Tag: Children

I can find out no rhyme to ‘lady’ but ‘baby’

I have a question for all of you beautiful people:

Do any of you nutters have kids?

Full disclosure: I am not with child.

I’m just curious that’s all. You see, there is a kid, currently located just outside of my kitchen window, who has been crying and screaming its absolute head off for say, the past fifteen, twenty minutes.

And this is not a baby, we’re talking about here. We are talking a legitimate, walking, talking human being – one who is weeping for all of Canada. He probably has a full set of teeth, takes trips to the loo solo, and can choose his outfits in the morning.

Having listened to him wail on and on for the last little bit, I just want to lean out of my window and holler, “WHAT’S THE PROBLEM KID? THERE’S NO CRYING IN BASEBALL! THERE. IS. NO. CRYING. IN. BASEBALL!!!11!!

AND GET OFF MY LAWN.

You whipper-snappers!

…

I mean, that’s pretty horrible of me, is it not?

I know.

I am definitely the worst.

And it is reactions of mine – like this one just described – that make me fear for the day (should I be blessed in the properly functioning uterine department) that I become a mother.

I just can’t imagine that scenario working out all too well.

For one, I have zero maternal instinct.

No, minus zero.

I have never, ever, had that “twinge” – when, after having glimpsed some beautiful scene where a glowing mother cuddles here gorgeous offspring – something inside of me says “I want that.”

To be honest, most of the time everything inside my entire being begins screaming, “DO NOT WANT. COMMENCE THROWING UTERUS IN GARBAGE DISPOSAL.”

I mean, sure, there are moments where I concede that it wouldn’t be so bad. In fact, the people I know and love who have kids make it look downright phenomenal. There are tons of great children out there, and seeing how many of the cool cats in my life love their kids is darn cool.

Plus I keep telling myself that I probably wouldn’t feel the same way about my child as I do about many of the random children I come into contact with – that being mostly terror, confusion, and incredulity.

Deep down I know I would definitely love the crap out of them.

But I still worry.

I worry for a number of reasons (above and beyond the fact that I seem to have pawned off my biological clock sometime in the early 90s for two Kitkat bars, some sour keys, and a copy of Kirby’s Dreamland for my Gameboy.)

The first and mayhaps the biggest?

I just don’t get babies.

I made it through about 4 minutes of this movie before turning it off:

Like seriously, people go absolutely bat shit CRAZY over babies. Not only that, but they go bonkers over baby paraphernalia.

WHAT THE HECK PEOPLE?

It makes me think that babies have some magical power to get you stoned. (Just think about it -marijuana gets you high, and potheads LOVE them some weed leaf stickers, Bob Marley posters, and giant decorative bongs – so I’ve come to the conclusion that it must be the same for those crazed baby-lovers.)

And if it isn’t for their ability to get you high, how else could people possibly care about a tiny pair of socks or a facecloth with a frog on it?

WHAT DO YOU PEOPLE KNOW THAT I DON’T?

And in terms of the baby itself – I too need this explained. Babies are small, foreign, angry old men or women, hell bent on breaking your ear drums, defecating mustard gas, and peeing all over every square inch of your life.

This is terrifying!

Seriously, their catchphrase could be – “BABIES: POOP GRENADES ONLY NOW WITH MORE POOP.”

And yet people think they are the bees knees.

And don’t tell me it’s because of their new baby smell.

I’ve smelled me some babies in my life and I know for a FACT that it’s not all cake and roses.

I worry that I’ll have a baby, and the baby will all be “I’m a baby SCREAM POOP PEE EAT SLEEP HAHAHAH JUST JOKING I’M NEVER GOING TO SLEEP SCREEEEAAAAAMMMMMM” to which I’ll just be like, “You, sir, are an arsehole, BUH BYE.”

I worry that I’ll have the baby, and the baby will all be, “BABY” and I’ll be like, “That’s all you got? Where the frick is the rest!? I JUST SPENT NINE MONTHS MAKING YOU – ENTERTAIN ME SPAWN!!!”

I worry that I will be the worst mother ever.

The first baby I ever held. I was sweating like crazy I was so nervous.

So what I guess I’m saying is that I worry.

I worry that I’ll give my kid the eating disorder that I struggled with for years; that I’ll give them the anxiety that I deal with on a daily basis; that I’ll make them think they need make-up to be beautiful because I too like to wear make-up; that I’ll drop them on their head the second I get home.

I worry about the unknown – what about my job? What about my relationship?

What about my body?

I worry about worrying about my body.

But throughout it all, I have one ace in the hole that makes all of these questions seem not quite so daunting.

That one person who makes me worry just a little less.

And that, of course, is Mr. M.

My freaking knight in shining armour.

