See that Mountain? Redefining Glory Days (from the Momplex Blog archives)

January 9, 2014February 27, 2023 Jenny7 Comments

The month before I graduated college, one of my writing professors approached me to ask if the university’s English department could use my senior writing portfolio as a model for future classes. She said it was one of the best she’d ever seen. My sophomore year, there was some sort of essay-on-demand writing-proficiency exam required for all sophomores, and my graded essay came back with a letter saying it was so good, the grader had stopped the rest of the judges to listen to it read aloud. True stories.

My husband and I used to be cemetery fanatics. This one, from Savanna, was always one of my favorites. It was next to the husband's headstone, which was about 10 feet high and inscribed with every freaking thing he'd ever done or joined. Go ahead. Click on it. Behold the last line of the epitaph. That's what I call honest. Makes her husband look like a narcissistic wiener. — My husband and I used to be cemetery fanatics. This headstone, from Savanna, Georgia, was always one of my favorites. It was next to the husband’s headstone, which was about 10 feet high and inscribed with every freaking thing he’d ever done or joined. Go ahead. Click on it. Behold the last line of the epitaph. That’s what I call honest. Makes her husband look like a narcissistic wiener.

I think about these experiences sometimes, mostly how they make me feel (and sound) like Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite: “See that mountain over there? What do you want to bet I can throw this football over it?” He takes his bite of pan-fried steak, his hairpiece glistening, and, oh, it’s such a pathetic sight. I guess I’ll take comfort in knowing I’ve done a few things between my supposed glory days and my current life.

It’s been about 15 years since I graduated from college. Before I even turned my tassle, I was working at a small educational publishing company as its managing editor. Since, I’ve worked from coast to coast. I’ve been a newspaper editor where Southern hog farmers and retired Yankees are fighting the final, fizzling skirmishes of the Civil War. I was the editor for the largest private-equity research firm in the Northwest, on the receiving end of a nana-nana-boo-boo letter from Bill Gates’ dad about a typo he found in a report I edited. (Yes, the rich and famous are just like us!) I’ve been a stringer for public radio. I’ve coordinated publications for the National Endowment for Democracy, where I got to meet some incredible champions of freedom, like escapees of North Korean forced-labor camps, survivors of rape warfare in the Congo, and one Azar Nafisi, the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran. More recently, I received a Pushcart Prize special mention and wrote a book. See that mountain over there?

Let’s be real. I haven’t landed among the stars, at least not the ones anyone expected. To quote a former classmate of mine from my 15-year high school reunion, a guy with something like 17 children and enough ATVs to entertain them all, “I thought you were going to go somewhere, be something big, like a lawyer or a doctor.” To boot, that was said during all the aforementioned accomplishments. He didn’t even know I was about to become what I am now.

These days, I am a mom and a wife in a Wisconsin home with a loud dishwasher that is making it hard for me to think as I type. My day went like this: shower, wake up the kids, make lunches, wake up husband, wake up the kids again, dry hair, wake up the kids again, make breakfast, search for kids’ socks, diffuse tantrum over socks not being fresh from the dryer, replace said socks with better-fitting socks, search for snow boots, drive kids to school, go to work, blog for a camera company, blog for a jeweler, pick up kids, go grocery shopping, miss yoga, make enchiladas, watch eldest pick onions out of enchiladas, go to science fair, do bedtime, and finally, sweet finally, watch some Modern Family. What can I say? I have two kids and came this close—this close—to choking a passive-aggressive, competitive parent tonight at a school science expo in a cafeteria, where the fluorescent lights no doubt showed off the greasy child-sized fingerprints on my glasses. Every day, I am so much more tired at the end than I intended to be at the beginning. Yes, I have #firstworldproblems. But, God, I love my family so much more than I ever loved anything I ever wrote. There’s that. No, there really is that.

