Once in a rare while, on Sepia Mutiny, the group blog I write for, someone leaves a comment which is so long, it's problematic. It makes scrolling down a thread difficult-- especially if one is attempting to do so via phone-- and it's also a lot of material to consider and respond to. It complicates the conversation.
In those situations, the ever-helpful intern steps in and suggest that a comment which is THAT long is really a post, just yearning to be blogged. "Please do so, then leave the link here, for those who might be interested. Thanks!"
Well, I guess I had a post, just yearning to be blogged. :)
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1 · tarta said
you are not 33 going on dead,anna! i know u said that tongue in cheek, but i think more and more professional women are postponing marriage to age 35-36 and kids to age 37-39
And thanggahd for it. I've been mildly obsessed with babies lately-- but not like you might think. :)
Last night, I read nearly every entry on a blog called "Take Back the Island". I'll just put it this way-- one of their running features is "Dead Baby Joke". I found TBTI via a NYT article from Feb 11th which introduced me to a curious world called Park Slope, which is in the Brooklyn...apparently thoughtless bitches run wild there, with humvee-sized strollers and similarly-sized senses of entitlement to the sidewalk, an establishment called "Tea Lounge" and finally all the space in a bar called Union-something which has Bocce courts. The article had 300 comments about the self-absorbed shittiness of it all, and I found myself coming down on the so-called "baby-hater" side of things, which is just amazing.
I've wanted to be a mom since I was in first grade, which is when my teacher asked what I wanted to be when I grew up and I said, "Supreme Court Justice. And Mommy". I looooove babies. I started taking Folic Acid supplements when I was 18, because I was so sure I was going to get married right after graduating, to my college sweetheart. Baby, baby, baby.
Now, I want to throttle women on the Metro who brutally force their double-wide, p.o.s. strollers (which hold more bags than babies) wherever they can, as if wielding a battering ram through innocent commuters, only to block the handicapped seating (which I needed to use for the majority of last year) as if it's their deity-given right to do so-- and woe unto anyone who dares look askance, because that will be be the catalyst for the "HOW DARE YOU!" heard 'round the monuments.
On the rare occasions when I go to starbucks in certain nabes, I'm certain to be slammed in to by some hyper-active, three-year old animal who is careening about the store while doing his best impersonation of a pinball-- and I'm even more certain to get a haughty, "EXCUSE YOU. You need to look where you are going", from his Mother, after which I am absolutely certain that I will have to stifle my urge to throw my $5 latte in her stupid face.
And best of all, when I go home to CA, I'm no longer allowed to attend my mother's prayer meetings, because in 2003, I picked up an exceptionally demonic species of crotch-fruit who screamed and kicked me while I attempted to take him in to the other room, to thrown him in to his worthless mother's fucking lap. "What happened?" she trilled.
"He decided to write on my piano with a sharpie."
"Oh, he's just playing."
"My father bought that piano for me 25 years ago. It's not a toy. It's precious and he would be horrified to know that your kid just defaced it."
"No, no. You care too much for material things...he is being cute...hahahaha."
And apparently (though I blacked out so I don't remember this) I lunged for her and my mom intercepted my clawing hands and hauled my ass in to my room so fast, we skipped a month. My primal attack might have been triggered by all the exquisite hypocrisy about material things, since crotchfruit's tree is the same woman who likes to announce how much her home cost and how she's already bored with her year-old luxury car and considering something newer.
So yes, tarta, much like the timeline in your comment indicated, I will have my kids in a few years, because by then, I will be ready to give up my lifestyle for theirs. I will have gotten shit out of my system. I will accept that I can no longer be a selfish bitch. I will not take them to BARS (wtf is going on in Park Slope, people?) because I'm resentful about how my life has changed and I want to have it both ways. I will resign myself to life in the burbs and inane never-ending videos and silly songs and wanting to beat my head against the wall because my own crotchfruit are driving me fucking insane-- but you know what? At least they will be doing that in my sure-to-be-destroyed home vs. at the mall, the movies, restaurants or anywhere else innocent people go.
I cannot comprehend how having a baby makes someone gifted. Any idiot can fuck someone and squirt out a slime-covered, squalling thing. Now, not everyone can take that crying newborn and parent it in to a good human being. I think it is all related to a greater issue-- an explosion of selfishness in America which is most often manifested via cell phone conversations in tiny buses where some douche is yelling, "what? I can't hear you. I'm on the bus. What?". Why be considerate of others while sharing common, public spaces? That's for wimps, people dumb enough to care about courtesy.
Unfortunately, with babies, you have a titanium excuse for treating other people like shit, because who is going to tangle with you, when you're holding a tiny person in a diaper? No one, because anyone who dares stand up for themselves or anything reasonable will be regarded as just thismuch less evil than Saddam Hussein. "It takes a village", they say. Well then let me step in and discipline your uncivilized beast-child, since your response to everything is, "he's just a kid!" And the next time I hear, "you're ungrateful now...but they'll be paying your social security", I'll laugh bitterly, because I want to be on the same powerful drugs which make this delusion so easy-- I don't expect monthly checks in 32 years. So take that lame justification for your child's appalling behavior and shove it up your birth canal.
I know there are good parents out there and beautifully-behaved babies (Hi, Godson). I know. But a non-trivial number of awful apples are making it difficult to remember that (or, even want to remember that). You don't see these kind people, because when their kid acts up in church or at the movies or at Macy's, they are. out. of. there. They are sweet enough to be mortified at their child's meltdown, and they are aghast at the thought of inflicting it on innocent strangers. So toddlers are whisked up, away, to the car and then home. The ironic thing is, if you parent well, it's imperceptible to the naked eye and nearly impossible to remember. What does get remembered is the idiot father who turns his back on his kid, believing that "not paying attention" is the best strategy for addressing his offspring's public shittiness. It hasn't crossed his mind that dozens of people are wincing while he just speaks to the poor salesperson he's corralled in a voice which grows louder to compensate for the screaming he's brilliantly ignoring.
Even more memorable are the couple I once saw in Fremont, outside a Jamba Juice. Their children were literally playing in "traffic", in the parking lot, and finally, the inevitable happened-- a shaken driver veered to spare Junior Asshole and ended up slamming in to a parked car. Said the parents, upon being summoned from their stupor by the sound of breaking lights and mashing bumpers: "Gosh, the way people drive is just outrageous! Willow, are you okay? Did that man scare you?" All of us looked on, agape from the disbelief and willful denial.
I am amazed. My parents spanked us, regularly and we didn't dare let out a peep in public, let alone toss full-blown tantrums, deface others' property or otherwise act like meth-addled monkeys. All it took was one look and we'd quiver involuntarily. But as my mother explained to me after her eventful prayer meeting (after letting me out of my room), "those days are over. Now, parents want to be friends with their children. They don't want to be the bad guy. They don't want to parent. And if you do discipline your child, you better hope no one sees you smack their little butt because you'll go to jail. It's a different era. We didn't let you act out because it was not appropriate behavior. Now, everything is appropriate behavior."
"Mom, if that kid comes near my piano again, with any-"
"So have you thought about moving back to New York?"
