Anne Nahm

STEP 1: Overhear husband talking on the phone. Listen to him gleefully accepting offer to sleep on his sister’s couch – 900 miles away. For four days. Two days from now. Scream-mime WHAT??!! to husband with hugely exaggerated facial and body contortions in silent, agonized tribute to Marcel Marceau.

STEP 2: Watch husband hang up the phone and walk over to your contorted body, lying on the floor. Witness husband make the appropriate “what gives, Crazy Lady?” facial gestures you know so well.

STEP 3: Watch with horror/satisfaction as it dawns on him that you are a family of four and the couch sleeps one.

STEP 4, Location: BREAKFAST: Start Parent Propaganda Machine with children, re: Glories of something called a Sleeping Bag! Whee! Let’s go out and buy some today! We are all going to have so! Much! Fun! Like camping. In someone’s living room. On the hardwood floors. Yay!

STEP 5: Buy own rhetoric. Remember your old “My Little Pony” cotton sleeping bag circa 1982; loved until it became one big, fuzzy, pill-ridden blanket of nastiness. Take a moment to moon over Cabbage Patch doll or recollect getting high off the fumes from Strawberry Shortcake’s head. While you are doing this, baby will complete STEP 6 in her morning routine: Dump Cheerios and milk into diaper. Squeal. Scream ‘cold’ repeatedly while laughing. Watch out – she seems to be ahead of you this morning.

STEP 6: Decide that your children must. have. sleeping. bags. Despite all evidence to the contrary? A trip involving sleeping on someone’s living room floor will be AWESOME! Like camping! But with more Indoors Awesomeness and less s’more!. Screw s’mores!

STEP 7: Fueled by Strawberry scented nostalgia flashbacks, go to Target. Right before lunch. Forget to change baby’s diaper before you leave.

STEP 8, Location: TARGET: Heft $120 worth of impulse buys into your cart as you wander towards the camping section. Your two girls cannot live without “I love my Mummy!” orange glow-in-the-dark t-shirts from the boy’s section. Whee! Shopping is fun!

STEP 9: Pause to wonder why the world is so unjust that only little boys get funny t-shirt sections at Target. Forget last hundred times you bought from the boys section and girl children intuited this knowledge and refused to wear boy clothes.

STEP 10: Hear your adorable baby say, “wanna walk!”. Decide this is a good idea. Baby is talking! Must encourage by agreeing to request! Impulse clothes go in the shopping cart, baby comes out. Whee!

STEP 11: Promptly lose baby under rack of clothes. Demands for children to return to cart are met with eerie giggling from clothing racks. Cajole children out with bad mommy style combo of threats and bribery.

STEP 12: Arrive at camping goods section with two children in cart, eating popcorn. Discover there are no sleeping bags. None. Camping season is OVER.

STEP 13: Realize you have to pee pretty bad. Screw that. You are not leaving your cart of impulse buys and dragging two children to the Target bathroom. It is too gross. You will just stretch bladder to a new level of pee capacity. This pain will make you a better mother.

STEP 14: Break the news of no sleeping bags to children, followed by “lets go home and get some lunch.” Oldest child tells you it is her lifelong dream to own a sleeping bag, but she loves you, and will sleep on cold hardwood floor if that is what ends up happening.

STEP 15: Hex My Little Ponies specifically and The Corporate Brainwashing Machine in general. Cry little tears for realization that there may not, in fact, be sleeping bags with little horsies on them anymore. Grit teeth with understanding of what must be done.

STEP 16: KMART! Pull into parking lot. Hear baby’s diaper actually explode. Guess you should have taken care of that back around STEP 7. Fwoops. Don’t forget to pick up World’s Best Mommy shirt for yourself while you are here.

STEP 17: Tell kids to “get in the cart, hold on tight, and don’t say a word!” Hurdle through the very fabric of time at Top Speed of Mom through store to camping section. At this speed? Still leave Kmart 45 minutes later with $60 worth of extraneous crap, one ugly Pink Colman sleeping bag, one happy child hugging said bag, and one child screaming, “Wanna walk! Wanna walk!”

STEP 18: Drive home. Turn radio up really loudly so you cannot hear kids. Swear if you did not have to pee so damn bad you would drive directly to planned parenthood and get your tubes tied.

STEP 19, Location, HOME: Realize you came home with only one sleeping bag and you have two kids. Who are now fighting to the death over ownership.

STEP 20: Watch husband laugh and fall to floor in mock scream-mime NOOOOOOO!!!. Forgot it was one couch and 4 people, Anne?

STEP 21: Resist kicking husband in balls. Keep resisting until urge passes. Enjoy imagining him doing own Marcel Marceau: Man with testicle lodged suddenly in his pelvis.

This is the type of post in which the actual content of what I want to tell you is more on the fuzzy side, while the main priority is more pushing recent posts further into the karmic past.

I’ve been waiting all week for the other shoe to drop in this matter: My husband will come in and tell me I really am an idiot and he doesn’t love me anymore (or better yet, just surprise me with an internet post on the matter – as a bookend to the marital status update I did for him last post).

