Butt Crack Mail Slot

My son is going to grow up to be a nudist.  From infancy on, he’d pull and tug at his clothes until he escaped from their confines.  He’s now 11 years old and while he manages to keep clothes on in public, the second he walks in the door from school (or anywhere else from that matter) he begins stripping down to his skivvies.  It is a common site for me to walk in from work, see his back pack thrown down just inside the door, his jacket tossed on the couch, his shoes a few feet away in the middle of the floor, his pants a few feet further, with his shirt completing the trail from the front door to the kitchen for a snack.  It is also common for me to come in from work thinking, “Are you freaking kidding me?!” yelling “SON!!!  GET YOUR TAIL IN HERE AND CLEAN UP YOUR TRAIL!!!”  I’ve tried many different techniques to discourage this behavior, yet it continues.

My son is not a little guy.  Even at 11 years old, he’s bigger than many 15-year-olds and has got a butt crack that would make a professional plumber green with envy. Usually he wears boxer briefs which aren’t so bad, but one day, not too long ago, he came walking into the living room, plops down on the couch wearing nothing but his tighty-whities, butt crack smiling at us, to watch TV with my 16 year old daughter and me.  We both exchanged exasperated looks before I said to him, “Son, how would you like it if your sister and I decided we’d be more comfortable wearing nothing but our underwear as we watched TV with you?” He just rolled his eyes at me as if to say, “Yeah right mom, you wouldn’t do that.” He then averted his eyes back to the TV completely unmoved by my not-so-subtle hinting for him to go put some damn clothes on.  My daughter and I exchanged a glance, then a smirk, and without another word, to my son’s mortification, off came the clothes.

We both pretended he wasn’t even in the room as we stripped down to nothing but our bras and panties, and plopped back down in our respective seats.  I said to my daughter, “No wonder he’s always in his underwear.  I can’t believe we’ve been missing out on this.  I feel so comfortable, so free!  I may never wear clothes in the house again.” My daughter in complete concurrence says, “I know!  This is awesome.  I might even quit wearing a bra!”  My son was mortified.  His face bright red, a wide eyed look of sheer terror at seeing us both lounging around half naked, and the thought of us going braless was more than he could handle.  Shrieking, “Mama!  That’s disgusting!  I don’t want to see you guys’ butts and boobs!” He ran from the room leaving my daughter and me laughing till our sides hurt.  We stayed in our bras and panties until he came out with clothes on.

For a while the thought of us lounging around wearing nothing but our panties encouraged him to wear more than just his underwear, though, lately he’s been pushing the boundaries again.  So last week, I call the kids to dinner, and my son comes to the table wearing only a pair of boxer briefs and a t-shirt (at least he’s wearing a shirt, so I wasn’t going to bitch).  We’re at the table eating and talking.  My daughter is talking about how cute some little kid is, and my son pipes in, “I’m cute!” to which I reply “You guys are both long past cute.” He got a wounded look but quickly recovered and changed his strategy saying, “So what am I then?  Oh, I know…I’m SEXY!”  Without missing a beat, I say, “You’re obviously too sexy for your pants!” About that time, my daughter pipes in, “And I swear your butt crack is a mile long.”  I noticed her grimacing as about half a mile of his mile long butt crack was exposed from beneath his shirt.  I couldn’t help but observe “It looks like a change slot…like you should be dropping quarters in it.” To which she retorts “Heck no, I feel like I should be swiping credit cards!”  The conversation continued, my daughter and I playing off each other till we finally concluded it was more like a mail slot deserving of its own address. 

I wish I could say that this exchange has convinced my son to remain clothed while in the common areas of the house, but as write this blog, he is wondering around the house wearing nothing but his underwear, his mail slot shining.  Maybe I’ll start sewing addresses to the seat of his underwear as it looks like there’s no end in sight to his assault on our eyes.  If only I could sew a button on his back to fasten his underwear to!

DO NOT OPEN UNLESS ELECTROCUTED

After publishing the “Teen Solution” blog about putting teenagers in medically induced comas and teaching them everything they needed to know through strategically placed electrodes to their brain, I was talking with a couple friends about co-founding the “Teen Solution Foundation” (TSF).  We would revolutionize the world!  The more we explored the possibilities, the more we realized that if we turned this dream into a reality, the world would memorialize us in song, erect statues of us, and write our names in every history book.  We’d be revolutionaries forever changing society as we know it.  Kids would become more successful, parents would be less stressed, crime would dramatically decrease, the welfare system would be less stretched.  Every talk show in America would want the founders of TSF (being us) on their shows; hell, Opra’d even start a NEW talk show just to have us on it!  We’d be famous.

However, we also realized that there is a cost to fame.  We’d have fans following us everywhere, grateful parents always wanting to thank us for finding a solution to the teen problem, paparazzi at every turn, and even a couple haters now and then.  This of course would require us to have bodyguards…big, strong, handsome, muscled up, could break a neck with two fingers kinda bodyguards.  It would be awful, but such is the price one must pay for fame.  As we start in on the bodyguards, and their break a neck with two fingers requirement, my friend says, “but could you make sure they have ALL their fingers, cause they may have some down time and well…”and that’s how the conversation changed. 