Sometimes I’m plagued by the thought that I have not become what I could become. There are still little voices telling me I thought you would be a big deal. This is when I have to remind myself that life is longer than 15 years between college and now. What am I? Dead? It is no small deal raising children well while still becoming who you were meant to be. In fact, in my case, the two are inextricably related. And so I do my best. I march down from curing the hiccups, negotiating over cold or hot lunch, doing so many endless experiments with baking soda, and I try to turn on that thing—that magic thing—that’s still somewhere in there. Usually I can’t find it. It’s so hard to create beauty when you’re exhausted. In the end, I believe this isn’t a choice I have to make right now. I believe the writing will keep. My kids will grow up and move away, for we all know childhood’s fleeting. But the writing will keep.

babies · grandparents · humor · preschoolers

10 Reasons the Elderly Are Not Like Little Kids (from the Momplex Blog archives)

February 28, 2013February 27, 2023 Jenny3 Comments

I’ve heard it my whole life, the notion that elderly people are a lot like little kids. I know regression takes place over the final years. I’ve seen firsthand how Father Time eventually subtracts some of the most basic skills, leaving behind a storeroom of Depends and the impulse control of—well, a preschooler. But having spent much of today with my nearly 90-year-old grandfather and my 4-year-old son, I’m not convinced the analogy holds much water. Here’s why I don’t think the elderly are much like little kids:

Although my grandpa did fall and get a rug burn on his forehead just before I arrived to take him out, he did not start screaming, “BAND-AID! BAND-AID! I NEED A BAND-AID! I’M BLOODING!”
While my grandpa has indeed reached the stage where incontinence is an issue, he never wiggles around pinching his wiener through his pants and swearing to God that he really does not have to go.
Although my grandpa did shout, “WAITER!!!” loud enough to cast a spell of startled silence over every single patron in the IHOP where we ate today, he came off like a regular Emily Post next to my son, who at that moment was creeping out from under the table with something balanced on his index finger while saying, “Mom! People wipe boogers under this table!”
My grandpa requires naps and can fall asleep anywhere, but he does not sprout horns and devolve into a blubbering, fit-throwing devil during the 20 minutes prior. He also does not demand any particular bedding be present, and although he does like a good reclining chair for the deed, I’ve never once seen him pitch a fit if he doesn’t get one.
My grandpa carries a handkerchief with him everywhere and deposits his boogers in it instead of on walls, in his hair, or worst of all, in his mouth. He also does not spend time marveling at each specimen he removes.
My grandpa’s jokes don’t all end somehow with someone pooping or falling into poop or smelling like poop or eating poop or being poopy. They pretty much never involve poop.
My grandpa never shows up to the dinner table nude.
My grandpa may hoard things that clearly belong in the trash, but at least they’re remnants of things that were once used by him and might possibly serve some purpose in the future. They are not someone else’s rubbish plucked up from playgrounds, parking lots, grocery store floors, or worst of all, the mall play area.
No matter what he’s served, my grandpa eats every…single…thing…on…his…plate….right down to the last nanoparticle of butter. Then he licks his fingers. Enough said.
Once he goes to bed, my grandpa is down for the night. He does not call out requests for water, back scratches, hangnail doctoring, different speeds on the ceiling fan, lights dimmed or brightened, another trip to the toilet, or answers to random questions about God, death, or private parts.

Think about it. Can’t you name way more differences than likenesses between little kids and the elderly, too?

121122_0024 — Not always bad to have things in common

advice · government · humor · motherhood · poop · preschoolers

Whack-a-Mole: Parenting in an Intrusive World (from the Momplex Blog archives)

February 13, 2013February 27, 2023 Jenny7 Comments

Poop-slinging is not just for primates. I know, because I experience it as a mom firsthand all the time. I’m not talking about literal poo once flung at me by kicking baby legs—technically, that’s not slung. I’m talking about the endless heaps of crap the world puts on parents, day in and day out:

Sexualized monster dolls with anorexic thigh-gap and Kris Jenner eye makeup
Vaccination, breastfeeding, and red-shirting debates that outheat the meetings of the Continental Congress
Surprise commercials for things like CSI: Cannibal Ear-Rape Unit during family Christmas specials
Endless scare campaigns about eating high-fructose corn syrup, GMOs, aerosolized feces, snow, etc.
Magazine covers with the lying liars who make babies in Hollywood and the lying liars who help them lie about the baby weight they “melt away” three weeks post-partum through a combo of Pilates, coconut oil, and Acai berries. Liars.
Know-it-alls forever saying, “If I were a parent, I would never…” [insert karma’s placeholder here] as if it were as simple as boiling an egg or crate-training a dog
YouTube instructional videos for DIY push-up, padded training bras
Absurdly expensive athletic programs that require 12 practices a week and a second mortgage, until the third grade, when it all doubles
My personal nemesis, the bottomless sea of paper: teachers’ notes, permission slips, school calendars, snack lists, book fair circulars, fundraiser order forms, and really bad artwork that only qualifies as artwork because your child wrote his/her name on it during art class

It’s nothing, really. I’m sure every generation of parents has it’s crap, and I’m not complaining. I do my best to roll with the punches and stay ahead of the whack-a-mole game that is raising kids. But sometimes I just have to laugh at the absurdity of what gets slung at me by our hyper-ridiculous society. Look at the headline of a note I received today from the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and Public Health:

An Intervention!!! Exclamation Point!!!!

No pressure there, right? Screw the “happiest kid on the block.” We’re going for global domination! Basic rule of thumb I’ve learned as a writer: Be wary of exclamation marks. They often indicate hysteria, fake excitement, ignorance—or, in this case, all three.

Turns out the university thinks my kid is fat. And they want to do something about his dangerous fatness—as well as mine and his dad’s—through a special web-based program to help us exercise and eat healthier meals: “All parents and children will be weighed and measured at the first visit, and again at 6 month and at 12 months.”

Um. Really?

This letter took me off guard. It explained that an enclosed body mass index (BMI) chart—on which my son’s latest BMI was shown—indicated that my son is heading for heart disease, bone problems, and diabetes. Basically, they called my kid fat, and then very subtly indicated that my husband and I must be fat, too.

Thank God SOMEBODY'S looking out for my kid. — Thank God SOMEBODY’S looking out for my kid.

Most of you don’t personally know my son. Let me just say that I regularly worry he isn’t eating enough. He even has a little preschooler six-pack. You know what I’m talking about, right? I’d kill to have his abs.

The BMI is an arcane tool, and you can Google to your heart’s content to find out why. Basically, it’s an oversimplification and doesn’t really measure what doctors purport it measures. My husband used to always tip the BMI index at “obese” when he was in the military. Then they’d do what’s called a “tape test” to measure his various body parts in proportion to one another (no penises, I promise) and conclude otherwise. In other words, the BMI is flawed.

So, I wrote a harsh letter to the university. It had more to do with my critically anorexic cousin—now in her 20s—than with my son. That the medical community would start imposing diets on 4-year-olds with six packs? Please. Let’s sling some more poop at parents. I’m sure there are kids who will benefit from the program, but I could not help but wonder about the 11-year-old girl who might intercept that form letter, who might be perfectly well proportioned, and who might head up to her bedroom sobbing because the numbers show she’s “fat.” And the doctors want to pay her family a $100 research reimbursement to see if they can un-fat her!

Maybe the medical school undertook this ill-researched project to jump through a funding hoop. I’m certainly not signing up. I don’t aspire to having the “healthiest kid on the planet,” but I don’t think I’m terribly far from just that. I aspire to having normal kids who walk the usual tightrope of living, who aren’t scared to death by all the poop being slung at them and their parents over the course of their sweet little childhoods. I want kids who are prepared to take the reins when it’s their turn to be mommies and daddies. I suspect there will be ever-more poop slung at them. But just as I was there to wipe it off their bums from the start, I want to be there to wipe it off their faces someday so they can still see straight.