While I’m sobbing my heart out, a crazed goat will appear out of nowhere and bite off a couple of my kids’ fingers (really grinding them up for good karmic measure). As I’m trying to staunch the bleeding, I will bend over and someone will say, “FRED? Your name is FRED? You’re the orgy town master?” And when I turn around, it will be my pastor asking the question.

I’m pretty sure that scenario will end with me sucking in my gut as a last ditch measure at still trying to look better than I am and my FRED-belted jeans will fall down around my ankles.

***

The lovely Sam mentioned in comments she didn’t know that my mother was crazy. This inspired me to go over to my parents’ house to document some of their decorating peccadilloes. However, permission to photograph was met with having to have these two conversations about infinity times:

MOM: I completely understand your need to do this. Children all want to kill their parents. Symbolically! It’s good for you.
ME: I don’t want to kill you mom. I just want to make fun of you on the internet.
MOM: It’s OK! I understand! This is the way children become adults! Destroying the older generation!
ME: Ugh. Stop it. If you don’t want me to take pictures of your stuff, just say so.
MOM: I do! I think it’s good you are taking this step into adulthood!
ME: I’m 32. I have a camera.
MOM: Make fun of us! Tear us down in any way you need to! I want you to!
ME: Ok, now I’m going to really have to kill you.
MOM: I know.

And later,

MOM: You know, if you are having so much fun making fun of me on the internet, I really should charge you money or something for the pictures.
ME: If you don’t stop with this, I will decide to call you the ‘freaky neighbor lady’ and use your real name. In fact, I should charge you money just to keep your name out of it.

So in answer to your comment, Sam? Clearly, my mom is not even slightly touched in the head. Perfectly normal. Although she does have this puppet encased in Lucite. She thinks it is the artistic interpretation of how, when a person gets free of their demons, they are no longer the puppet of past trauma. They can get off their puppet strings and become real people and operate in the world by their own will.

She doesn’t know why it gave all her kids nightmares growing up. It’s a puppet!

I know why. Dude. Its got blood on its hand. That thing gets out at night and kills alley cats or something.

My parents also didn’t know why all my high school girlfriends would laugh at this frog (who has my dad’s name printed on his collar for extra gross laughs, because I wouldn’t have become the person I am today if I hadn’t heard this a thousand times growing up: Hey Anne! I see your dad’s golfballs!):

And finally, more of FRED’s stuff, kept even though my parents don’t drink:

My husband is thinking about having one made for their collection. It will say, “Mattel Toy from China.”

Husband,

Our seventh wedding anniversary was this month. Three weeks ago, I was mad at you.

I had done something kind of stupid. You laughed when you found out about it.

After all these years of you seeing me do and say and think stupid things, I was still embarrassed that you would catch me looking foolish. And laughing! I yelled at you, “you must think I’m an idiot!”

You stopped and looked at me for a moment. Then you said, “of all the things that I keep in my head about you, Anne. Of all the things I know about you. Not one of those things is bad.”

I will never forget what you said to me. You love me with more grace than I know how to love myself.

There are no words for that.

But still? Thank you.

I must confess that I’ve been wearing a belt my mom gave me with FRED embossed into it. Being pretty uncool fashion-wise, I had thought that FRED was probably some famous belt designer and eventually I could get around to selling my FRED belt on Ebay after I was done using it to hold up my pants. Until last week, when my mom told me that, no. FRED is actually the name of the previous owner of my belt.

Yep. I have been wearing the belt of a man who thought he needed to brand his own name into stuff he wore. I’m thinking he must have been a big orgy guy, and at the end of the night, he just got sick of sorting through the pile of cast-off, unmarked clothing. And PS? That is also the lesser known reason Superman had the ‘S’ on his cape.

This weekend, our family went to a great neighborhood farm/petting zoo/ vegetable market. This place sells fresh baked pies, lets you pick berries and apples off their trees, and gives out bags of ‘ugly’* produce so people can feed the baby goats, ducks, chickens, cows, peacocks, and sheep that are fenced in around the property. Around the miniature ponies, there are several signs that say, “don’t feed, ponies bite” and “I’m on a special diet, please don’t feed me or my tummy will hurt”, and so we say hi to those ponies, but we follow the rules and we don’t feed them.

My husband and I like to sit at a picnic bench under a shady tree and watch from a distance of about fifteen feet while our children feed the animals. I am telling you all this in specific detail because while the majority of people don’t bat an eye, there is always one parent there who holds truck with what we do.

I see this adult from my short distance. It can be a man who does this, but this past weekend, it was a woman, so I will use the general ‘she’. Anyway, this parent will see my small daughter hold out a lettuce leaf while a goat nibbles it from her fingers. She will watch out of the corner of her eye as my daughter pets the goat on the head. This observation period may go on for a few moments or several minutes.

Then, I will see the mom scan the area, looking for me. Why isn’t there a parent standing right here? Her concerned face says. Has someone abandoned this baby at the petting zoo? Because there is no one right! here! When her silent question goes unanswered, she will start cautioning her own child (in this case a boy around the age of 5). “Careful…. Careful… Careful! Keep your fingers out of the way!”

