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  • Two Steaks, Twenty Dollars and My Mind

    When I moved to Naperville, I hated not knowing where I was. Oh, I knew where my house was in relation to the major highways, but I didn’t know the city the way I had known Oak Park. To be fair, Oak Park covers 4.7 square miles directly to the west of Chicago. Like Chicago, its streets are straight, running north/south or east/west. Naperville covers 35.5 square miles. There are a handful of straight streets, mostly in the older, downtown area. In the newer sections, and there are lots of newer sections, the streets have been designed to curve and wind gently through the rolling countryside, I suppose to make up for the fact that all of our houses look exactly alike. Actually, there isn’t much countryside left out here and any rolling is manmade.

    Naperville seems to specialize in streets that take you right back where you started. In my own neighborhood, there are numerous “courts,” or cul de sacs. You enter and exit from the same point. That’s actually pretty straightforward. More confusing are the “circles,” which are streets that have two points of origin. My husband, who routinely blew off our street when we lived in Oak Park, would appreciate it if we lived on a circle. Then he’d have two chances to get driving home right.

    For a while after we moved, knowing how to get Target was sufficient. Soon, though, I wanted more mastery over my geography. With no lake to serve as a point of reference, Naperville proved a geographical nightmare.  So, I would get lost. On purpose. What with the circles, cul de sacs, unincorporated areas and streets that change names mid-street, it’s pretty darned easy to get lost in Naperville. Obviously, I always found my way back home.

    I haven’t always been lucky in loss. Frankly, I’m a world-champion loser. I am resisting the urge to write, “Just ask my kids,” but, clearly, I am losing that battle with myself. See? I really am a loser.

    I have lost all kinds of things. Recently, I lost two steaks. They were big fat rib-eyes, grass-fed, that I snatched on sale at Whole Foods. In the pantheon of things that will stop your heart cold, rib-eyes are up there with an air embolism and Tori Spelling without makeup. I make myself believe that, if I buy them at Whole Foods, the good I do the Earth balances the evil I do to my body in a sort of personal health “cap and trade” program.

    I got the steaks home and then they disappeared. For days, I rummaged through the refrigerator and the freezer hunting down the steaks. Eventually, I gave up, assuming I’d find the steaks the same way I found a pound of hamburger I lost when my son was a baby—by smell. But, the house didn’t start smelling like the stockyards on a summer afternoon so soon enough, I forgot the steaks.

    I don’t just lose meat; I lose money. Now, I’m not talking about making bad investments. I don’t need to invest one cent to lose money. I lose money just by letting it out of my hands. The problem is that I don’t let the money out of my hands in a controlled, habitual manner. If I were to take money that is given to me and immediately place it in my wallet, I would not lose money. But I don’t, thinking that if I do, I will then spend the money. So, I put money all over the place. I put it in my back jeans pocket. I put it in my jacket pocket. I put it in the cupboard with the coffee cups. I put it on top of my clothes drawers in the closet. I put it in any of the three or four pockets inside my purse. I put it on counters, in drawers, in cups, in nooks and in crannies

    I love winter, but not because the snow is pretty and covers up all the ugly gray drabness that is Chicago after autumn. I love winter because I find money in just about every pocket of every coat I own. The first few weeks of winter are like winning the lottery. Every day, I find anywhere from one to ten dollars waiting to make my day. So far, most of the money I’ve lost has come back in due time. Still, there is a twenty-dollar bill floating around the house somewhere.

    I lose my keys, but everyone loses their keys. I lose whatever book I’m currently reading at least two times per day. I’ve found them all sorts of places, like in the gazebo, under the dining room table, in the car. Once, I found a paperback on a shelf under the sink in the bathroom.

    Something I’ve never lost, though, is my mind. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder sometime after I had my son. I’ve been treated for depression. I’ve been treated for dysthymia. Never, in all the years I’ve been treated for my myriad of mental maladies, have I misplaced my mind. Frankly, there were times I wished I could. I was naturally curious then when I discovered iCarly, the kids’ show on Nickelodeon, would be airing an episode titled “iLost My Mind.”

    I was warned that this episode would present a terrible picture of mental illness and institutions that treat it. Mental health support groups implored parents to boycott the show. Of course, my daughter wanted to watch it. So we did what we’ve always done when my kids wanted to watch something I was pretty sure was crap. We watched it together.

    “iLost My Mind” is crap. I did not say, “I told you so.” We did talk about what was funny and what was not. Not funny: dirty walls with signs on them saying things like “Don’t eat the puzzle pieces” and “Friends don’t kill friends.” Funny: a male character dressed up as one of the other character’s moms. My daughter admitted that she understood that delusional people don’t act the way the characters in the show did but she thought one of them was funny anyway. And, we talked about how people with mental illnesses are a lot more like her mom than the characters in the show.

    I found the steaks. They were delicious. I have no idea where the $20 went. Perhaps my son knows. And my mind? Firmly and permanently ensconced in my skull.

    © Copyright 2011 by Janice Lindegard. All rights reserved.

  • Dead Squirrels and Anger Issues

    I was making my daily “survey the acreage” walk around my home last Friday. First morning cup of tea in hand, I walk a circuit either from front door to back or vice versa. Along the way, I make note of things that need attention, but since I have nothing to make the note on, I usually don’t remember the thing that needed noting until I’ve noted it several times.

    This particular morning, I hadn’t even left the house and I already knew something wasn’t right. I looked out my front door and saw a grey lump in the middle of the sidewalk. “Hm,” I hm’d, “someone left one of Pogo’s stuffed animals outside.”

    Pogo, our dog, once brought me a present of a dead baby rabbit. Since then, he’s enjoyed a series of stuffed faux wildlife. He delights in grabbing the critter in his teeth, then whipping his head back and forth until the poor thing pops its stitching. More than once I’ve come into the family room to find a limp, drool-soaked faux hide lying in the midst of a mountain of fluffy white stuffing.

    A closer inspection revealed there was nothing faux about the wildlife on the sidewalk. Doing my best “Ducky,” I deduced that the squirrel, due to the relatively intact state of the body and scant amount of blood, had literally dropped dead out of the parkway tree onto the sidewalk. Removal, I further deduced, was a job for Animal Control.

    Animal Control informed me that wildlife removal was my responsibility. Period. Oh, they gave me the helpful suggestion of using doubled grocery bags, garden gloves and a shovel to secure the dead squirrel and then said I could just drop it in with my normal trash. I balked at this.

