn’t do too well, either). Remembering this, those same faithful readers are probably shaking their heads right now and saying to themselves, “Another hike? What was she thinking? Doesn’t she remember the Red Mountain Death March of 2004? The Abominable Snowbowl Meltdown of 2003?”

The short answer to all of these very valid questions is: of course I don’t. I’m a parent: I don’t remember anything. In fact, it is only the conscious forgetting of the many terrible ordeals I have suffered throughout the years that enables me to make it through the day without twitching. This planned obliviousness is also why I now must ask you, faithful readers, to help me out. The next time you see me and my children in the parking area of anything even remotely resembling a hike, please beat me about the head and shoulders with the heaviest edition of Richard and Sherry Mangums’ Flagstaff Hikes you can find. Trust me: I will thank you for it in the morning.

As you have no doubt by now guessed, on this most recent of hikes there were no faithful readers, with or without the Mangums’ tome. Luckily, though, there was something even better: other people’s children behaving badly; behaving, if possible, even a little more badly than mine. True, mine (or at least Clyde) were whining; but theirs were whining louder. Mine (again, Clyde) were begging to be picked up and carried; but theirs were begging for it even louder. And finally, mine (yep, Clyde) were falling down, scraping a tiny bit of epidermis off of their knees and then howling like they were in the amputation ward of a Civil War hospital; but, again, theirs were howling louder.

It was wonderful: there is just something so freeing about somebody else’s children behaving worse than your own, even if it is only by the smallest of degrees. For one thing, it means that you get to be the benevolent one, the one who smiles understandingly while oozing munificent platitudes like: don’t worry; it’s ok; and, these things happen.

Oh, how I cherish those rare moments when I get to be the understanding other mom. Some people, when they get on an airplane, ask to be seated as far away from the babies as possible. Not me–I like to be in the seat right behind them, because I know that if a pair of three month old twins with ear infections can’t make my children look good, then nothing will.

And, though it may seem cruel for me to wish for another parent’s discomfort, as the one who has been on the mortified other end of the stick all too often, as the one who has apologized sheepishly one too many times as someone else’s child comes running into the house crying and sporting a goose egg on their forehead while my own child comes strolling in nonchalantly swinging the world’s biggest whupping stick–well, all I can say is that I think I deserve a little slack.

In the end I actually enjoyed our most recent hike: although my children–ok, Clyde–at one point flopped on the trail, crying piteously, theirs flopped just a little ways off, crying even more piteously still. In fact, factoring in the O.P. (Other People’s) children quotient, our hike ended up being so enjoyable that I found myself dusting off my old ambition to someday hike the Grand Canyon with Clementine. Yikes. My only hope now is that, somewhere between the back porch at the El Tovar and the beginning of the Bright Angel Trail we’ll run into a faithful reader, Mangum book at the ready.

“Just buy me something!”

It seems to me that there are few periods in childhood that are more frustrating than the time that comes right after articulation, but just before rationalization. It is the time when they are finally able to tell you exactly what they want, but still not able to understand why they can’t have it. Such was the case a few years ago when our annual trip to the Phoenix zoo ended in our annual meltdown in front of the gift shop (conveniently placed near the only exit).

We had almost made it out the gates, when suddenly Clementine realized that we were actually going to leave without buying one single thing: no tube of little plastic animals to get lost in the car seats before we had even left the parking lot; no stuffed bear sporting the holiday wear of the season–not even a smashed penny. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. This, of course, fired up every single one of her consumer sensibilities, as well as her incipient patriotic fervor (I think it was soon enough after 9/11 that the nation–Clementine included–was still trying to “shop its troubles away.”) As the awful realization that she was about to become persona non shoppa finally sunk in, she dug in her heels (both figuratively and literally), and, refusing to go even one step further, issued the now famous demand, “Just buy me something!”

I could see other parents eyeing us nervously as they too made the mad dash to the exit, and, even though I could see that they felt for me, I could also see that they were desperately trying to avoid having their own children contaminated with what looked to be a very serious case of consumer longing. It’s true: avarice is the most contagious of all childhood diseases; in Clementine’s case I believe she had picked it up by unprotected exposure to some contaminated toy catalogs– for days she had been carrying them around the house, lovingly stroking them so often that you would have thought they had been retrieved from the Lost Ark of the Covenant instead of their true origin, which was the recycling bin.

So there we were, in the middle of the zoo exit; it was plain to see that, as far as Clementine was concerned her plastic levels were dangerously low, and that only by dint of an immediate intervention in the form of some cheap, yet overpriced Chinese toy product could she be saved from a case of pernicious toylessness (a disease that hasn’t been seen in this country for the last fifty years–except, of course, in the Amish; but then again, they don’t vaccinate).

