Bye-bye, little one: An argument in favor of the kindergartener
It’s official. Last Tuesday—after I helped thread her arms through the stiff straps of a backpack covered in more pink and white butterflies than were flitting around in my stomach—I walked my daughter one block down the street for her first day of kindergarten and, in doing so, became a cog in the busted-up, broke-down, rusted-out, caving-in jalopy known as the San Diego Unified School District. But this column isn’t about SDUSD, a bottomless well of editorial fodder; there will be plenty of time for my commentary on that hot mess over the next 13 years.
No, this is about Holy shit! I’m not the parent of a toddler anymore!
You know the first thing I did after leaving La Princesse at class that morning was to b-line for a cocktail. I wanted to bring a flask in my purse and take a nice, big draw from it just as I stepped off school property, but I really have made an effort to leave high school behind me. It would be a bummer to get blacklisted from my kid’s new school for drinking on campus. On Day One. I’d rather earn my banishment with some caustic columns.
Of course, I was a little misty as I watched my child’s giant backpack walk away from me toward her new classroom, the whole of her eclipsed except for two long, skinny legs in laceless, pink-sequined Chuck Taylors and a perfectly round Afro-puff topping it all off. It was downright cartoony, and I hummed “School House Rock” on my way to meet my Maker’s Mark, thinking of how far I’d come.
Oh, the memories: There was the time Ruby smeared poop on my face. And the incessant late-night wailing that forced Sam and me into garage exile for the better part of a year. Or the meltdown at the pumpkin patch— man, that was an illusion killer. In an act of self-preservation, I pretended I didn’t know her and just let her sob and leak snot on herself in the dirt amid hay bales and ponies, while all the other families sipped cider and took photos for their scrapbooks and happily picked out their gourds and corncobs and whatnot.
Those miserable days have receded sufficiently and are now humorous anecdotes I offer in conversations with new parents to explicitly convey that they are not alone, and to subliminally convey the fact that they are completely fucked. To this day, whenever I see disheveled parents maneuvering diaper bags and strollers and Snack Traps while hunched over trying to prevent their new crawler from tumbling head first into a menacing pile of fire ants, my first thought is always: Better them than me.
Babies might smell good, but let’s be honest: They mostly suck.
Having a 5-year-old is much more palatable. For one thing, they don’t pee and poop in their pants anymore. That’s a big bonus. Sure, there’s the occasional oops-I-waited-too-long leak that they neglect to mention and which you only find out about when you pick up their inside-out heap of clothes they left on the bathroom floor. FYI: Unexpectedly wet kiddie undies evoke the same kind of reaction as walking into an unseen spider web.
And as long as I’m talking bodily functions, being summoned to the bathroom to verify that, Yes, honey, you’re right. That is diarrhea, is only better than a diaper trauma by a number of degrees. But it is, unarguably, better.
Another plus is communication. When a baby doesn’t care for her food, she spits it out like an oscillating lawn sprinkler, and suddenly you’re washing walls while contemplating taking lovers, Seasonale and a secret apartment in Crown Point (a small dream, yes, but it makes visitation easier than an apartment in Positano). By contrast, a 5-year-old will keep the grilled onion on her protruding tongue, contort her face like Popeye and flail her hands in the air next to her head until you remove the offending bit with your napkin. After a long sip of water from her glass (no more sippie cups!), she’ll look directly at you and say, “What the hell, Mama? I said ‘No onions!’”
Getting dressed is so much more pleasant with a 5-year-old around: Not only can she dress herself, but she can also create ensembles. She has a will and is going to exert it. Giving in to her proclivity for pairing autumn-hued plaids with pastel stripes and primary polka dots, often layered and topped with a pink gingham belt and/or a tulle skirt, beats the hell out of onesies and baby-jeans with those maddeningly miniscule crotch snaps.
I stay out of the fashion choices in my home now and only venture into jacket-battle on truly cold days. And I do insist on underwear beneath skirts if we’re going to be leaving the house. I’m a stickler on that point. You never know when you might be exiting a limousine to the flashing bulbs of paparazzi. You never know when you might suffer that accidental leak.
The best thing, though, about a kindergartener, is that they can make you proud in deeply meaningful ways that can’t be dismissed as gas (a first smile is still charming) or natural progression (first words, first steps, first haircuts, first skull-shaped self-inking stamp pressed repeatedly along every wall in the house at a 36-inch height). A toddler is the drunken friend whom you must prevent from dying; a 5-year-old is the pragmatic one who hears “No” and offers 17 plausible ways the answer should be “Yes.”
“What do you call the person that’s in charge of the school?” Ruby asked her dad during curriculum night while she and three of her new friends were pretending to play classroom. The role of “teacher” had been delegated and Ruby was unsatisfied as “pupil.”