    When my dog, which I own, dropped a dead bunny, which he killed, onto our deck, which is in our back yard, I put the dead bunny in my trash. It stank more than stink can stink by the time the trash was collected some days later. Surely, removing a wild squirrel that fell from a publicly maintained tree onto a publicly owned sidewalk is the responsibility of the public. Nope.

    By this time, the cul de sac was filling with children playing in various vehicles. One was being pedaled as quickly as its toddler driver’s legs could pedal it straight toward the dead squirrel in the middle of the sidewalk. I warned the parents, saying I’d get to the squirrel as soon as my skin stopped crawling. Then, a miracle occurred. The dad offered to dispose of the squirrel. I looked at him as if he were insane. He said, “No, really, not a problem!” He was sincere; his eyes gleamed. I looked to his wife. She said, “Oh, he gets rid of dead animals all the time!” At this point, I figured it was not just convenient to have him remove the animal, but indeed it might be unwise to deprive him of the pleasure . . . of helping a neighbor.

    Squirrel dispatched and it being my daughter’s birthday, I started cleaning up the house in preparation for family festivities. At some point, the phone rang. There was something else going on in my life at the time that required me to lower my defenses just a bit. Otherwise, I never would have done what I did. I answered the phone, even though the caller ID said, “Private Caller.”

    Private Caller said he was looking for Alan Zachary. I asked Private Caller for his name. He said he was looking for Alan Zachary, that he had a package for him. I asked him for his name. He asked me, “Are you, like, Mr. Zachary’s wife or something?” I said that I was not like Mr. Zachary’s wife, that I was indeed Mr. Zachary’s wife. Finally, he told me he was John Lynch, that he was with the IRS and he had a package to deliver to my husband. So I said, “Well, deliver it.”

    “Yes, m’am,” he said, “this is what I am trying to do.” John Lynch had a foreign accent, so it came out more like “thees ees what I am trying to doooo.”

    “Fine,” I said, “deliver the package.”

    “M’am,” he said, “Thees ees a cashier’s check. We are trying to deleever eet. You need the code.” Code? I thought. Since when does the IRS use codes? Fear, yes. Codes? Foreign accents? Refusal to identify self?

    “Who are you?” I asked. At this point, I figured he knew that I knew that he was a scam artist, but this was a day that started with a dead squirrel, so I played through.

    “M’am! I am telling you! I am John Leench. I am trying to deleever a package to your husband.”

    “And I’m telling you to deliver the freaking package,” I said. I may have used a different “F” word.

    “M’am,” John Lynch said, “you have anger eessues.”

    I started to tell Mr. Lynch that he had some nerve calling me to scam me and then accusing me of having anger issues, but he kept interrupting me to tell me that I was behaving like a child and that I needed anger management classes. So I hung up.

    The phone rang again. I was in another room. I let it go to voicemail. Then it rang again. Maybe it was the dead squirrel, maybe it was the other pressures in my life, I picked up the phone. It was John Lynch.

    “Hello, m’am,” he said. “You must stop acting like a child. I am trying to deliver the package to Mr. Alan Zachary.”

    I decided to have a little fun with Mr. Lynch. I did my “I am the most reasonable woman in the world” routine and asked him to repeat everything he had already told me. I promised to speak with my husband and get back to him. John Lynch breathed an audible sigh of relief and told me that he worked for the Treasury Department. He gave me a 202 area code number where I could reach him. “Oh,” I said, “I thought you were with the IRS.”

    “Yes, M’am. The IRS and the Treasury.”

    “And what did you say your title was?”

    Silence. I heard John confer with someone.

    “I am the manager, m’am.”

    “And what department do you manage, Mr. Lynch?”

    “The Treasury department.”

    “The whole deparment?”

    “Yes, m’am.”

    “Where are you, Mr. Lynch?”

    “At the Treasury department.”

    “No, where is your office? Where are you right now?”

    John put his hand over the receiver for a moment, then came back on the line.

    “I am in Flareeda,” he said, with the emphasis on the “ree”.

    “I’m afraid I’ve never heard of that. Where are you?” I asked.

    “Flareeda, m’am. Flareeda. It’s in the US.”

    “Oh, you mean Florida,” I said.

    As I signed off with Mr. Lynch, he told me to be sure to get some anger management classes. I told him something he could do to himself, then phoned the Treasury Department Fraud hotline.

    My day did not improve after hanging up with Mr. Lynch. My daughter accused me of treating her birthday as if it were any other day. I got a nosebleed as I stepped out of the shower. I sneezed my lunch all over my hand. I had an upsetting conversation with a friend. My computer froze. I realized I had neglected to invite my father to the family birthday dinner that evening.

    Still, I made it to the end of the day. My daughter had a lovely dinner at her favorite Chinese restaurant with (most) of my family. I unwound with a cup of tea and a slice of bright blue birthday cake.

    After everyone had gone, I checked voicemail.

    “M’am,” John Lynch’s voice said, “you need anger management classes. You have anger eesues.”

    Maybe I do, I thought. But I got through a day that included a dead squirrel, a delusional Nigerian scam artist, a nosebleed, a pouting Birthday Princess and a hand covered with lunch sneeze. In the end, I was surrounded by family and there was a smile on the Princess’ face. Not a bad end to a pretty bad day.

  • Zen In An Ear Of Corn

    When I was a child, I believed that one was either Catholic and Republican or went to hell. When I grew up, I chose hell. Actually, I chose to become a Buddhist and a Democrat. Same difference.

    Though I have yet to discover if I will indeed go to hell when I die, my choices led to at least one hellacious family dinner. I had come to visit my parents wearing a “Mondale-Ferraro” button on my coat lapel. During dinner, the discussion turned to politics. I swear I did not start it! My mother, bless her heart, was Southern. She taught me right. I do not bring up politics at the dinner table, but I sure went there when talk turned to taxes and prayer in schools. The conversation ended with Dad walking out and Mom telling me, “I just wish you prayed, honey.” My husband, on hearing this story, said that Mondale and Ferraro were a waste of a family feud.

    Apparently, my Buddhism is less troublesome than my politics. Once I told Mom that Buddhists do, indeed, pray, she was cool.

    I think my Buddhism goes down easier because Buddhism is easier on the non-practitioner than it is on the practitioner. What’s to worry about from a peaced-out, meditating, non-violent vegetarian? Getting to the peaced-out, meditating, non-violent vegetarian state is much harder.

    Before I had children, the meditating and non-violence were easier. The vegetarianism? Not so much. My metabolism seems to require regular doses of high quality protein, otherwise known as “meat.” My children believe that eating meat makes me a bad Buddhist. But I read somewhere, and I am not making this up, that some good Buddhists eat meat. It’s one of those “angels dancing on the head of a pin” arguments. You ponder and obsess about whether or not eating meat makes you a bad Buddhist until your obsession with determining if you are a bad Buddhist actually makes you a bad Buddhist. Better to shut up and eat your meat.