Because somehow (and I have no idea how) he doesn’t have any of these doubts. He just knows. He has confidence in not only himself, but in me, and it is through him that I have started to believe, little by little, that one day, if this happens, it will be just grand.

And while I’m not necessarily at the same level of belief that he cooly-as-a-cucumber maintains, I have the belief that I will get there, eventually.

Because when I see him with children? That’s when I feel something flicker.

I imagine him and I giving piggybacks, and leaping through sprinklers; teaching small, wild haired munchkins about tidal pools and earthworms, making mud pies, and reading storybooks by flashlight.

And it gives me pause.

But who knows – maybe one day all of what I currently feel about myself, and my relationship with my yet-to-be-born babies will change. I will wake up, flick on the internet and order the newest poo grenade and pay extra for the express shipping.

But until that day, my questions remain.

As does my love.

Unlike, thank goodness, the echoes of the crying child, outside of my window.

Which means that he too, is happy.

Smoking, or non?

I did a lot of crazy stuff as a kid.

(This probably shouldn’t come as a surprise to any of you.)

In grade two, Ms. Nolan (full disclosure: I LOVED HER) asked us to bring in props for our “class store.” We were going to learn how to add and subtract integers through the purchase of goods on sale in our shop.

The student buying the products would have to add up the price of their groceries, while the cashier would have to calculate the correct change owed.

As a class, we were darned excited about this math unit.

Now, other kids brought in cereal boxes, soup cans (that had been – responsibly – cleaned and dried), kraft dinner packages, and egg cartons.

And what, you may be asking yourselves, did young Ethel bring to the project?

A jumbo box of Eggo waffles and an (empty, thank goodness) twelve-pack of Labatt Blue.

That’s class with a K right there folks.

For all you non-Canucks out there, LB is a kind of beer. And a pretty bad beer at that. (Actually, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t even exist anymore.)

Ms. Nolan must have been pretty flabbergasted, especially because our grade four buddies had come down to help us set up shop (literally) and bunch of them were play-acting drunk, slurring their words and taking pretend swigs from the bottles.

Needless to say, most of my props went home with me that day.

Though the Eggos stayed.

Flash-forward to grade five. We had a student teacher named Michael, who was wonderful and completely lovely.

He was patient and soft-spoken, was always excited and dressed really well.

(In my memory he’s about fifty-nine, but in reality the guy couldn’t have been older than twenty-six.)

And as a class, we used to make him sweat like long-tailed cat in a room filled with rocking chairs.

And I, I was a chief culprit of this stress (though not of my own volition or intention.)

Like I said, I just did weird stuff!

Case in point:

One of the assignments he got us involved with was a cross-Canada anti-smoking campaign, which was also a competition to see who, out of all the elementary students across the country, could create the best anti-smoking poster and catch phrase.

In order to participate, you had to finish the sentence: “If you smoke – …”

I’ll never forget the winner from the previous year, because my ten year old self thought it was absolutely freaking brilliant, and the poster looked like it had been drawn by a professional artist.

The winning poster read:

If you smoke, you’ll be hooked!

The accompanying picture was that of a really sad killer whale being fish-hooked by an evil (and obviously soulless) smoking henchman.

Aha, I thought to myself. This was what we had to live up to!

So what did I pull together you might ask? Did all my hard work ensure my victory?

Well, I’ll let you decide for yourself.

My slogan was: If you smoke, you’re just a butt!

Genius, right?

I mean, who would want to do anything that reminded them of bums? No one, that’s who!

My poster, while a little avant-garde, was sure to wow the judges.

This is (a recreation of) what I drew:

That’s a border of cigarette butts by the way.

Needless to say, I think Michael may have had a heart attack when he saw this.

He kindly let me know that there was no way, not for all the tea in China, that he was letting me send in a poster that depicted a bare ass smoking a cigarette.

I fought back hard.

Couldn’t he see how much effort I had put into it? Yes he could, he told me. Couldn’t he see where I was coming from? Yes he could, he told me. Didn’t he like my border of cigarette butts? Yes he did, he told me. Didn’t he think that the thought of putting your mouth on a bum would make kids not want to ever smoke a single cigarette in their entire life? Yes he did, he told me.

At this point I remember his face getting really red – not from anger I’m sure – but more from the fact that if he didn’t laugh soon, his entire head would explode.

In the end, I received an A on the project and I got to keep my slogan, but I had to go home that night and make a new poster.

So this was the one I sent into the competition:

(The stars are the cigarette butts – I was too lazy to draw them out again.)

Needless to say, I didn’t win.

But hey, it wasn’t a total wash. In fact, looking on the bright side, I don’t smoke, and if I ever hear someone say that a person has a “smoking ass” – well – only I know the real truth of the matter.

But like I said, crazy stuff guys.

CRAZY STUFF.