Filed under: Generalizations | Tags: children, culture, funny, humor, kids, life, lifestyle, parenting
You know what bugs me? Ok, ok a lot of things bug me, but you know what really drives me batshit? Questions. Not questions like “What are you going to make for dinner?” or “Do you want to watch The Shining or Halloween?” but questions that just aren’t anyone’s damned business. For the first six years of our relationship, Mike and I dreaded going to weddings. Short of the booze and bad music, you just knew some distant family member was going to corner you and go “So, when are you two going to tie the knot?” *wink wink* and you’d have to smile and think of some lame excuse like “Oh, it’s not really a priority to us right now”, when what you’re truly thinking are things like “Get lost old bag” or “Who is this person talking to me?”
Well, it gets worse after you get married. People assume that now you’re married you’re just dying to procreate. As if you’ve really been waiting seven years until marriage, because a child out-of-wedlock is a sin…and other bullcrap.
They also assume you want lots and lots and lots of little you’s running around, screaming, eating candy and taking turns crying and pooping. Now, please don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike kids. But to be fair, I don’t like very many kids either. So this whole “kids” thing? Yeah, I’m thinking about it. It seems kind of cool. I’d like my life to have more meaning then the things we want to do, and well, to be honest, kids have cool toys.
So you answer something like, “Yeah, maybe in a few years we’ll have a baby. Just one though”. Well, that starts off this whole new thing. The family member (whose name you can’t remember and relation you’re skeptical of) starts in on the whole “Just one? Oh, wow. If it were me I would have just had oodles of little babies. I just love their little cheeks and the way they smell”.
Look, I’m thinking about it ok? I don’t really want to commit to a whole slew of kids. That’s like saying “You know, you may as well give me all the BMW’s in the lot, since I like luxury vehicles a whole bunch”. I’m ok with just the one. You know? See how it works out and stuff. Then maybe… maybe I’ll have another one.
Besides, babies are like these perfect, clean little people. They’re canvasses for parents to fill with colours and paint in little personalities. And guaranteed us adults are gonna fuck them up. So I wonder to myself, how many little people do I want to screw up? Cause I’m gonna. So if I only screw up one person, does that mean I’ve mitigated the damages?
I don’t know, this is a lot of pressure.
Is there anywhere I can rent a kid for a bit and see how I do?
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 1990, childhood, children, culture, funny, kids, life, love, nostalgia, nostalgic
I grew up, all the way, in the 1990’s. 1991 I was starting my first day of Grade One, and in 1999 I was entering my last year of Junior High School. More often then not, I feel bad for the kids we’ve got nowadays. Their cartoons are mostly animated with CG (“computer graphics” unless that term isn’t being used anymore and they’re just calling it “animation” now), and well, the rap is full of bitches and ho’s.
So with my 26th birthday looming only eight short weeks away, I’m sorta missing the good old days, and the good old 1990’s. Below are things I miss about the 90’s:
Fluorescent Clothing – It was cool and blinding all at once. Seriously, I had this windbreaker that looked as if it were designed by a schizophrenic with a passion for brightness. The only bonus of that was your parents didn’t make you wear those light-reflective strips when you rode your bike at night. There was no need…you are your own source of light.
Screamer is gonna kick some ass
Ghostbuster Toys from McDonald’s – Have you seen the crap they throw in Happy Meals nowadays? Let’s not fool ourselves, creativity and imagination is not exactly something we’ve instilled (on a regular basis to those good parents out there) in our children. So I’m a little shocked at the piece of crap toys that kids are (kind of) playing with. Now we got Ghostbuster shit, and da’shit it was! There was the horn thing you strapped to your handlebars, and rode around the neighbourhood at like 7 am while it screams WEE-YOOOOO WEE-YOOOOOO WEE-YOOOOO” until the day your dad “accidentally” busted it in the garage with his hammer.
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air – With shit-family shows like Full House and Family Matters on TV (by the way, didn’t Family Matters have some younger sister who all of a sudden just disappeared? hmm), The Fresh Prince was the coolest of the cool family shows (which weren’t many). Will Smith was so good at being so bad. And the rappin’ was bitchin’. Seriously though, how did Uncle Phil not suffer a massive coronary?