    While the vegetarianism was always a challenge, meditation and non-violence were a breeze. You can meditate for hours when you don’t have any distractions. In fact, there are Zen teachers who create distractions, like whacking their students on the back with a stick.

    Now that I have children, I have no need for a Zen master to whack me on the back with a stick. If I’m busy folding laundry or cleaning the kitchen, my children can be completely occupied with other things, like video games and Selena Gomez movies, things that I would not be able to pull them away from if I stood in front of them naked screaming, “We’re going to Disney World!” But if I settle into a lotus position—really more of a pansy position now that I am over 50—they will be on me like ducks on a June bug.

    No, I don’t need a Zen master anymore. My children are my Zen masters. I discovered this when my son was three. We had been out doing errands. He was being a great little errand runner. I had gotten everything done that was on the list. I was ready to get us both home for a snack and a nap. He was not. He was so not that he executed the Plank Maneuver when I tried to buckle him into his car seat. Those of you who’ve had children can skip the next paragraph; you know what the Plank Maneuver is.

    Children learn, somewhere around the age of two, that they have the ability to solidify every muscle, tendon and ligament in their tiny bodies and that they can do this at will. In the Plank Maneuver, the child solidifies all of the above mentioned body parts all at once, turning his body into a human two-by-four.

    It is hard enough buckling a three-year-old into a car seat. Buckling a plank is impossible. The belt is not long enough to accommodate the plank and the plank is not about to bend. Still, I struggled mightily with the plank. I wanted nothing more than to get home and I was going to get home if I had to bend that kid in half, breaking every bone in his stubborn little body to do it. Then, I realized I was thinking of breaking every bone in my child’s body . . . not literally, of course. So, I stopped fighting. I accepted that he wanted to climb around the back seat of the car. Because he also wanted nothing to do with me—I think he caught the “nice mommy has left the building” vibe—I decided to call my mother. I had a lovely conversation, uninterrupted. My son explored the car to his content, got in his seat and let me buckle him. We went home and had a nap.

    My children aren’t the only Zen masters in my life now. Without much time for meditation, I’m working on turning running into a meditative practice. Unfortunately, cyclists on the trail I use have a tendency to zoom up behind me unannounced, scaring the peace right out of me. I curse them roundly in my head, thereby further ruining my Zen state. I decided to switch tactics. Instead of cursing the cursed cyclists, I would try blessing them, using the words, “May you live in safety and be happy.” At first, the blessing tended to come out as “May you live in safety and be happy, jerk.” This did not achieve the desired state of calm. I progressed to wishing them safety and happiness through gritted teeth, minus the epithet. I’m up to hoping they live in safety because then I’ll be safe. Room to grow.

    I was at a family dinner recently and started a discussion of Zen masters. I related the plank incident and asked the others who their Zen masters were. My brother-in-law said, “This corn.” We laughed. I realize, now, that he was the Zen master at the table. Being present, fully present, in the moment is what Buddhism is all about. How much more present can you be than thoroughly enjoying an ear of summer sweet corn?

    May you live in safety and be happy.

    © 2011 by Janice Lindegard. All rights reserved.

  • Inside My Head

    There is a foul-mouthed, judgmental witch in my life. I’m ashamed to admit that I even know her, but there is nothing I can do to eradicate her presence. You see, she lives inside my head.

    I am, by nature, a curious person. At the same time, I like to do things “the right way,” which means that I do lots and lots of research on what is the right way to do particular things, especially household tasks. The voice inside my head, therefore, has an opinion about everything, from how people should brush their teeth (two minutes, reaching all tooth surfaces) to how they should fold their sheets (the way I do).

    Naturally, I am a huge fan of Martha Stewart. Martha understands me. She knows that there must be a best way to do everything and she will find it, by God. Take the dishwashing liquid bottle on the counter, for example.  Probably eighty percent of the households in America have a big plastic bottle of green or blue liquid dishwashing soap sitting to one or the other side of the kitchen sink. I had one. I thought it was ugly. Martha had one. She thought it was ugly. In a stroke of genius worthy of a NASA engineer, Martha decanted the brightly colored liquid into a beautiful glass bottle and topped it all off with an attractive liquor pouring spout. I immediately bought a beautiful glass bottle, filled it with Dawn and set it beside my sink. It made me smile. But that wasn’t good enough for the voice inside my head. No, every time I spy a plastic dishwashing bottle while visiting someone’s home the voice inside my head says, “Ewwww!”

    “Ewww” is one of the tamer things that rattles around my brain. “Hooker” pops up more often than I like to admit. I have no idea why, but the “inside my head” voice sees hookers just about everywhere I go. I was in Target this past winter. I was doing the economy a favor, pushing my cart up and down the aisles. I turned a corner to find a young woman wearing a heavily ruffled blouse under a pea coat, which was heavily ruffled in the back. My eyes traveled south of the ruffled pea-coat-butt to the thigh-high, black suede high-heeled boots and “Hooker!” popped into my head. I saw similar boots on a five-year-old girl at the mall not long after that. Right after “Hooker boots!” popped into my head, I wondered, “Who buys hooker boots for a five-year-old?”, immediately followed by “Who makes hooker boots for a five-year-old?”

    While playing Fashion Police is a favorite activity inside my head, I really get cranking when someone ticks me off. This seems to be happening more and more during my regular runs. I mostly do trail running, usually through a prairie preserve near my home. Recently, my daughter begged to join me. Inside my head I was whining about not getting my mileage for the week but my mommy instinct won and my daughter and I headed to the prairie despite 20 mph winds and a constant drizzle.  We ran one and one-half miles with the wind yanking my daughter’s hat off her head every chance it got. Back at the trailhead, I spied a couple dressed, to my mind, completely inappropriately. Being the considerate person I am, I attempted to warn them that the wind was fierce that day. “I’m sure it is,” said the woman runner, giving me her best “maybe you can’t hack it, but I can” smile. I do not like condescension and, inside my head at least, I’m not particularly mature either. “I hope your hat blows away,” I thought.

    While condescending runners get my goat, it’s the cyclists on the trail that really set my inner witch to wagging her tongue. When I was a cyclist, I was ever so considerate. I never cut anyone off; I never rode on the wrong side of the path. Readying to pass another cyclist or a runner, I announced myself. “On your left,” I said, and then thanked the passee.  Not so those who share the trail with me. Many are the cyclists who whiz past me unannounced, scaring the whiz out of me. To each and every one, I think, “Get a bell, asshole!” as they speed out of sight.