“You mean the principal?” Sam asked. “Yeah,” Ruby said. She skipped back to where her friends were playing. “OK,” she said to them, “I’m the principal.”
Au revoir to those bruising toddler years. And bottoms up to the brutality ahead.
(As published today in San Diego Citybeat.)
Happy Endings
I was going to write some fresh material tonight, but then Christine O’Donnell won the Republican primary in Delaware.
In honor of her victory, I am going to masturbate instead.
Who’s with me?
When tabloids masquerade as legitimate news
I’ve been busy this week and unable to watch any of the U.S. Open tennis tournament. (Or write. But that is pretty much secondary to everything else in my life at the moment.) Yesterday, I went to the Huffington Post to check the results of the Nadal-Verdasco match. New York Times described Nadal’s performance as “perhaps the finest and most suffocating performance of all his U.S. Open matches.”
But when I clicked the sports tab on HuffPo, I was assaulted with everything but tennis, let alone breathtaking reviews of the quality of play. Granted, some sports barely got a nod. But all—as in every single story—of the other headlines were in male-dominated sports, each smeared in more scandal and train-wreck clickability than a Kardashian sex tape. A quick tally of what was on the page revealed what HuffPo editors believe to be compelling sports stories:
Boxing: 3- one involving gang rape, one domestic violence and one about Mike Tyson and a regret he harbors about Tupak.
Basketball: 4- one arrest, one swastika defacing, one US/Cold War rematch (really? still?), and one player who loves NY women. Big news, people. BIG.
Baseball: 1- something about Hank Aaron who, I’m pretty sure, is dead. But dead is more captivating than baseball, anyway.
Football: 11- motherload! There was some sports news here, as in, the season kick-off and Super Bowl odds. But there was also some Ashton Kutcher, a big contract, a big car accident, a prostitution ring and lots of bad behavior. Quel suprise!
Soccer: 3- sex scandal, gay scandal and a shirtless Christiano Ronaldo, as usual.
Golf: 3- sex scandal, sex scandal and more sex scandal.
Car Racing: 1- one death.
Wrestling: 3- a coma, a hospitalization and one murder/suicide.
Tennis: 3- one “super skimpy” outfit (on Venus, read: ho), one “revealing dress” (on Wozniaki, read: sexy) and the worship of Kournikova because she’s so “pretty”.
Just glancing at the page makes me feel like I’ve just read US Magazine: The Athletic Edition. But there is an extra rub when it comes to tennis.
Not only is there zero coverage of EITHER the men’s the women’s play. Zero, zero, zero, nothing, zero. Get it? No link to the coverage of Nadal’s quarter-final. Not even a link to the great and short (perfect for the average internet-reader attention span) analysis of why the number one ranked Caroline Wozniaki has such a high percentage of shot-making. Just inane discussion about how short her skirt is with a series of accompanying photos. And continued inane discussion about Venus Williams’ firework-bedazzled dress and accompanying photos, including way back to the French Open when Venus said a big F. U. to the world with her brilliantly flesh toned shorts. You go girls, I say. If your costumes are such an issue, maybe you should be required to wear shorts and tees like the men (and recieve the same winnings, too). All the hub-ub makes me wish these women would show up to play in their underwear only. But then they might be considered gymnasts.
Seriously. I want to know: Are Beavis and Butthead in charge of the content on this site?
Le Sigh, Le Boo Hoo, Le Don’t Grow Up, S’il vous plait
Ruby had her orientation last Friday. We visited her new classroom, met her new teacher and some of her new friends. She was one cool cucumber. ,I on the other hand, was not. Sam told me as we walked down the street toward her school, to pull it together at least while she’s around. Then he went for the jugular: “Don’t be my mom.” (Hey, Marsha! 
) Suffice it to say, I wore my very big, very dark sunglasses, which I will be wearing again on Tuesday. Ruby was none the wiser.
I’m a writer, but I cannot formulate the words right now. So photos will have to do for the moment….
Transitions
Ruby’s outfits have been spectacular lately. This is one she wore during her last week of preschool:
The leg warmers slay me. Especially on a day that saw temperatures stretch into the 90s.
One of my apprehensions about kindergarten—and grade school in general—is that she will begin to lose her creativity and decide she wants to be like all the other kids. I have come to love her mix-and-match choices and the conviction behind each ensemble. I hope she holds out on conformity.
She’s growing up. I want her to grow up…it’s what she’s supposed to do.
But man, I don’t want her to grow up.