The Macarena – I was ten when this song came out, and may I ask everyone of you reading my nostalgic remembrances, when was the last time you did the Macarena? Do it, love it, line dance your way back to the 90’s.
Nintendo 64 – You really didn’t need any skills to play the N’64. We got Mario, Mortal Kombat and all that good shit. I always kicked my brother’s ass. Why, you may ask? Well, back in the 1990’s button-mashing was a surefire way to Sub-Zero the shit out of people.
EAT YO CANDY!
ADD – Everyone had ADD. And when I say everyone, I mean any eight-year-old boy who ran around, screaming and acting, well, like an eight-year-old boy. So pretty much everyone was on Ritalin at that time, which I gotta say, didn’t seem to have any real effect on these kids. We had three boys from Grade 2 to Grade 7 who *had* ADD. It was interesting watching them pitch their fits once or twice a year and throw desks and bite people and shit. Yeah, I miss real ADD; not this ADHD shit we’ve got now.
Fruit Snacks – My God we have a lot of fruit snacks back in the 1990’s (which, thinking back on it, probably contributed the the influx of ADD kids). Bright colours and FUN FUN FUN winked at you and if you didn’t just have Soda Licious you would DIE from snack-mortification. Which in turn was used to buy the souls of your classmates. Those kids would do anything for fruit snacks….
There’s like 1,000 things I could compare with the way we do things today, but I think that’s enough for now. The 1990’s knew how to rock it, and nerd it out all at once. Maybe I’m just feeling nostalgic cause the new Super Mario Bros. for the WII is kicking my ass. Let the button mashing commence!
Filed under: Generalizations | Tags: adults, bullies, children, food, funny, humor, injury, kids, life, love, strength, zombies
Do you remember that kid from elementary that always happened to hurt other kids? He never meant to, all he wanted to do was play and to love them like children love the world. But he was cursed with a god-like strength he couldn’t control. All the kids were terrified of him, they’d call him a bully, even though he wasn’t.
Eating delicate food, like hamburgers was always a challenge for him. No matter how hard he tried, his brute strength would crush all the life, and toppings, out of his hamburger and it would end up a meaty, ketchupy mess running down his small hands flavoured slightly with his tears of frustration. All he wants to do is eat his hamburger!
Now imagine that little kid grew up, and I decided to marry him. In 2007, Mike ran his thumb through a table saw. Really, really gross with the pins and the bloods and the casts and stuff. Take my word for it. But during his long months of physiotherapy, he did learn one important thing about himself: his right hand control about 70lbs of gripping force.
The “Death Grip” was born that day (I picture this happening with gamma rays and ripped shorts).
Since then, the Death Grip has taken the lives of 1 plastic spoon, 1 wooden spoon, 1 measuring cup and countless ice cream cones (and I only just started keeping track this year). Any amount of delicacy is no match for Mike’s hands. They crush, they destroy, they break and all they want to do is eat a hamburger. My finger bones grind together when we hold hands, but that’s cool, I have a high pain tolerance. When he gave me massages, I wondered if he’d confused me with a lump of dough that required kneading.
Sometimes though, it’s hard not to picture that little boy with the mangled remnants of his hamburger falling in pieces all over his plate. And he cries, and cries, and cries, because all he wants is to love.
There is a bonus to this, no jar lid is a match for the Death Grip. I imagine it will also come in extremely handy during the inevitable zombie apocalypse. The Death Grip will pop their engorged, rotting heads right off their shoulders. See, there is a plan for everything.
Filed under: Generalizations | Tags: autumn, candy, children, costumes, fall, halloween, holidays, humour, life, lifestyle, parenting, parents, social, social behaviour
My pumpkins are better
But then, that was when I was a kid and living in Ontario. We would turn out the lights after 200 kids had depleted our stash and yet still the knocks would come. One year, my father (who has a deep opera-like voice and is irreversibly tone-deaf) recorded his own spooky tape. It worked… Kids were too frightened to come up to our house. Those were some of my favorite memories. Nobody did anything half-assed. If you only had one lame pumpkin, the kids and neighbours mocked you. My street was like The Avenue of the Dead.
And then I moved to Edmonton, where I consider it an excellent accomplishment to get over 30 kids at my door. Maybe it has to do with the size of the city, or with maybe the Mall only a few blocks away, but nobody trick-or-treats anymore. It makes me sad.