    Inside my head, the trail I run is “my trail” and I am not particularly kind to those on my trail that I consider, shall we say, stupid. Witness the happy runner who trotted toward me on the wrong side of my trail. In America, we drive to the right, we walk to the right, we run to the right. I looked right at the wrong-sided runner. She did not yield. Instead, she smiled. “WTF,” I thought, so I gave her the universal WTF sign: palms raised to the sky, eyebrows up, quizzical look on my face. She did not yield. No, she smiled wider, waving, and trotted happily down the trail. “Idiot!” I thought, as I stepped out of her way.

    Immediately after thinking the idiot an idiot, I felt bad. “Maybe she’s from England,” I thought. “Maybe she has some leg length discrepancy that requires she run on the left side of the trail. Maybe I’m just mean and intolerant.” By the time I reached the end of my run, I had convinced myself that I am a nasty-minded, judgmental witch. See, as nasty-minded as I am toward others, I am hardest on myself. My children have called me fat, mean, stupid and ugly, though never all at once. It doesn’t get to me. I realize I am not fat, mean, stupid or ugly. But inside my head there is a constant barrage of insults. Can’t find my keys? “You are so stupid,” I tell myself. Gained a pound after having my annual turtle sundae? “Ack. You’re fat!” Reading a book instead of de-cluttering my office pig mess? “You’re so lazy!” You name it, my inner witch has a nasty comment for it.

    This morning, my daughter wanted me to hear a Selena Gomez song. In it, Selena sings, “Who say’s you’re not perfect?” My daughter sang merrily along while I held her in my lap and cried. Inside my head I thought, “I hope you never have a nasty, judgmental witch inside your beautiful, perfect head.”

    © 2011 by Janice Lindegard. All rights reserved. Photo: Martha Stewart.com

  • The Stupid Files

    My son grew up with better cartoons than I had. Oh, the Jetsons were ok and I really did love “Rastro,” but my son was lucky enough to be a ‘toon watcher when “Dexter’s Laboratory” was in its heyday on Cartoon Network. Dexter, the boy genius, was constantly vexed by his less intellectual sister, Dee Dee. In every episode, Dexter would tell her “Dee Dee, you are stupid. You are stupid. And don’t forget, you are stuuupid.”

    I think I love that line so much because there is so much that is stupid in this world. As evidence, I offer the following. There is a road that runs east and west through Aurora and Naperville, crossing Route 59. On the Naperville side of 59, it is called “Aurora Avenue.” On the Aurora side, it is called “New York Avenue.” If you go north on Ogden Avenue from my house and you keep going north, you have to turn right to continue onto Ogden. Continuing north, without turning, will not keep you on Ogden. You will find yourself on Raymond as if you had entered an alternate universe. And, while turning east to stay on Ogden keeps you on Ogden, turning left does not put you on the westbound part of Ogden. A left hand turn will put you on North Aurora Avenue.  The Naperville area is not alone in street naming stupidity. There is a sign in Palatine, I’m told, identifying Meacham Road that reads: “Meacham Road road.”

    Massive amounts of stupidity emanate from the myriad fast food drive-thrus in our area. I just adore those disembodied voices that don’t even say “hello” or “welcome” before diving into a guess as to why I drove up there in the first place. “Would you like to try the Triple Burger Death from Hell?” they ask. I am always polite and say “No, thank you” to their gracious suggestion. Some day, though, I’m going to say “Wrong! Guess again!”

    A friend recently visited a drive through to order three two-cheeseburger meals, one cheeseburger and two shakes. Well, of course, the little video screen beneath the disembodied voice (let’s call it “DV,” shall we?) showed that my friend ordered two cheeseburgers and two shakes. My friend corrected DV; the order became three cheeseburger meals. My friend corrected DV twice more and the order was finally correct, but that is not the most egregious incidence of DV’s stupidity. No! Each burger had to be decorated with the proper condiments, so DV asked, “Do you want cheeseburger number one with everything: pickles, lettuce, tomato, mustard, mayonnaise, and ketchup?” “Sure,” said my friend. DV went on to cheeseburger number two. “Do you want it with everything: pickles, lettuce, tomato, mustard, mayonnaise, and ketchup?” “Sure,” said my friend. Cheeseburger number three got similar treatment. Finally all of the cheeseburgers had been decorated and accounted for. DV forgot the shakes.

    My kids can do some stunningly stupid stuff. My son, for instance, can stand within arm’s distance of the back door. Should he open it, he could step directly out onto our deck. No stairs required and he’d be outdoors. Instead, he shouts to his father, “What’s it like out?” Yesterday was Mother’s Day. I wanted nothing more than to sit in my gazebo with a cup of tea and scan the news on my iPod. I finally got my wish and was glorying in a beautiful morning when my son appeared at the patio door. He looked at me pleadingly through the glass. I got up and went into the house, hoping for a “Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.” I got, “What do we have for breakfast?” Now, this is the child who went with me to the grocery store the night before. He himself selected two boxes of cereal and a half-gallon of milk and placed them in the shopping cart.

    The dumbest thing I’ve ever heard come out of my children has probably come out of every child in the world at some point. Hell, I’ve said it. “Are we there yet?” they ask. Every time the car has been moving more than 15 minutes, one of my children will ask it. They will repeat it. I have always said the same thing: “No, not yet.” I have, in short, been patient. The last time I was asked if we were “there” yet, something broke in my good-mommy brain segment. Smart Ass Mom replied.

    “Dear child,” I asked, “what happens when we get where we are going?”

    “We’re there,” said the child.

    “Yes. And then what happens?”

    “I don’t know, Mommy. What?”

    “Well, the same thing happens every time. Mommy parks the car, I turn it off and we all get out. Now, has Mommy parked the car? Have I turned it off? Are we getting out?”

    The child was silent. A few miles later, she said, “Mommy are we getting close to being there?” No child of mine is stupid for long.

    The most consistent sources of stupidity in our lives, though, are the administrators of our children’s schools. They truly shine at registration time. Each year, for the past four years, I have been asked to complete the forms contained in a registration packet. Even though the first page of the packet is a computer-generated form, printed front and back, containing all the information that is necessary for my child’s continued presence at school, I am required to fill out five additional forms with the same information. I write my daughter’s name five times. I write my own name five times. I write my husband’s name five times. I fill out the same information on the new Emergency Card that I supplied in prior years. Ditto with the health card. One year, I pointed out that the school had all of the information on the cards I completed the prior year and that nothing had changed. Ah! But something had changed. They threw those cards away. They sent the un-completed cards back and threatened to exclude my daughter from classes until they received the completed cards.

