friends · humor · motherhood · preschoolers · sons · speed-posts

The Shame of Hand-Me-Downs (from the Momplex Blog archives)

My son has almost no clothes of his own. By that, I mean he wears almost exclusively hand-me-downs. I can’t even begin to fathom how much cash this has saved me. Land’s End snowsuits, firetruck galoshes, and warm cable-knit sweaters are nothing to scoff at. I’m grateful.

BUT.

This year my son started preschool, and among his classmates is the younger sibling to the kid who used to own my kiddo’s threads. And several times a week we are greeted in the preschool cloakroom with one of these lines:

“Hey, I know that shirt! That’s one of Sam’s!”
“Oh! Our favorite pants! Sam loved those!”
“Hey! There’s another one of Sam’s sweater!”

And so on.

For some reason, it’s starting to get embarassing to me. Like none of his clothes are ours. Like we never buy him anything new. Like we’re riding someone else’s wave. I find myself wanting to shush her, to say, “Do you have to announce that every day?” Which makes me feel like a real jerk. Because it is just that: real jerky. Maybe it’s just the repetitiveness? Like Ned from Groundhog Day who greets Phil every deja vu morning with the same thrilled Hey! Phil!? Phil!? Hey, Phil Connors! I thought that was you! Hey, hey, now don’t you tell me you don’t remember me, because I sure as heckfire remember you!” Look where THAT got him:

Sweet relief, look how good Phil feels after that release!

Oh, my god. Am I seriously suggesting that I punch a dear friend in the face because she’s happy to see her kid’s old clothes again? Do you know what this is all about? Well, I might. You see, I’m a little sister, the one who got all the hand-me-downs in my family. Even if I loved them, weren’t they somehow always not quite mine? Weren’t they always a little worn and pilled already? Didn’t my sister used to get to dictate which ones could be released to me? Like, did I EVER get that #$!@ng awesome Tweety Bird t-shirt she had in the first grade? No. I got her stupid jeans.

This is starting to look to me like a classic case of PTHMDS, Post-Tramautic Hand-Me-Down Syndrome. You know what? I had better get the heckfire over it, because Land’s End snowsuits, firetruck galoshes, and warm cable-knit sweaters are nothing to scoff at. And like I tell my 4-year-old son, we don’t punch our friends.

humor · sexuality

What Turns You On (from the Momplex Blog archives)

One of my childhood friends—I’ll call her Jane—had a big golden schlong in her parents’ closet. It wasn’t hers, of course. It was theirs, but Jane must have felt some measure of ownership over it, at least enough to figure it was hers to show me one afternoon after school.

“Look at THIS,” she said, her eyes flashing darkly as she cackled and produced the metallic member from one of a seeming zillion boxes stacked willy-nilly in the closet. It was like Mr. Ollivander plucking the perfect wand from his inventory shelves in the world of Harry Potter. “Can you believe THIS!?” The thing is, it wasn’t immediately clear to me just what THIS was. Was her mother a gardener? Was THIS some sort of dazzling county fair award for having grown the biggest cucumber?

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s a vibrator,” Jane answered matter-of-factly, as if this would clear things up for me. It didn’t.

At my home, my parents had a little vibrating contraption, too, but I’m pretty sure they’d picked it up from the health and beauty aisle at the S&H Green Stamps store. They kept it plugged in right in our living room sometimes, and my sister and I would use it to massage our legs, arms, heads, even the dog. It was a heavy, substantial appliance sort of thing, because it was a back massager. It boasted two fist-sized knobs that would squeeze in and out—and vibrate. So, of course, when I looked at Jane beaming about her parents’ “vibrator,” all I could think was Why would anyone want a leg massage with THAT? When she clarified, I wanted to barf.

Years later, another friend—I’ll call him John—introduced me to porn in the form of a Brazilian film called The Lady on the Bus. It was really a gateway to porn, more of an “erotic genre” film that tells the story of a grieved woman trying to heal herself by way of nymphomania. She spends the whole film soliciting sex from strangers on city buses, doing it in weird places and shouting out terrible lines like, “Beat me senseless!” I knew I shouldn’t have been watching it, but the dialogue and acting were just so ridiculous that it was comical. John had a screening of sorts for me and a handful of other friends, and to this day he can still quote a good deal of it that will still get me rolling with belly laughs. No matter how funny I found the dialogue, though, I distinctly remember wanting to leave the room during the naughty scenes. I simply did not want to watch other people having sex.

Klassy...and so literal.
Klassy…and so literal.

Let’s not drudge up every story that explains why. I’ll just say here that the sex and porn industry aren’t exactly my raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. That’s why it’s so funny and so wrong that a porn-peddler was the one to co-opt the original blog domain for the Momplex. I can’t tell you how many times I inadvertently type in the old URL and get a startling eyeful. I still cannot get over the fact that my mommy blog turned overnight into an online portal for porn and sex toys. What were those pirates thinking? That I’d pay the ransom that is the ridiculous price they’ve put on the domain’s head? That people who’d grown accustomed to visiting my blog might be interested in some porn instead?

If you’re going to turn a mommy blog’s domain into a porn shop, I suggest you do it differently. Do it right. Show pictures of a week’s worth of meals neatly organized in a freezer. Show full, gorgeous glasses of wine. Show kids doing their own laundry and dishes. Show men’s underwear, in the hamper. Show a toilet with the seat down, no pee on its base. I’d show a lot of things if I were peddling porn on the old Momplex, but none of them would be vibrators or skin flicks or people cupping their naked body parts with their heads tilted back in rapture. You can get that crap anywhere. Tired mommies deserve the good stuff. I’d beat them senseless with pictures of cozy places to nap.

humor · sons

Holiday Hobnobbing with People Who Don’t Wear Pants (from the Momplex Blog archives)

It’s an age-old story, known the world over and spanning the centuries. No, it’s not the one with the stable and the wise men and the donkey trying to eat Baby God’s bed. It’s the one where you’re trying to enjoy a family meal but instead have to race through swallowing your pork roast to remind one of the guests, “We do NOT put our penises on the table.” Right? Am I right?

My son is four, and like his peers, is still a fairly long way from being civilized. We really did have to tell him to get his penis off the table last night. Yes, he puts on his own socks, says please, and washes his hands after toileting, but he also rips off farts, naked, while getting piggy-back rides. It’s gross, but the kid’s got chutzpah.

The one place where he shows the most promise of shedding his caveman tendencies is actually the room right next to where he eats nude. Yes, in the kitchen, he’s like a little domestic god-in-the-making. He loves to help me cook (and sometimes even clean). We’ve made pies and breads and roasts and sauces together, and he always seems like he’s paying such close and studied attention. But he’s still four. Keep that in mind as today, in honor of the holidays, I share his first-ever recipe of his own design. Get out your recipe cards and keep this one handy for your Christmas table. It’s a keeper.

B’s No-Logic No-Cook Applesauce

Shut up, Barefoot Contessa. He's got this one.
Shut up, Barefoot Contessa. He’s got this one.

Ingredients:
Apple
Water

Directions:
Coarsely chop apple. Add water and bludgeon with a wire whisk until whisk bends at handle. Voila.