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!

Poop Smears to Buger Picking...The Joys of Parenthood

Along my parental journey I have learned that kids make us extremely aware of our shortcomings, and are always finding new ways to embarrass and gross us out. Lets face it, kids are often gross, and tend to reflect back at us the negative qualities of ourselves, bringing them to our attention where we might have otherwise remained blissfully ignorant.  I'm a parent and my kids are no exception.

 Learning To Talk:
My son was a big binky baby (binky=pacifier).  Everything he did, absent eating or drinking, that binky was in his mouth.  When he was about fourteen months old, he comes strolling in the kitchen wearing nothing but a diaper, dad’s hat, dad’s shoes; binky in his mouth, sippy cup in hand, looking absolutely adorable.  About half way through the kitchen, the oversized shoes trip him up a little causing him to drop his sippy cup to the floor.  Without missing a beat, he snatches the binky out of his mouth and with perfect enunciation exclaims, “SHIT!!” My first thought…No he didn’t just say what I thought he said.  My second…he said it in the appropriate context with an impressive emotional emphasis.  My third…I’m a failure as a parent.  It was at this moment I realized I would have to make some changes in my preferred exclamations.

Potty Training:
Oh, what parent doesn’t have fond moments of teaching our children to use the toilet so we can be spared the responsibility of changing dirty diapers and the costs of buying them.  Potty training is more than teaching them to control their functions and void in the toilet, but includes instruction in wiping correctly, flushing and washing their hands. One disgusting thing I have found to be common in the potty training stage are poop smears on the sides of cabinets, behind the toilet, or anywhere else within reach of their small hands when the wiping goes wrong.  Their small undeveloped minds don’t think to wipe it on another piece of toilet paper, or wash their hands…all they see is poop on their fingers which must be wiped off immediately and on anything within reach they can wipe them on.  Often during the poop smear stage, the parent is unaware that the child has “made poo poo” until there’s been some terribly embarrassing moment, like discovering the poop smears AFTER the small town mayor pops in for a visit and uses the bathroom.

Nose picking:

Every small child goes through a nose picking stage.  Nothing like being in a restaurant eating and looking over to find your child knuckles deep in a nostril.  I had a very effective tool during these times.  When the kids were little and began going through the tickle their brain, nose picking stage, I recalled a poem I’d known as a child. From the children’s poetry collection by Shel Silverstein in the book, Where the Sidewalk Ends, the poem, titled “Sharp Toothed Snail” reads:

Inside everybody's nose
There lives a sharp-toothed snail.
So if you stick your finger in,
He may bite off your nail.
Stick it farther up inside,
And he may bite your ring off.
Stick it all the way, and he
Might bite the whole darn thing off.

As small children, the idea that there was something with sharp teeth living in their nose capable of actually biting off their finger acted as a powerful and very effective deterrent to their continued nose picking.  It wasn’t always effective, however, when dealing with other children.  My nephew, for example, spent about a year trying to catch it.

Illnesses:

A child in my charge once had a very serious stomach virus causing extreme puking and diarrhea.  After a couple days of this and a complete inability to even hold water down, fearing dehydration, I took her to the hospital for IV fluids and medications.  Just before being discharged, she was prescribed a suppository phenergan to help with the nausea.  The idea of some strange doctor seeing her butt, much less inserting something into it was more than she could bear, so we talk the doctor into giving it to me and I’d administer it when we arrived home.  True to our word, the medication was administered much to our mutual discomfort.  About half hour later, this child, completely void of anything left to puke, makes a run for the bathroom heaving.  A few minutes later she comes out, tears streaming down her face, and tells me, “Trish, I think I just puked that thing you put in my butt.”  It took everything in me not to burst out laughing as she was obviously in anguish over the though.  I explained that it didn’t work that way and that the nasty stuff she was puking was bile NOT the butt medication.

Constipation induced oversized turds:

I’m not really sure which is worse…finding an unreported clogged toiled, or an unflushed toilet a while after the duty has been done.  There is something about the digestive tract of a child that is capable of producing turds which look like they should have come from the butt of a sasquatch, not a small child.  One day I enter the bathroom and am immediately assaulted by the pungent aroma which filled the bathroom like a heavy fog.  I lift the lid to the toilet and jumped back, temporarily startled at the monster hiding beneath it.  I’m sure the child tried to flush it, but it was too big to flush and was sticking out of the water like some water beast ready to attack.  I found myself staring at it wondering how on earth such a large, odorous object could come out of the butt of a child so small. 

Each day brings opportunity for new adventures; and with children, every day IS an adventure.  One thing for sure, you never know what hidden treasure's you'll find along the way. My babies are getting older, so hopefully my days of discovering poop smears and crusty bugers between couch cushions or on the corners of their bed sheets are over, but what treasures will I find next. Lord help me.

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.

Lies and Torments I've Subjected My Kids To.

