Snide Reply

Tag: teenagers

  • Sometimes my kids aren’t very funny at all

    pACEBW-1126408dtSeems like lately, we’ve been going through a not-so-funny period at what is usually The Fun House. Between arguing about whether driving is a right or a privilege with our son and arguing about how much duct tape is too much with our daughter, I’d say things are decidedly downbeat. Today, I find myself trying to find the humor in a hole the size of a ten-year-old’s heel in the staircase wall. It’s not coming. Note to new parents, you think you will escape the horrors of preteen and teen parenting. I laugh at you. All I can say is have plenty of wine on hand, and a tub of spackle.

    How’s your day going?

  • Check it out! I guest blogged!

    Ordinarily, I eschew exclamation points in my writing but, golly gee, someone asked me to write for his blog and I did it! You can check out a bit of my experience parenting my son through one of the darkest times of both of our lives here:  http://blackboxwarnings.wordpress.com/2012/06/28/a-tale-of-two-meds-and-one-teen/

    Read the other posts, too. The man who started the blog is also dealing with a son with ADHD and the meds that come along with it. And there are others who posted as well. It’s a valuable, developing resource for those of us taking drugs with black box warnings (means they can lead to all kinds of nasty side effects, like suicidal ideation and other fun things) and parenting kids taking those drugs.

  • Rants, Raves and Pie

    I’ve been told I’m intimidating and frankly, I’ve never understood it. I’m tiny, no more than 5’ 3” tall. I am fine-boned and thin in most places. I am, as they say, petite. But apparently, in speaking my mind, I am the mouse that roars. Maybe it’s my inner sense of confidence about my beliefs that makes them come out sounding like proclamations. I spend a lot of time thinking about the things I believe, so I suppose it’s natural that I’m convinced I know what’s best—and worst—for the world. Here, for your edification, are my latest edicts.

    Shirtless guys! Heads up! The only man who looks good running shirtless is Zac Efron. You are not Zac Efron. Put your shirt back on. I don’t want to see my middle jiggle, let alone yours. In fact, seeing your pizza dough bouncing up and down is as distracting as Zac Efron shirtless.

    Instead of running shirtless get a pedicure and run barefoot. Frankly, I’d rather look at your shoeless feet than your shirtless form. If you must display your body, make it your primped piggies.

    Facebook posters: stop putting words in quotation marks unless you are referring to something someone said or to a specific word. I don’t know what you mean when you write that the Tea Party cited “costs” for Obamacare at a much higher rate than the President. If you intended, as you say, to indicate that you are skeptical about what was actually considered in the cost estimate, then you failed. Pretend I have no idea what you were trying to say, because I have no idea what you were trying to say.

    Here’s a thought, have a Mexican Coke before you hit the reply button. Savor the good, old-fashioned taste of a cola beverage made with sugar—real sugar—the kind of stuff they make out of sugar cane. No high fructose corn syrup, no fake sweetener. Just Coke made the way it should be. While you’re sipping on your soda, ponder a more accurate way of getting your thoughts in words.

    Son! I don’t have to tell you to have Mexican Coke. You’re addicted to the stuff so much so, in fact, that you feel I owe you a case every month. Never mind that I pay for music lessons to the tune of $200 each month. Never mind that more than $350 dollars is marching out of my checkbook in the next two months so you can join the marching band. And let’s just forget that driver’s ed will drive away with nearly $400 this summer. It’s not enough. No, now you want percussion lessons and a second car.

    It’s all for my benefit, though, he assures me. The percussion lessons will get him into college (huh?) and he’ll drive his sister to gymnastics if he has a car. I used to think Alec Baldwin was a monster for calling his teenage daughter a “selfish, little pig.” Now I believe he may have been holding back.

    Daughter! You can make your own breakfast. I assure you, it isn’t hard. Back in my time, as my son would say, I made my own breakfast when I was ten. Or my sister made my breakfast. I can’t be sure. I don’t remember back that far because, as my son would say, that’s a very long time ago. Still, my mother wasn’t making my breakfast. I’m sure that, like all things in my home, my daughter’s inability to make her own breakfast is my fault. I’ve made the breakfasts up until now, of course. But things are gonna change. From now on, you can pour your own cereal, heat up your own cinnamon buns and get your own juice. And then you can carry the barely-eaten food to the sink and throw it away yourself. I mean it!

    Husband! When a child says, “Dad, hypothetically, if I (insert terrible teenage thing to do), what would happen?” the child is not speaking hypothetically. There is no “hypothetical.” There is only, “Dad, I did this really stupid thing and I’m afraid to admit it because I’m really unsure of how you’re going to react.” Further, husband, when son presents you with a hypothetical situation involving terrible teenage things, you should immediately report said situation to me.

    Oh! More on Facebook posting! Stop it with the “Post this if you support whatever-the-cause-of-the-day-is.” Posting something on my wall doesn’t do a thing for whatever the cause is, especially if it’s something like breast cancer or child abuse. Do you really think there is anyone alive who doesn’t think children get abused or that child abuse is a terrible thing? If you really want to post something in support of your favorite cause, write a check, put it in an envelope with a stamp on it and post that.