Halloween is a uniquely North American holiday, only falling behind Christmas when it comes to sales. So why have we let it go? Are we that big of wimps that walking around on a not-so-cold autumn night makes us reconsider? I can remember my mother making our costumes a few sizes too big, just so they fit over our snow suits.
All I’m asking is that we bring the true Halloween back. The one where youthful shouts fill the streets and all of the neighbours participate (except for that one jerk whose house always gets egged… you deserve it jerk).
Recall if you will your own Halloween memories. Isn’t it sad that a lot of our own children wont have memories like we did? Instead, they’ll have a memory of fluorescent lights and food courts.
LAME.
Filed under: Generalizations | Tags: babysitting, batman, children, culture, driving, fun, funny, halloween, humour, lawyers, sales
The call for Justice has been sent
Here’s a list things to do with a Batman mask:
1. Door to Door Sales. Who hasn’t slammed the door on a salesman before? Regardless of what they’re selling, the first human instinct is “Get them away from me as quickly as possible”. A Batman mask will distract your potential buyer long enough for you to give your sales pitch.
2. Visit your lawyer What stronger deterrent to a skeezbag of a lawyer than having the true face of Justice staring at them throughout your meeting? Your lawyer would be too unnerved to unfairly pad your bill.
3. Wedding Stand-In Best man bailed? Can’t find a Justice of the Peace? No problem, a little bit of Batman will easily solve that problem. Batman also doesn’t need to pass any tests to marry people, Justice is his middle name.
4. Babysitting Children are afraid of Santa Claus finding out their dirty deeds, imagine if Batman was watching them for the evening. No longer will your little Johnny terrorize the local teenage girls. With Batman around, he wouldn’t dare to pull that junk.
5. Driving During Rush Hour Even though he’s driving a Volvo, you know he’s got somewhere important to go. Even the police will stop to let Batman continue his journey to bring peace and stop crime with every illegal left-hand turn.
Filed under: Generalizations | Tags: children, community, cooking, domestic abuse, feminism
Ok, so I’ve had numerous cups of coffee and some diet Pepsi and lunch so now I actually feel like I can communicate in a manner which would allow you to understand my irrational rambling. I blame Mike’s insomnia for my own grogginess. Every few months he battles insomnia for about a week or two, and because misery loves company, I must stay awake and assist him with whatever he’s got going on at eleven o’clock at night.
Last night it was samosas. For anyone who remembers my post “Watch out Billy! Those are Cannibals!” then it’s not surprising that I LOVE curry. Like, a lot. So of course I was pretty stoked about these samosas.
Mike has discovered that I have a knack for folding pastry and making potato stuffed pastries. Apparently, only a few decades of feminism aren’t enough to purify ourselves of the many centuries (millennia, whatever) of catering to our men. Therefore, guess who got stuck stuffing the samosas? Yeah, the wife in an apron (my dress was white. Bite me).
Which got me to thinking about feminism in the first place. I understand that equal rights are great and everything. And being able to speak out against drunk husbands that beat us is a pretty awesome privilege, but sometimes I can’t help but feel a little nostalgic for the days where we women would spend their days making dinner and looking pretty.
So here we are shouting about the importance of equal rights, yet there are so many double standards surrounding us. First, women are expected to look a certain way all the time, regardless of how hard we might work. Impeccable hair is required, make-up nearly mandatory and clothes, oh man the clothes. The office is like a non-stop fashion show that manages to just (and only just) meet the dress-code requirements.
Not only are we expected to look a certain way, but again we’re further expected to raise fully functional children on sometimes as little as four hours a day. No wonder North America is populated by so many psychopaths when a stable home life is valued less than a dollar a day.
I guess this goes back to the post I wrote about community. Do we even have it anymore? Where do we get it back from? I think I know the answer: women. So although I appreciate having the right to vote, and make money, and divorce my abusive husband, and own property, and all that grandness, I can’t help but want to wear dresses and lipstick to nowhere fancy but the store.
Feminism, thank you for what you’ve done, but I think I’ll hold onto my bra for now and pray for a day that returns women to their families.
The Lifespan of a Fly 