Hoping to head this outbreak off at the pass, I told her the story of her great-grandmother, and how she had considered herself to be the luckiest child I the world if she got one orange for Christmas. I told her the story of children throughout the world who had to make their own toys out of pieces of paper and plastic bags. Hitting my stride, I was about to launch into even more pitiful tales still when suddenly Clementine gave me a look that told me the awful truth: she knew. She knew I was a fraud: wasn’t I the same one who had grown up demanding, and frequently receiving, my own weight in Barbie dolls and Breyer horses? How could I be playing the hypocrite now, when the weight of a thousand discarded Barbie shoes still lay heavy on my back?

Properly chagrined, I meekly followed her into the gift shop where I bought her something–maybe a plastic monkey cup; all I really remember is that whatever it was it only kept her satisfied until our next stop at a gas station twenty miles down the road, where, surrounded by aisles full of chips, candies and sodas, Clementine once more turned to me in frustration and demanded, “Just buy me something!” This time, though, I was better able to resist: after all, even the weight of a thousand Barbie shoes can only go so far.

For years now I have kept a picture in my kitchen cabinet; it is a self-portrait of my friend Todd trying to decide what to have for dinner. In front of him lie three choices: Kraft macaroni and cheese, Top Ramen, and a loaded gun. (The fact that he was still alive to give me the picture tells me he must have chosen one of the first two).

I keep this picture for two reasons: one, it’s funny, and two, it is a reminder to me that I am now far beyond my ramen years, far beyond the days when I purchased food based on how many units of it I could get for a dollar. Gone are the lean college and post-college years when “fine dining” meant using real butter on your mac-n-cheese, and “splurging’ meant using two flavor packets on your ramen noodles. Now I am not only an adult, but an adult with an actual job that pays actual money, enabling me to therefore stock my kitchen cabinets with all kinds of actual food. Which makes it even harder to explain why, when I opened up my cabinet this morning I was confronted with box after box of macaroni and cheese.

It is the same with every parent I know. No matter how health-conscious, kosher, vegan or South Beach the parent happens to be, dig hard enough in their cabinet and you will find some version of macaroni and cheese. It is the food you reach for when all other food offerings have failed: when the sushi has elicited howls of despair, the pasta puttanesco has produced lip-curling sneers, and the meatloaf has generated newfound vegetarian conversions. It is, in the world of kid cuisine–where every attempt to introduce variety and/or flavor is inevitably met with the sort of disdain usually reserved for balding middle-aged men trying to pick up college girls–the equivalent of that same balding, middle-aged man just giving up and calling an escort service. In other words, it is a sure thing.

This is, unless of course, you happen to be one of those people who writes the books and magazine articles about how “easy” it is to get children to try new foods; for these child-feeding “experts” all you need to do is offer a variety of healthful, nutritious foods presented in a variety of “fun” options and children will instantly transform themselves into miniature gourmands. If only, they chastise, you would take the time to dress up their open-faced spelt bagel and hummus sandwiches with broccoli “hair”, red pepper smiles and olive eyes, then your child, too, would be joyfully gobbling down their healthful snack, instead of hanging off the refrigerator door like the world’s noisiest magnet screaming “Popsicle! Popsicle!” After all, that’s what worked for their little Jacob or Brianna, so why wouldn’t it work for you?

In rhetoric terms, this is what is known as a logical fallacy. Saying that my child will eat fresh vegetables because your little Jacob did is the same as saying the sun goes down because it is scared of the dark. Let’s face it: Jacob ate his fresh vegetables because he is a little freak. Hey, there’s nothing wrong with that: lots of people are freaks, myself included. It’s only when freaky Jacob’s freaky mother writes a book about how the rest of us could get our children to eat fresh vegetables too if only we really tried that I start to have a problem with it.

In fact, the only thing that keeps my resentment at the thought of them enjoying their family dinners of eggplant, pad thai, and even such exotic dishes as rice in check is that same picture of Todd. That picture always reminds me that one day the Wheel of Fortune will swing even these children into their poverty-stricken early twenties, where they, too, will learn to make friends with the blue box. Let’s see their nutritionist mothers write a book about that.

The other day, while poking around a friend’s toy room, I made a gristly discovery: Deep within the bowels of this toy room, hidden behind all the boxes of Magz-X construction toys, vintage Lincoln logs, and enough Thomas the Tank Engine train track to deforest the entire island of Sodor, there lurked… a crayon making machine. I was aghast: What kind of person makes their own crayons?

In my house, not only do I not make crayons, I usually refuse to buy them as well. In fact, any stray crayon that does manage to find its way through my doors can expect to receive the same kind of treatment that a stray gazelle might receive from a lioness on the prowl; only the crayon, instead of ending up as a pile of horns and hooves on the savannah, will most likely end up as a bright speck of citron yellow at the bottom of the trash can. But this, apparently, was not the case in this house; in this Bizarro World they not only fully supported the rights of all crayons to exist, they actively participated in the process of making them as well. It was enough to make me wonder what other horrors I would find in this house: Bathtubs full of homemade gin? Basement rooms full of crystal meth? Maybe even a puppy mill in the backyard?