    Finally, when life has you down, there is nothing better to do than eat pie.  Say seeing Not Zac Efron running on your local trail has scarred your eyes. Eat pie. You’ll feel better. Say your child is sucking money from you faster than a Dyson. Eat pie. It’s cheaper than therapy. Say your daughter won’t make her own breakfast. Give her pie, then get yourself a piece. Say your husband presents you with some hypothetical teenage situation. Get some pie, real pie, because in life there are no hypothetical teenage situations and there is no hypothetical pie.

  • Bras, Condoms and a Drive in the Country

    In the past week, I went for a drive, shopped for extra-large condoms and bought a training bra, all in the name of helping others. Before you picture me doing favors for unfortunate strangers though, I should note that these were not random acts of kindness. Each of the others I helped is intimately related to me.

    From the time I became a mother, helping others has been a primary focus of my life. Admittedly, it isn’t always easy. Sometimes I’ve even resented it. Babies can’t feed themselves, change their own diapers, move themselves from place to place. And they can’t control when they need any of those things done. They don’t care if you haven’t slept more than two hours at a time since they were born. They need what they need when they need it and, if you’re any kind of decent parent, you help them get it.

    Aging parents are, indeed, like children. Right now, my dad needs help moving from place to place, dealing with toileting and even feeding himself. The difference between caring for him and caring for my babies? Dad does care about who’s caring for him. He knows it’s tough and apologizes regularly. I sometimes wish he wouldn’t, but in the middle of a night where he’s gotten up three or four times convinced he needs to get ready for a meeting with an architect, it helps.

    Being cute is a baby’s way of making its care less onerous. Dad has a sense of humor and even when he’s not trying, provides ample amusement. He can’t seem to remember his surgeon’s name, so calls him everything from Dr. Ballerina to Dr. Bubbalongname. The doctor’s name is Billimoria, but Dad’s names for him make me laugh, so I call him Bubbalongname, too.

    Amusing Dad is far more difficult for me than caring for him. He doesn’t read, can’t really walk far, favors watching golf over cooking shows and doesn’t want to learn how to knit. I haven’t lived in my hometown for more than thirty years; I have no idea what to do there anymore. Neither does Dad.

    There is one thing Dad has always loved to do though: go for a drive. Since I was a child, Dad’s been driving. Vacations were spent driving from Illinois to Florida, a two-day trip that Dad relished. I realize now that the drive was probably the most enjoyable part for Dad and not just for the thrill of making good time.

    Dad loves driving for the process, not the destination. He doesn’t care where he’s going, as long as he’s going. I am goal driven; I hate the process. At the end of a long drive, there better be something worth my while because I’ve just spent a good deal of precious time doing nothing. So, getting in the car and having Dad say, “Drive out Route 14,” then promptly fall asleep is my idea of hell. Still, I get on 14 and drive, passing numerous turnoffs that look to offer promising destinations. Dad needs help satisfying his wanderlust and I provide it.

    Helping my son has become complicated and conflict-ridden. This brings us to the condoms. Sometime ago, I bought my son a box of condoms, intending that he would check them out in order to be familiar with them when the time—preferably far, far in the future—came. There were three. He took one to school, put it (wrapped) in a friend’s sandwich and enjoyed the hilarity that ensued.

    So, there were two condoms in my son’s side table drawer for quite a while. And then there was a girl friend. And then there was one condom. That afternoon, I met my son in the driveway and said, “Get in the car. I need to talk to you.” “Why?” he asked. “Get in the car,” I said. “We’ll go get ice cream.” Maybe my Dad is onto something with the driving thing, but a car ride is my go to parenting tactic when I need to confront—I mean—talk to, my son.

    In the catalog of things a mother doesn’t want to hear, I think “I didn’t use it because it didn’t fit” is way up there with “I didn’t know the gun was loaded” and “You can’t get addicted to heroin with just one use.” I still can’t figure out how a condom doesn’t fit, but my son was insistent and is gloating about it to his dad. I find this rather unseemly, but figure that’s between the boys. In addition to stern lectures and profound disappointment, I provided condoms that should be large enough for my son, ego included. If he doesn’t improve his grades, I suppose Porn Star could be his fallback career.

    And now we come to the training bra. My daughter is perched precariously on the verge of puberty. She can be as smart-mouthed as her older brother one minute and talking baby talk the next. She’s convinced she’s beginning to bud, but her pediatrician and I disagree. Still she’s tremendously modest and I was reminded of this when her shirt obeyed the laws of gravity, revealing most of her upper body as she hung upside down from the neighbor’s monkey bar. We hustled off to Target and secured “bralettes,” which are actually more like cut-off camisoles than bras.

    She was understandably and adorably eager to wear one when we got home. In her haste to remove her shirt, she got stuck with it half over her head. Helping her was so easy, I nearly cried; I untied the sash she’d forgotten about. She popped on the bralette, threw on her shirt and ran outside, shouting, “I’m wearing a sport bra!”

    The day will come when I need help the way my loved ones do now. I hope it’s later, rather than sooner. When it does, I hope it doesn’t involve extra-large condoms and training bras.