I have a confession to make, Internet. No, it’s not that The Daver is secretly a 12 year old, because hi, he’s a whole whopping 2 years OLDER than me (old balls)(loose skin) and it’s not that my 5 year plan consists only of one phrase: don’t die. It’s not even that I actually appreciate how much shit I can shove into my mini-van.
It’s this: Back to School Night makes me feel like a fraud.
Every time I have to deal with something related to Ben’s schooling, I feel like at any moment, an unmarked Child-Napping van will pull up and a bunch of guys in polyester suits will spring out and drag me into the van. Then, the soccer moms will all emerge from their coordinated hiding places around the playground, wielding pitchforks and torches; their pony tails mussed and their jeans hiked up to their nipples.
“FRAUD,” they’ll scream at me, gnashing their perfectly whitened teeth. “You’re no MOTHER! GET AWAY FROM OUR KIDS.”
Well, Internet, I guess I might have a bit of an imagination. And maybe a complex or thirty-seven.
(shut UP)
It’s funny, I guess, in one of those not funny kinds of ways, because I have no such issues with the smaller kids, but when Ben reached school age, I just feel like I don’t belong. Most of the parents are older than me by 10-15 years and I’ve frequently been snubbed by them (and no, to answer your question, my nipples were NOT hanging out at the time. And both of my ass cheeks were firmly INSIDE my pants, thank you very much).
It’s obvious that I need to get the hell over myself immediately if not sooner, because, this shit is just ridiculous. I need to make some friends that have kids, get involved and move the hell on to be neurotic about my socks or something.
Believe it or not, the one thing I am NOT neurotic about is my socks.
There’s just something so very…ADULT-like about going in and registering your child for real school. When Ben went to the hippie Nut Ban! school, it was different, because no matter what grade he was in, it always felt like preschool. But shit, man, *I* remember being in 3rd grade pretty vividly.
THAT was the year my mother scarred me for life. And shockingly not by walking around the house naked as a jay-bird, although that would have been pretty terrifying too. No, see, she gave me BANGS that year. Bangs that would certainly have kicked YOUR bangs’ ass. They started approximately at the crown of my head, or maybe it was the back of my neck, I don’t know, but they went all the way to my eyebrows in one straight line.
I’m pretty sure she hated me at that point in her life. Because, obviously.
Long. Straight. Bangs.
When I saw that bangs were making a comeback, a part of me died a little inside. That same part died when I saw stirrup pants AND oversized shirts make their reappearance for the second time in my life, because shit, you know that splatter paint technicolor shirts are coming back too.
I always thought that the eighties was kind of the time when designers threw their hands in the air and then migrated to Siberia for a decade and a half. But, according to H & M, I am sorely mistaken. It was like my childhood vomited itself all over the store, down to the gaudy plastic earrings and plastic pearls and I half expected NKOTB to be blaring from the speakers.
But no, it was some other God-awful screetchy music and I kind of wished for half a second that I was deaf so I couldn’t hear it any longer. Then, when I realized that wishing I was DEAF was stupid, I sort of prayed for a meteor to fall on me.
THEN I realized that I was an old fart and that I’d effectively turned into my mother.
I went home immediately so that I could lay down on the couch dramatically and after I rested my hip (my arthritis was acting up) and changed my Depends, I went outside where there was all kinds of ruckus and commotion disturbing my afternoon Matlock session. I shook my fist at the damn fool kids on my lawn and wished feverishly that I had a cane with which I could beat them silly.
It was only after one of them addressed me as “Mom” that I realized that those kids on the lawn were my kids.
Shit, man. Shit.








August 13th, 2009 → 8:48 am
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August 24th, 2009 → 10:37 am
[...] Wants Vodka – Does This Mini-Van Make My Ass Look Big? – Every time I have to deal with something related to Ben’s schooling, I feel like at any [...]