Cooties:

When my daughter was 4 years old and about to start pre-k, I sat her down to have a very important big girl conversation.  The topic?  Boys.  I told her about boys having cooties and how contagious they were.  She listened with wide eyed interest and then asked what cooties looked like and how you got rid of them once you caught them.  Because cooties were invisible, of course no one really knew what they looked like, only that all boys had them.  I told her not to worry though…because in her cubby at school there would be an invisible can of cootie spray.  All she had to do was spray down the boys with her cootie spray (demonstrating how) and she’d be safe. 

After her first day of school, upon picking her up, she was noticeably upset. When I asked about her day, she heatedly informed me that she looked and looked, but could not find her invisible can of cootie spray.   “Now I’ve got cooties too!”  Yeah, some days it’s great to be a parent.

 Amusement Parks:

 I learned a long time ago why they were called amusement parks.  Parents bring their children, watch the children get terrified, and the parents are left very amused.  When my daughter and then step-son were little (4 and 6), we went to MGM in Orlando.  We waited in outrageously long lines in the sweltering heat before finally boarding “The Tower of Terror”.  Within moments they were both terrified and wanting off…NOW.  By the time we got off the ride, they were both white as a ghost and near tears begging NEVER to go on it again.  For the next year, anytime they acted up, just the threat of making them ride “The Tower of Terror” would bring them right back in line.  Thanks Disney!

 My son was a very big baby, and an even bigger toddler.  When he was 2, he was as big as or bigger than most 4 year olds.  During a trip to Universal Studios, we boarded the “Jaws” ride.  It was a beautiful day and we were slowly floating along when a mechanical Jaws burst out of the water mere inches from our side of the boat, displaying a mouth full of big, sharp, white teeth.  My son screamed in terror as he jumped up in the seat and ran across me in a desperate attempt to escape the attacking shark!  Everybody on the boat, myself included (I know…mom of the year), were laughing so hysterically we were wiping tears from our eyes, as my terrified toddler struggled to find the humor in almost being eaten by the giant beast.  Try as I might, I could not stop laughing as I tried to comfort him and assure him it was just a fake shark and NOT going to eat him.  Did we stop there?  Heck no!  I was now amused.  Next stop…“Earthquake”. 

 Christmas:

 They give us parents so much to work with around the holidays, big and small.  From Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny to the Tooth Fairy, society has made lying to our children not just acceptable, but expected, especially at Christmas.

 When my ex-husband’s son was about 7 years old, he started questioning the existence of Santa Claus, and sharing his doubts with my 5 year old daughter.  That Christmas Eve, we left cookies and milk for Santa and carrots for the Reindeer…on a chair visible from the doorways of each of the children’s rooms.  After the kids went to sleep and the presents were placed under the tree, my husband donned a Santa Claus suit and headed for the cookies as I headed for the kids rooms to wake them up.  I snuck in their rooms, and woke them up very quietly telling each one to be absolutely silent so we didn’t scare Santa off.  I told them that if Santa knew they saw him, he might leave fast, or even disappear so they had to be quiet.  They watched in silence was he ate the cookies and drank the milk, then stuffed the carrots in his pockets, before saying “Ho, Ho, Ho” and then disappearing from their sight. 

 When my son (almost 5 years younger than my daughter) was about 8, he came home from his father’s devastated.  “Dad told Santa to put me on the naughty list!”  After thinking about this for a couple weeks, I enlisted the help of my daughter and put my plan into action.  When my son returned from his next weekend stay with his father, on two small hooks by the front door hung a small wool coat, a matching pointy hat and a tiny lantern with a paper scroll tucked into it.  When he asked about it, at first I refused to tell him anything saying only for him to leave the items alone.  At various times, I’d remove the items for periods of time and then return them to the hooks.  Finally, after swearing him to secrecy, I told him that one of Santa’s elves was staying with us while he handled a top secret mission for Santa.  The kids stared at the items begging for permission to read the tiny scroll. While he never actually got to see the elf, I did manage to take a very fussy picture of him to show my son (which I actually pulled off the internet), and just before the elf’s stuff vanished for the last time, we snuck a peek at the tiny scroll which read, “Naughty” then had a list of several names, including the name of their dad!

 Teenagers

 When my kids were little I would to tell them that aliens injected the brains of teenagers with a toxic serum that turned their brains into gelatinous goo until they hit their 20s and their brains started solidifying again.  This made teenagers act in completely crazy ways and do really stupid things until their brains recovered somewhere around their early to mid 20s.  My son was about 6, and we were walking through Wal-Mart when my son excitedly points to a group and loudly exclaims, “Look mom!  They’re teenagers!” as if he was seeing an endangered species or making a rare discovery, eliciting many strange looks from the Wal-Mart onlookers. 

These are just a few examples of how I've lied to and tormented my children over the years.  To post them all would be a thousand plus page novel.  Ok, so maybe the last one was a bad example of a lie or torture my kids have endured from me as I really think I was onto something with that one!  Luckily for me, though probably unfortunately for them, I still have several years left to inflict more damage in the form of creative lies and torment.  One day, they'll have children and will be able to pass on the traditions just as I am now doing to them.