    Now, all of that sounds pretty darn stupid, doesn’t it? But, it’s not the dumbest thing that has come out of one of my kids’ schools. Not by a long, long shot. No, the dumbest thing that has come out of their schools—maybe the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen—came from my son’s principal. Apparently, the staff at my son’s school spent too much time delivering stuff students had forgotten to the forgetful little buggers’ classrooms. Henceforth, Mr. Principal announced, the staff would no longer deliver such items. Nay, he said, they would be reserving their efforts for “more poignant responsibilities.” Yup. He said it. All I can say is “Mr. Principal, you are stupid, you are stupid. And, don’t forget, you are stuuupid.”

    © 2011 by Janice Lindegard. All rights reserved.

  • The Other “F” Word

    I collect refrigerator magnets. I’ve never stopped to count how many there are but I’ve got quite a few. My favorites are the ones you get in trendy gift shops that have a vintage picture of a woman with a witty saying. For instance, I have one very large one with a picture of a woman leaning on a pillow. The saying? “I dreamed my whole house was clean.” I also have one with a pensive woman. Her caption reads, “She thought she might enjoy being mature.”

    My favorites, though, go hand in hand. One, of a woman embracing a man states, “Darling, let’s get deeply into debt!” Its mate shows a picture of a beautiful woman with bleached blonde hair and deep red lips. She’s saying, “Frugal is such an ugly word.”

    I firmly believe that frugal is an ugly word, but as we are deeply in debt, I’ve resolved that I shall attempt to become frugal.

    My grandmother was very good at being cheap—I mean, frugal. I remember she had a wire basket with a long handle in her kitchen. You know those little hunks of soap that are too little to effectively wash your hands with but too big to throw away guilt-free? My grandmother collected them, put them in the wire basket then, when she needed soap for doing dishes, she would swish the basket around in the hot water.

    I’m pretty sure they don’t make the soap my grandmother used anymore. Until my own family entered the frugal zone, I bought really nice soap. One particular favorite is French-milled and smells like gardenias. I’m not really sure what French-milled means, but it makes the soap nice and hard, but not too hard. Unfortunately, my favorite gardenia soap costs $5 for a bar. Now, it’s a big bar, but one can purchase a crate of Ivory soap for $3.99 at Target so I switched to Ivory. My husband liked that it’s cheap—I mean inexpensive. My daughter liked that it floats. I remember liking that when I was her age. I don’t remember the soap costing more than $100 to use, though. Here’s the problem with Ivory: it’s soft. It’s soft and gushy and all that soft, soapy gushiness combined with my daughter’s long, long hair creates a drain clog that requires a plumber to remove. Our foray into cheap soap cost us $65 per hour to remove. That gardenia-scented soap is smelling better and better these days.

    I’ve tried to save money on clothes and shoes. Back when I was young and trendy, I had more than twenty pairs of black shoes. “How can one person need twenty pairs of black shoes,” my husband asked? I was astounded that he could question owning so few black shoes. I tried to explain to my husband the difference between sandals, pumps, sling backs, oxfords, loafers and ballet flats. All he retained is that the ones he thinks are hot are called “pumps.”

    I used to spend a LOT of money on shoes. One pair was made entirely of leather, from the buttery smooth uppers to the little stacked heels. They were sleek, almost austere and I wore them with everything from pants to skirts. They were $200. I wear them still. Last year, I bought a pair of tan Mary Jane pumps at Target. They cost $19. Within half an hour of putting them on, my feet are screaming in agony. I remind myself of this every time I am drawn into the shoe section at Target. For me at least, there is no cheap and chic when it comes to shoes.

    I can’t save money on my daughter’s shoes, either. She has long, narrow feet that can only be shod by the local outrageously expensive children’s shop or Nordstrom. My son, however, wears the same pair of shoes every day. While I admire his cheapness—I mean, frugality—I am sure we will have a doctor visit for some disgusting fungal growth in the near future.

    Since our grocery expense is rather large, I thought I’d cut costs there. I bought the huge store-brand of frosted flakes. It came in a floppy bag with “Cheap Frosted Flakes” plastered all over it in big, bold letters. I needed a proper disguise. I bought a really cool plastic, reusable cereal container. My mother would have called it “Tupperware,” but a genuine Tupperware cereal container costs $20. I think I paid $5 for mine and felt guilty about it. I put the $1.99 worth of cereal in the $5 cereal-serving container. The next day, my son poured a huge bowl of flakes, added three pints of milk and took a bite. He immediately ran to the sink, spitting the flakes out as if they were coated with arsenic. “These aren’t Kellogg’s!  These suck!!” His sister heard his pronouncement; hence she wouldn’t eat the offending flakes either. So, I tasted the flakes. They suck.

    I moved on to makeup, another considerable expense. Foundation, in particular, is something I am very particular about. I routinely bought $45 foundation, made specifically for me by Prescriptives. Apparently, I didn’t buy enough of it. Prescriptives went out of business. There being three aisles of makeup at Target, I selected a promising shade. It cost $15. I put it on. Though a lovely shade of rose in the bottle, it turned instantly orange on my skin. I tried another brand for $12. It turned orange. Another brand. Another $15. It turned orange. Forty-two dollars later, I still need a foundation that doesn’t turn orange.

    My husband would say that one of our biggest problems is the fact that our regular grocery store is Target, coupled with the fact that I like nothing better than going to Target and pushing a cart around for an hour or two. I’m better about non-grocery items landing in the cart, but the kids aren’t. Some surprise treat always makes its way onto the belt. And, while I bring a list, I always find something we need that isn’t on it. At the check out counter, the children have fun guessing if the total will go over $200. I’m pleased to say it frequently doesn’t. Still, one of my son’s favorite jokes is that Dad goes to Target to get milk and comes out with milk. Period. Mom goes to Target for milk and comes home with milk and a flat screen TV. What? You mean you don’t? What are you, cheap—I mean, frugal?

    © 2011 by Janice Lindegard. All rights reserved.

  • I See London

    Lately, my daughter has been asking about embarrassing moments.  “Mama,” she said, “what was your most embarrassing moment?” I don’t embarrass easily, so I had to think hard. I recalled a truly embarrassing incident in fourth grade when a teacher wouldn’t allow anyone to use the bathroom. I really had to go; the teacher really wouldn’t let me. I waited until lunch period, but we weren’t allowed to use the bathroom at lunch either. So, I got in the lunch line. My bladder reached the end of the line just when I did. I wet my underpants, copiously, as I handed my lunch money to the cafeteria lady.  I understand my dad come to school and ripped the teacher a new one. I take great satisfaction in this.