My first instinct, of course, was to deliver a sharply worded lecture on the inadvisability of bringing more crayons into a world full of white walls with eggshell finish, but, for once, I bit my tongue. After all, maybe there was a reasonable explanation as to why two seemingly normal individuals would want to make their own crayons. (Even though, the last time I checked crayons were something like ten packs for a dollar at the local drugstore.) Maybe, though, there was something going on that I didn’t know about, like back in the 1970s when I continued to indulge in Nestle’s chocolate products, blissfully unaware of the international boycott. Could this be the same thing all over again? Had I, with my occasional purchase of store-bought crayons, inadvertently led to the continuation of intolerable working conditions in the crayon mines? Were the big crayon makers, even now, depleting the ozone layer with their foul bursts of burnt sienna and ochre? Or, worse yet, was the international trade in crayons merely a front for terrorist cells the world over? Every time my son, Clyde, colored on the walls, was he really coloring with Osama? (That I could believe).

Or maybe it was just a personal choice on their part. Maybe they were getting ready for the big move off the grid. Maybe the crayon maker was just the first step in their struggle towards self-sufficiency, and even now they were also making plans to grind their own flour and sew their own clothes. If I looked hard enough, would I also find the place where they were saving their used cooking oil and fireplace ashes in preparation for making their own soap?

Finally, when none of these theories proved satisfying I did what most people would probably have done in the first place: I asked. Unfortunately, the answer I received was less than edifying. “The crayon maker?” they gushed, “It’s great. You take all the little bits of broken crayons, put them in here, and then you get a great big colorful new crayon.”

Ah.

Clearly, I had been correct in my first theory: I had inadvertently entered the Bizarro World, where parents not only bought toys for their children, but allowed them to play with them as well. (The toy room should have been my first clue). It was, of course, slightly disappointing to find out how baseless all of my other theories were, but at the same time it did give me one thing to look forward to: At least now I know where to go the next time I want to pick up a few bottles of really cheap gin, some meth, and a new puppy.

There are many careers I feel I could have excelled at: surgeon (except for the part about having to touch someone’s insides–yuck); test pilot (except that I hate to go fast); even model (at least from the ankles down–I have lovely feet). In fact, I can honestly say that I have never lost my childhood belief that I could be anything I wanted to be when I grew up. Or, at least, almost anything: from an early age, I always knew I could never do retail.

I’m terrible at selling: I don’t even like to get a receipt when I drop off stuff at Goodwill, because it feels too much like I’m engaging in some sort of a “transaction”. In fact, probably the only person in the whole world who is worse at selling than I am is my friend Tom, who is such an inept salesman that he couldn’t even hold a job at the local theater’s concession stand, a place that comes with a built-in client base. (It seems that every time some poor kid would try to buy a box of overpriced candy, Tom would lean back, shake his head mournfully and say, “You don’t really want to buy that do you? It’s terrible.” Before you start to make assumptions about Tom’s noble quest to save the youth of America from dangerous chemicals and preservatives, you must know this: in college he also used to hand out unfiltered Camel cigarettes at Halloween.)

Some people just aren’t cut out for sales, and I count myself to be among them. But that’s ok: everyone has their limits, and I know this is one of mine. (For the record, Tom is not now involved in either sales or public health education). How is it then, that even with knowing this about myself; even after spending years avoiding the high school salesgirl job at The Gap, the college salesgirl job pushing magazine subscriptions door-to-door, and the twentysomething salesgirl job working at the local call center, I now find myself up to my neck in the retail biz? Two words: school fundraiser.

I know: it’s supposed to be the child who is selling the products, but let’s get real–how many 9-year-olds do you know who can count amongst their inner circle the type of person who wants a talking “Battlefields of the Civil War” picture frame or a tin of carob-covered Hanukkah pretzels? Realistically, it is the parents who end up schlepping these catalogs around to playdates, offices and book clubs, always on the lookout for someone gullible enough to believe that there actually exists a wrapping paper that is worth $12 a sheet.

And therein lies the real rub: it is not so much that our children’s schools are “encouraging” us to sell-sell-sell, it’s that what they’re “encouraging” us to sell-sell-sell is such crap-crap-crap. After all, I don’t mind helping Clementine with her yearly Girl Scout cookie sales: with those babies you are not so much a salesman as a dealer (the problem isn’t getting people to buy them, it’s getting people to stop coming over to your house at midnight trying to get their thin mint fix). As far as the school catalog products are concerned, though–well, let’s just say I would have better luck (and feel less guilt) if I was trying to convince people to help me collect my Nigerian lottery winnings than I do trying to convince them to buy something called a bucket o’pizza. (In my experience, unless the third word is beer, bucket o’ has never helped to sell anything).

Actually, though, judging by Tom’s popularity with the neighborhood children (if not their parents), maybe a bucket o’ciggies wouldn’t be such a bad fundraiser–they might even give the Girl Scouts a run for their money. Maybe I’ll suggest it at the next PTA meeting–if nothing else, I’m sure it will get me out of being asked to sell anything ever again.