No longer were we talking about revolutionizing the world, but about big strong men with big strong hands and what they could do with them.  I wish I could say that this is a rare thing, but I cannot.  It happens often with us.  The conversation rolled seamlessly from big strong men to the hormones surging through our bodies at this age, to our out of control libidos and the difficulty with being single with these raging hormones. Then my friend, a couple years my senior, drops a bomb shell on me saying, “Oh just wait.  You haven’t seen anything yet.  You haven’t even hit your peak.  Just give it a couple more years.” To which I replied, “Dear Lord, if it gets any worse I’ll be found dead, electrocuted in my bed with no pants!  I mean, batteries are expensive, and if it gets any worse I’ll have no choice but to move to electrically powered, but maybe not so waterproof means of frustration relief.”

As soon as I said it, the mental image which popped into my mind was both horrifying and hilarious at the same time.  I began laughing so hard I was wiping tears, but we knew then what I must do.  I needed to write a letter to keep on my bedside table; a DO NOT OPEN UNLESS…just in case of electrocution, goodbye letter to anyone who may find me in such a compromising position.

So yesterday, I wrote a goodbye letter, complete with a detailed description of the struggle I’ve endured as a single woman in my mid-thirties leading up to my unfortunate electrocution.  I put the letter in a sealed envelope and placed it on my bedside nightstand.  Written on the outside of the envelope is: “DO NOT OPEN UNLESS FOUND ELECTROCUTED.  If found dead of any other cause, please disregard and destroy IMMEDIATELY!” I pray the contents of this letter forever go unread, but in the event I’m found electrocuted with my pants down, I hope my finder will understand.

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I Have A Dream...The Teenage Solution

When the kids were little I used to point at teenagers and whisper in their ears, “There’s a teenager…aliens inject something in their brains, turning it to liquid, making them act crazy until their brains resolidify in their early to mid 20s.”  I used to think it was hilarious to watch the children look at the teenager wide eyed with a sort of curious trepidation.  One day, while at a community event, my son (at about 4 years old) grabs my arm, points wildly and exclaims for everyone around us to hear, “Look mom!  It’s a teenager!”  The crowd looked at us quizzically, as I just burst out laughing.  Over the last couple of years, I have come to see the wisdom in what I started as a joke, because sometime a few years ago, aliens got a hold of my daughter.

I am a mother of a teenage daughter.  I’m fortunate that my daughter is better behaved than most, most of the time, but make no mistakes, she is a teenage girl.  Being a single mother of a teenage girl presents even more challenges.  There is there’s no man in the house to assist me in those trying times when she wants to challenge me for “Queen Of The Castle”, so to speak, nor is there someone to assist me in the disciplining of her during those times when I’m just too mad or disappointed to be an effective disciplinarian, and take up my slack.  It’s all on me.

I have talked with many other parents and realize that I am not alone in my frustration.  We, as parents of teenagers, all share a common bond of anxiety and sometimes almost overwhelming desire to strangle our children, coming to a full understanding of why some species eat their young.  

During moments of extreme anxiety, and sometimes blinding anger, I’ve often calmed myself with the daydream of a teen sleep center.  Instead of taking our children to their first day of high school, we take them to an alternative campus…a medical campus, where the children are placed in medically induced comas, and taught everything they need to know through electrodes strategically hooked to their brain.    Parents would have unrestricted access to the morality section of the brain, and could record things for regular introduction such as religious fundamentals, our version of skills they’d need to succeed in life, the code of ethics we’d like them to live by, and anything else we’d introduce that would screw them up in a way specialized to us as individual parents.  The best educators would create age appropriate lessons which would be introduced and absorbed by each child, free of distraction from things such as that good looking boy sitting in the next row.  World events of significance would be introduced to them in the form of a filtered news cast, so that when they awoke, not only would they be fully educated, provided a moral foundation based on each parents own, but they would be informed of what is going on in the world. 

Each day, us parents could come in, spend quality time with our child free of arguing, dirty “fuck you”  looks, or looks that say “you’re a complete dumbass and know absolutely nothing”, we can admire how angelic they are, and feel that overwhelming love we felt for them when they were so young and innocent, thought we were their heroes, and were completely dependent upon us.  We could plug the latest movies and music into their electrodes for absorption as we watch or listen along.   We’d never have to wonder where they were, who they were with, where are my car keys, or my car, for that matter.  Then, when the magic day comes along, we weep as we wake them and send them off into the world fully equipped with all the tools they need to be successful in life.

 I realized last night that if every parent who’s ever wanted to feed their teenage child to a wild animal or even just strangle them slightly into submission gave only one dollar, we’d have enough funding for the research and development to turn this dream into a reality. 

However, I also realized that big corporations would never allow it to be successful, as the pharmaceutical companies would lose billions in anti-anxiety and depression medications, the therapeutic market for counselors and psychiatrists would all but cease to exist, law enforcement jobs would be lost due to lack of teen related crime, welfare benefits would no longer be needed to support teen age mothers and children, and a wide array of other unforeseen consequences.  So despite the abundant sources of funding, this dream will remain a dream.