    My daughter, however, was not satisfied. Apparently, wetting my pants more than forty years ago isn’t embarrassing enough. She wanted something more up-to-date, so she supplied it.

    You need to understand that I am on a first name basis with my pharmacist. These things happen when you’re on the auto-refill until eternity program. For some reason known only to the god of chaos, my prescriptions auto-refill on different days. For some other reason, known only to the god of reason, this cannot be changed so that I can maintain my version of sanity with a once-monthly visit to “Chris.” Until the planets align, I am at the pharmacy counter at Target a minimum of two times per month.

    Last week’s toothache and antibiotics to cure it required an additional visit to Chris. He’s a pleasant guy, always ready to answer a question. As I chatted with Chris about drug interactions and other pharmacy-related topics, I heard my daughter say, “Ewwww!!!”

    “What is it,” I asked?

    “That!” she said, and pointed to the latest Target flyer. I admit to feeling a little awkward explaining pretty lingerie to my daughter in front of Chris. But I thought I had it covered when I told her that some women like to wear pretty underwear and reminded her that she, in fact, likes to have things like princesses and ponies on her undies.  She didn’t let the subject go, though.

    “My mommy doesn’t wear panties sometimes,” she said to Chris.

    I had no idea what she was referring to. Really. Honestly. So I said the first plausible thing that came to mind.

    “That was only once when I had to run down to the laundry room to get some, Sweetie.” “Sweetie” was the only publicly acceptable name I could think of for her at the time.

    Somehow, Chris filled my prescription without looking at me. I managed to pay for it without looking at him.

    Two days ago, I remembered what she was talking about.

    “Mommy,” the evil mistress of embarrassment said, “you went commando at the Y.”

    And she’s right. I did indeed go commando at the Y. See, I can get my kids to school with everything they need from lunches and homework to water bottles and notes to the teacher. Me? Not so much. I am usually stuffing my stuff into my gym bag as I push the kids toward the car. Frequently, I find myself missing some essential workout ingredient. One day—and it really was just one day—I finished my shower and reached into my bag to find no underwear. I looked right, I looked left, then pulled my pants on and got my GI-Joe self home as quickly as possible.

    My mother would have been appalled. What if, God forbid, I had been in an accident on the way home? What if I had been grievously injured? What if I had been taken to the hospital where the doctors cut away my pants to find that I had not just failed to wear nice underwear but had failed to wear underwear at all?

    Many mothers have the same rule mine did—wear your nicest panties when you go out because you never know when you’ll be in a terrible car accident. My best friend’s mother had that rule. Naturally, my best friend was in an automobile accident on a low-laundry day. She blessed her luck that she wasn’t grievously injured else the doctors would cut away her pants to find her wearing her husband’s tidy whities.

    Sometimes wearing panties can be a source of embarrassment. Another friend prides herself on her appearance in public. No gnarly sweats and socks with Birkenstocks for her. She undoubtedly wears nice panties when she goes out. Sometimes she wears them in surprising places. Once, in a hurry, she grabbed a pair of pants from the laundry basket. She tossed them on and ran out the door. At the grocery store, she felt as if she stepped on something once or twice, but thought nothing of it until the third time. She looked down to find a pair of panties peeking out of the leg of her pants. It says something about my friend that she was embarrassed not only about the panties but by the fact that they were her everyday plain old white ones. I have another friend who is as frazzled on her way to workout as I am. She found herself at dance class once with her underwear on over her workout pants.

    Wearing thongs is particularly problematic. My best friend reports that her daughter believes women over fifty should not wear thongs. Apparently, we are supposed to suffer VPL in our yoga pants. I gave up thongs with yoga-type pants a few years ago, when I bent down to retrieve something while wearing a pair of lovely pale pink sweat pants. A man standing behind me, who I thought was a gentleman, remarked, “I thought thongs were no longer fashionable with you girls.” My daughter doesn’t believe anyone should wear thongs. I’m following her advice these days.

    About three days after I started the antibiotics for my tooth, the phone rang. Though I didn’t recognize the number, I answered anyway. It was Chris, the pharmacist, wondering how I was doing on the antibiotic. I’m betting that isn’t all he was wondering.

  • Let Me Take You To Funky Town

    It had to happen eventually. I’ve been riding pretty high on this writing thing. Every week, I told myself, I would write 1,000 words. I would get them written and published without fail. I set my deadline: Monday before noon. It’s been about six months now and I’ve achieved my goal every week. Copious pats on the back for me.

    Then, this week rolled around and shoved me right into the writer’s block wall. I’m not really surprised. I kind of felt it coming early in the week. “What will I write about,” I asked myself. “Hell if I know,” I told myself. “Maybe I’ll write about what goes on inside my brain,” I thought, then realized there wasn’t enough going on to fill 1,000 words. There wasn’t enough going on to fill the back of a Target receipt.

    I’ve gotten to Saturday and wondered what I would write for Monday many times. I’ve always come up with something. Maybe not what I originally intended, or how I originally intended, but generally, Saturday ends with me set on Monday’s topic. Not this week. At the end of the day on Saturday all I knew was that “Camelot,” the new series on Starz, looks like it might be good, though Joseph Fiennes looks really silly bald.

    This week, though, it was Sunday night and I still didn’t know what to write. It became our dinner table conversation.

    “What should I write about?” I asked.

    “Write about me and my friends,” my daughter said.

    “Did it already.”

    “Pets!,” she said. “Write about pets.”

    “Done,” I said.

    Not to be deterred, she said, “Houses. Write about houses and how they protect you.”

    “I try to write about funny things.”

    “Oh,” she said. “It has to be funny?” That ruled out houses in her mind though I had considered writing about how I coped with a portion of Spring Break by allowing her to string yarn all over the house.

    “Write about condoms,” my son said.

    “I have,” I told him. “You came up in it.”

    He offered suggestions for a number of truly obscene things about which I could write. I informed him that my mother’s cousin reads my blogs. He shut up.

    I turned to my husband, who had said nothing throughout the children’s suggest-o-rama, though I did see him hide his head in his hands over one or two of our son’s suggestions. He looked at me and without saying a word, I knew that he knew the problem.

    “I’m in a funk,” I said, “and it’s not very funny to write about being depressed.”

    The conversation turned to lethargy, which is a fancy word for feeling so tired that you just want to stay in bed forever even though you aren’t really tired and you know you’re not tired but somehow getting out of bed just seems impossible. I mentioned that antidepressants can actually give some depressed people the energy they need to off themselves. I am already on antidepressants so there’re no worries about that here.