She will say these things to her own child. But she will be looking at mine.

At this point, I will see that the concerned mom’s child is holding an 8 inch corn husk at the very far end with two tightly pinched fingers and is making jabbing motions at the goats. He jabs again and takes a step back. He is now standing a foot away from the fence and eying the goats nervously. My daughter pets the animal on its ear. The goat nods its head.

That cracks it. I see what this anxious mother is going to do and I pop up out of my seat and start jogging over. She grabs my daughter’s hand away from the goat’s head and starts to pick my child up. And as she does I am there to take my child out of her tension laden arms. The woman admonishes my child, but it is quite clear she is directing her words at me when she says, “Don’t want to get those fingers bitten off!”.

I scowl at the woman. The woman scowls at me. We both huff off. She thinks I am a bad parent, or at least a very lazy parent, and she has done some civic duty to prevent my daughter from being known hereafter as ‘Little Stubby Four Fingers’. I am outraged that this strange woman is messing up what I have been working so hard to teach my child.**

I am teaching my young girl how not to needlessly fear the world around her. I strongly believe she does not need to fear baby goats.

Learned helplessness is a psychological theory that has been studied ad nauseum using different types of animal and human experiments in varied types of situations. It boils down to this - if a creature is put in a situation, they attempt to control it. If they learn they have no control, they stop attempting to control the situation. They can learn this lesson so well that even if they later have the opportunity to take control, they are unable or unwilling to try.

To illustrate: Mice that are dumped in water where there is no place to rest can survive for up to twenty minutes swimming on their own. Mice that have their limbs held until they stop struggling and are then dumped in the same situation? They drown almost immediately.

Other studies show animals that cannot escape electric shocks in one scenario will not attempt to escape electrical shocks in another, even though the second situation provides them with the ability to escape.

The woman at the barn was teaching my child a form of learned helplessness, in my opinion. Was she shocking her or drowning her? Of course not. However, she was a stranger who grabbed my child, restrained her momentarily, and gave her a horrifying suggestion (having her finger bitten off). The lesson was clearly that exploring the world deserves strong negative social reprimand from an adult.

As a parent, I am well aware animals may bite. Probably there are some really gruesome horror stories of children at petting zoos having their whole finger amputated, the wound becoming infected with some horrible goat disease, and the child dying a painful death. Those are the obscure but presumably factual facts of life. I realize that I am putting my child’s life at risk by letting her feed the baby goats.

It is a bigger risk to raise my child with the specter of “The Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen Might Realistically Happen if You Explore the World!!” hanging over her shoulder. It seems to me that was exactly the type of bullshit the concerned parent was (probably with the best of conscious intentions) trying to teach my child. How is that lesson in any way more valuable to a kid’s overall understanding of the universe than the one she had been previously learning: Goats are soft and like to eat lettuce. They may nip your finger and that will hurt. You can have a peaceful existence and understand the consequence of your actions without growing up fearing The Goat That Might Eat Your Finger! Aghhh!

It seems logical in my own head, but I know from the way other adults look at me, I must be in some sort of parenting minority. These parents get angry with my lack of hovering, fearful parental supervision. They seem increasingly aggravated when they point out my apparent lapse, I will not also feign to agree with them – I refuse to duck my head and whisper apologies*** like, “ooh, was my baby touching the animals? Thank you for grabbing her fingers away! I must have had my head momentarily up my ass – so glad you were here.”

Instead, I am the worst type of mother – the one who will allow her children to get hurt. I might even see that they will get hurt and do nothing to stop it.

Today, as I was mulling this over at the park, my four year old fell from the height of two feet from a climbing net. She did get the wind knocked out of her. A mom standing right next to her own son (and holding him by the belt loop of his pants while he climbed up the same rope netting) rushed over to tell me, “Your daughter fell. And she’s crying!” In a tone of alarm (fine by me if that lady’s worried – she doesn’t know my kid. And also, I’m not a monster – if my kid’s crying, I’d like to comfort her and check out her ouchies and all) and also vague smugness (more than a little irritating that my kid’s crying brings out that emotion in her too). It made me wonder why, if she was so concerned for my kid’s well-being, she had left my daughter crying in the sand while she strolled over to let me know what was going on.

So why am I the one who feels like I have to defend my parenting?

* Bruised or wilted and not for selling to the humans, but otherwise perfectly ok.

** For full disclaimer in the event that you are hitting Child Protective Services on your speed dial: I did not just throw my kid unattended into the goat den of evil. Over the course of about a dozen visits, we stood by her side, explained the nature of animals, how to feed them, and basic anatomy. My daughter went through a period of being nervous around the animals once we told her they might bite. I let some of the animals bite my fingers to show her that while it might hurt or be surpising, it is just part and parcel of being animals. Additionally, I don’t let my kid feed the biting ponies and I monitor her closely when she feeds the cow – which I allow her to do if she is feeding the cow something sturdy like celery and can keep her fingers on one side of the fence while the cow can get nothing more than a tongue through.

*** Although there was certainly a time I felt the need to apologize. At first I believed I was wrong, and then later, I believed it was my job to keep up appearances. Now I just think it’s really irritating.