Freedom of Religion: Extremists think the First Amendment only applies to them
“NUKE ALL RAGHEADS” was painted across the rear window of the 90’s era silvery-blue, sun-splotched Buick. There was a small American flag attached to both the driver- and passenger-side doors, each one snapping in the wind with fury as the car growled past me in the fast lane on the I-5. I rolled my eyes and tried to pretend I wasn’t angered as the ugly message got smaller and smaller until it finally disappeared from my vision.
The date was Sunday, September 16, 2001 and like many other people around the world, I was still trying to find my balance in the “new normal.” Already, critical thinking had been swept away and replaced by jingoism and a caustic patriotic fervor. Two days earlier, I’d watched with great skepticism as our then-president stood bow-legged atop a pile of rubble, a bullhorn in one hand and the shoulder of an exhausted firefighter in the other. It was a photo-op made in publicist heaven.
We’ll smoke ‘em outta their holes, he said. You’re either with us or with the terrorists, he said. By September 20th, the man widely perceived as a spoiled dolt on September 10th was suddenly enjoying a historical 90% approval rating. America had had an abrupt and virulent case of amnesia. I had hoped we were smarter than that. But we weren’t and we’re not.
Nine years later, the un-thinking zombie-people among us not only have the bullhorn, but with it—and the complicity of Republicans and the still-spineless Democratic leadership as well—they’re framing the debate. As usual. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Those of us who cling to reason until our nails peel back and point to the First Amendment until our joints lock, can see the truth through the agenda-driven spin. But it’s pretty dang tough to fight the hysteria ginned up over the Mosque at Ground Zero Islamic Cultural Center, when leaders like Howard Dean and Harry Reid retaliate with a hem and a haw. Their let’s-try-and-find-a-compromise legitimization of right-wing idealoguery is about as effective as if they showed up to a duel, whipped out their guns and fired off little yellow banners reading “POW!”
Meanwhile, to the cacophony of Christian imperialists screeching about hallowed ground and the Islamization of America, a privileged college kid the media insists on absolving as “drunken,” went all West Side Story with his pocket-knife on the face of a Manhattan cabbie. Ahmed Sharif answered “yes” when the fare asked whether he was a Muslim. That was Sharif’s second mistake. His first was going to his job of 15-years that morning, only to be violently attacked by someone who didn’t like his way of life.
Hmmm—that’s eerily familiar. It’s reminiscent of something—. What could it be? Oh! I know! It’s like the 3,000 people—Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Atheists, Scientologists, Hedonists, Nudists, Humanists, Wiccans, members of Iglesia Maradoniana and probably a Satan Worshipper or two—who showed up to work at One World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001.
It cannot be understated that all who died that day deserve to be equally commemorated.
And speaking of commemorating them, Pastor Terry Jones of Gainesville, Florida, is having a bonfire on September 11th to do just that. The International Burn a Koran Day event will be held at Jones’s church, the ironically named Dove World Outreach Center. I often think of book burning and peace doves and world outreach in the same meditation, don’t you?
According to Jones’s website, his 50-member church is “a New Testament, Charismatic, Non-Denominational Church that believes in the whole Bible and that we are to act in response to the word of God in order to change the times we are living in. Those times have gotten further and futher [their typo, not mine] away from God; full of deception like abortion and same sex marriages.” I really like the charismatic part.
Pastor Terry is as egomaniacal and presumptuous (i.e. cray-zay!) as the next extremist and claims to know the difference between the word of God and the dirty lies of Allah. Even though he told New York Times reporter Damien Cave that, when it comes to his familiarity with the Koran, “I have no experience with it whatsoever. I only know what the Bible says.”
I personally prefer to read a book before I burn it. But I like broad horizons, while Pastor Terry? Well. His worldview is smaller than his penis.
Normally, a dude with God’s ear and a flaccid member bigger than his global awareness is largely discounted by the masses as a street corner proselytizing whack job with little impact on so much as whether a dung beetle rolls or buries its “food.” And, too, it’s not like he’s the first White Christian to exhibit nincompoopy aggression toward Muslims; Florida, specifically, has seen a recent uptick in acts of domestic terrorism aimed at Muslims.
But as Cave pointed out, Pastor Terry’s bonfire has earned him denouncements from a number of Islamic leaders around the world; one English Islamic group is urging its members to “rise up and act.” Not surprisingly, Terry is deaf to the possibility that his actions are dangerously inflammatory and in fact feels he’s the one being persecuted. Not the brightest bulb in the Evangelical shed, that one.
Personally, if I were a book burner, I would call for the event to be inclusive. Something more along the lines of International Burn a Bible, A Book of Mormon, a Torah, Dianetics and The Entire Twilight Series Day. It’s all just a bunch of hooey that leads certain gullibles to do very ugly things in the name of their God, which is always the Only God.
Flag waving or not, an extremist is an extremist is an extremist.
(As published today in San Diego CityBeat.)