    My neighbor calls our house “The Fun House.” I know she means that I don’t care if the kids paint or build a blanket fortress in the family room or tie the house up with yarn. But, to me, it’s a pretty good description of the atmosphere in our house. Things are a little wonky, often outrageous, definitely not normal and that’s fine by us. So, I laughed full and loud when my son described how I could commit suicide without leaving the bed by having our cat nap on my face.

    While I’m in no danger of taking the feline express to the afterlife, I am most decidedly down. I’m sure its primary cause is the whole morbidly underemployed thing and the now-due student loans that are part of my economy-induced nightmare. There are also a number of other factors inhibiting my ability to maintain my generally cheerful-ish demeanor.

    First, there’s my health. You know how people will go on about the problems they are having in their lives and you don’t know what to say and so eventually you wind up saying something lame like “Well, at least you have your health”? Well, I don’t have my health. Now it’s not like I’m really, really sick. I don’t need a benefit for me. (Wait . . .a benefit might help pay off those loans.) No, I’m not gravely ill. I have a nagging respiratory infection of some sort with one of those coughs that doesn’t bother you until someone makes you laugh and then you wind up hacking up a chunk of lung. And a toothache. I have never had a toothache in my life. Now I have a toothache. And a pulled groin muscle. What the heck is that about? I’m not a linebacker. How do I rate a groin pull?

    Ordinarily, I’d be running and laughing to cope with my troubles. Can’t run, because I’m still resting and rehabbing the offending muscle. Can’t laugh without paroxysmal coughing.  I thought I might garden away the blues, so I decided to clean out the garden beds. Seeing all those little green and purple shoots sticking through the soil would surely improve my mood.

    Gardening didn’t improve my mood at all. On the contrary. with every dead grass whacked back and every dried-up leaf pulled, I was more and more convinced that it was time to move into a nice little townhouse. It was sounding better and better in my mind until I got to the selling the house we already own part. Then I got to the packing up everything we have part and the part where the movers somehow misplace the box containing all of my shoes. I went inside for a cup of tea. The garden beds looked better, but my pity party continued.

    With laughing, running and gardening put out to pasture, all that was left was reading. Usually, reading helps me relax. Lately, though, reading is just making me feel terrible. It started with “The Name of the Wind” by Patrick Rothfuss. I am thoroughly enjoying the story and its imaginative setting. There are just enough fantasy elements to remove the story from reality but not so much as to overwhelm the narrative. It is, in short, wholly imaginative and beautifully crafted. And it makes me feel completely inadequate as a writer. When I tell my husband this, he tells me I am being ridiculous and that, if I were a full-time writer who started full-time writing when I was in my twenties and who had someone to take care of everything else, I would be writing wholly imaginative, beautifully crafted fiction.

    He’s right, of course. I am a mom, a wife, a teacher, a dog trainer, a cat wrangler, a gardener, a runner and a writer who somehow managed to write more than 1,000 words despite a week-long bout of the blues.

  • With Friends Like These

    When I was a teenager, I fell in with a bad crowd. Cognizant that some of my loyal readers were friends of mine when I was a teenager, I should immediately state, “I’m not talking about you.” It is most likely that none of the bad crowd with which I fell in are regular readers of Snide Reply. I suspect one or two may not be regular readers of anything, but that is neither here nor there. My parents felt it their duty to point out that I had fallen in with said crowd and to do all they could to discourage further falling.

    Though I don’t necessarily believe it, apparently the crowds children fall into these days are even badder—in the bad sense of bad—than those I encountered. There was binge drinking when I was a teen, there was sex when I was a teen, there were drugs when I was a teen. (Again, my high school buddies, I am not talking about you. Oh, OK, I am but I’m not telling who did what or with whom.) The drinking, the drugs and the sex are all bad enough and I’ve worried about my kids doing them since probably a day or two after they started kindergarten. I don’t need to think about worse vices my children may be pressured to try.

    Now that I own a teenager, my parental friend radar has been tuned to high gear. It’s a wonder my son hasn’t noticed the brain hum in the background. Every time a new name is mentioned, my “who the hell is that” button gets switched. I try to be nonchalant as I grill my son.

    “Fred?” I’ll say, “I don’t think I’ve heard you mention a ‘Fred’ before.”

    “He’s a friend,” my son will say.

    “Well, duh!” I think.

    “Well, duh,” I say. “Where did you meet him? Is he in one of your classes? Does he drink, do drugs or have unprotected sex? Is he a member of a weird religious cult?” Well, maybe I don’t say that last bit, but it’s only because I know that’s not an appropriate thing for a parent to say outside of her head.

    As if worrying about new friends weren’t enough, I’ve discovered old friends can go bad.

    We moved to Naperville just as our son was entering fourth grade. He spent his entire first year here friendless. Oh, we made sure he saw his Oak Park friends and installed a phone line in his room so he could call them whenever he liked. Still, fourth grade was tough. In fifth grade, he made friends with a very nice boy. So, he had a friend. One friend.

    Middle school started out miserably, friend-wise. Our son was placed into the gifted program; his one friend wasn’t. Friend ground zero all over again. But, having found his tribe, he started making friends more easily. Eventually, he had a bunch of friends.

    All of his friends, at least all that I’ve met and I’ve met quite a few, appeared to be fine young people. I might have written, “appear to be fine young people” but recent events necessitate a change in verb tense. One of those fine young people has turned out to be quite a . . .hm. . . what’s the word . . .well, it rhymes with “spit head.”

    Spit Head has twice, in the last month, hurt my son’s feelings deeply. The first time, Spit Head convinced my son that he was over-reacting. I wanted to give Spit Head a good talking to, but held my tongue. If my son wanted to remain friends with Spit Head, then I needed to let him do it, I reasoned.

    The second time Spit Head hurt my son, Spit Head’s mother got involved. Now, before you think that she was telling Spit Head he was behaving badly, stop yourself. Spit Head’s mother was proving the old apple falling from the tree thing. Surprisingly, my son has dealt with Spit Head’s latest antic much more calmly than me. “He’s a douche,” he said. “He’s a douche,” one of his other friends agreed. Then, they moved on.

    Me? I never want to see the kid again. And I if I ever see his mother? Well, let’s just say Naperville is gonna look a little bit more like the Jersey Shore that day.

    My daughter is having friend troubles but it wasn’t her feelings that were being hurt. Instead, my daughter is the grand prize in a battle for affections that is largely waged by a gang of siblings we’ll call “The Delightful Children” with all due credit to “Code Name: Kids Next Door.”

    The Delightful Children include two brothers and their younger sister. She adores my daughter, who I’m sure she sees as a big sister substitute. Problem? The Delightful Children seem intent on breaking my daughter’s considerable bond to her Best Friend.

    My daughter plays with Best Friend nearly every day. They can play together for hours on end. In the winter months, things are fairly quiet on the friend front. The Delightful Children are, for some reason, not allowed to play in other people’s houses. So my daughter and Best Friend trash, I mean, “play” in our house. Sometimes they “play” in Best Friend’s house.

    In the summer, the wars begin. The Delightful Children have one of those redwood things with a playhouse on top. The monstrosity is nestled in the branches of willow tree so the playhouse is hidden from sight. I believe the tree may be a Whomping Willow because, invariably, Best Friend rushes home from the playhouse in tears. It being illegal to water board children, we’ll probably never know the details of what ensues in the Playhouse of Pain but it seems to involve harsh words from The Delightful Children toward Best Friend.

    My daughter recently wailed, “It’s like I’m being forced to choose between hurting my Best Friend and hurting a little girl!” My little girl being the one getting hurt, I decided to lay down a law. No playing with Best Friend and The Delightful children together. My husband reports the law is being respected with unexpected results. Recently, Best Friend and The Delightful children played together while my daughter practiced gymnastics in the family room.

    I figured we were finished with friend issues for a while until my son started a conversation like this, “Well, I was talking with one of my pothead friends . . .”

  • Puh-leeeeze Read My Post About Whining

    I like to watch brain surgery. Really. I’m not being sarcastic. I am leading up to something, but, seriously, I like to watch brain surgery. My favorite brain surgery to watch is the kind where the top of the patient’s head has been taken off and the surgeon is rummaging around in the brain looking for a particular section that will elicit a particular response from the patient. The surgeon calls for the patient to be wakened. Then he (OK, or she) prods the identified brain section with his brain prodding thingy and the patient starts talking about some long forgotten incident. I’ve seen it lots of times and I still think, “Cool!”

    I want a brain surgeon to open my head and look for a particular spot and then sever its neural pathways. The one I want him to find is the one that causes my entire body to convulse when triggered by that parental nightmare: the whine.

    Whining slices straight through me. My entire body contracts, my eyes squinch, my brain crackles. I will do anything to make the noise cease. Some people can’t stand fingernails on a chalkboard. Some can’t stand ringing telephones. I can’t stand to hear the sound of whining children. This is a problem. I have children.

    I don’t recall whining being a huge problem with my son. He wasn’t a particularly whiny kid but all kids have something they do that is completely and utterly obnoxious. My son’s obnoxiousness was physical. He liked to hang on people. Literally. We knew it was annoying, but we never tried to stop him. The then-current parenting fad was logical consequences. The logical consequence of our son hanging on people was that they would be annoyed with him and tell him so. They did. He didn’t care. The logical consequence of our attempts at logical parenting was that lots of people thought we were indulgent parents afraid to discipline our child. Who? Us?

    Our daughter is the one who makes me want a lobotomy. Like many an eight-year-old, she is a charming child. She is beautiful and delicate. She is bashful around strangers. Her teachers report that she is popular, helpful, considerate and kind.

    These people have never denied her a thing. I know the monster that lurks within her. I have told her, “No.” I know the keening banshee that lies beneath her placid exterior, the one who comes out to play when the Empress is thwarted.

    A typical exchange might happen at breakfast. My daughter will say, “I know you’re going to say ‘no’, but can I have sugar cookies?” I will ask, “Have you had something healthy?” “No,” she will say, “but you said I could have them yesterday and I didn’t eat them then.” I will remind her that yesterday she asked to eat the cookies after she had eaten something healthy.

    “You can have the cookies after you eat your bagel and cream cheese.”

    “But I don’t want the bagel and cream cheese.”

    “You asked for a bagel and cream cheese. You will have to get your own breakfast if you don’t want what I made you.”

    “Ok. I’ll eat the cookies.”

    “No, you may not eat the cookies until you’ve eaten the bagel and cream cheese.” By now, the pre-whine tone has entered her voice. I can feel the tension building in my toes.

    “But I don’t want the bagel and cream cheese.”

    “Then get your self something else that’s healthy.”

    “You’re supposed to make my breakfast! I’m just a little girl!” She is now in full-on whine. I am resolved to remain tough. She is my little Zen master and I will not rise to her call to chaos.

    “You know the rule. If you don’t eat what Mommy makes, you make your own breakfast.”

    “Fine! I’m having the coo. . .” Before she can say “. . .kies,” I say, “No, we talked about this. You may not have the cookies. You must eat something healthy first.” I can feel myself slipping. The knife-edge of her whine has sliced my brain in two.

    “You interruuuuuuuuuuupted MEEEEEEEEEEE,” she wails. “I’m trying to talk and you interrupted meeeeeeee!  You always do that! I’m trying and trying to explain to you and you interuuuuupt meeeeeee!”

    And she has me. I cave.

    “Fine! Eat the cookies!” I say, thinking I would probably let her eat glass at this point if she would just stop whining.

    I don’t always cave in. Sometimes I hang tough. I remember that she is acting, that she can turn the tantrum off at will and that I have proof.

    Our children do nothing together but bicker. We spend lots of money on therapy so that they will learn how to do something other than bicker. After two years, they are able to tolerate playing video games together for about 20 minutes, in the therapist’s office. Progress.

    One night at dinner, our son was lobbying hard for some electronic or musical hundred-dollar-plus gizmo. Probably a Les Paul, but maybe a 40,000-gigabyte iPod Touch. Whatever it was, he was pushing with all his considerable negotiating talent. His father and I were resisting mightily. We were winning. Then, our daughter started whining. The whine turned to a wail. She was sobbing, tears were falling down her cheeks. All conversation stopped. We turned to her. “Sweetie,” her father said. “What’s wrong?” When she had all of our attention, she abruptly stopped wailing, looked at us and said, “Now will you give him what he wants?”

    We did not give him what he wants. But, while condemning her methods, we applauded her solidarity with her brother.

    There’s not much evidence that our daughter will leave the League of Fine Whiners any time soon. Why would she? It’s the most effective weapon in her arsenal. She may even be recruiting her brother. He has begun using whining as a tool to achieve his desires. So far, he does it playfully and it’s really rather amusing to see him smoosh his very teen-aged, semi-bearded face into childish pleading. He even holds his hands clasped together and gives me puppy dog eyes, while saying, “Pweeze, Mommy.” It’s ridiculously endearing. The first sign of serious whinery, though and I’m headed for the nearest neurosurgeon.