Dreamboat Teacher

Primo’s first-grade teacher is a dreamboat and I have succumbed to full-fledged love for her. She did – and this is a fact – hang the moon. I want to give this woman a Staples gift card worth $100K. When she leads the class out for dismissal, I want to scream in adulation like teenyboppers did at Beatles concerts in the 1960s. After a rocky year in Kindergarten, she has laid the groundwork for Primo to have a fantastic first grade, and for this I am eternally grateful. She somehow manages to be warm and friendly and fun while demanding respect and lawfulness in the classroom She doesn’t abide no fools and she makes those kids work hard but she also showers them with compliments when they deliver, and then rewards them for their hard work. She celebrates the kids for who they are. And her hair is preternaturally bouncy. She is (sigh) just dreamy.

Of course all of these attributes would be meaningless to me if she didn’t understand how cool my kid is. But she does, she gets it. So parent-teacher conferences were great because it was essentially like me winning 15 minutes with my favorite rock star, to talk about my favorite subject ever. But in the middle of the conference, it almost all went terribly wrong.

The kids are writing stories about small moments in their lives, and Jennifer was reading some of the stories Primo’s been writing. If I was helping Primo brainstorm possible subjects, the list would include: “Going for a midnight dip on Ferragosto,” “Getting caught in a big rainstorm,” “Having a tea party with cousins.” Instead, for his first story, he chose to write about how Sec pretended she was going to fall off the balcony. I found this choice of subject matter strange for a number of reasons but mostly because it was a highly uneventful moment – Sec basically just sat on the balcony and said to him, “I’m going to say. ”Oh no! I’m going to fall off the balcony!” and you say “No! Don’t!” OK? OK?” Then I told them that was a lousy game and they should stop. But he told the story somewhat differently:

“One day Sec almst Fel! Off! The! Balkany!” it begins. His illustrations show me, eyebrows angled down like an arch-villain, shouting “NO!” and Primo yelling “STOP!” It is a very gripping story.

As Jennifer reads it aloud to us, I really want to explain that this isn’t what happened so she knows that I am not the sort of mom which would be too busy to notice her child almost falling off the balcony, but then I think that’ll sound like I’m protesting too much and anyway, she must know that the kids take poetic license with these “true” stories.

Then we move on to another story he has written about when he was little in Italy and fell in a piazza and scraped his face.

“One day I wos litl and I wos rning in the peaza and oh no! I fll! Dere was blod! Mamy gav me a banddad.”

Jennifer read this and David and I were smiling, so proud, so delighted. Then her voice halted suddenly and we looked at the words she was supposed to read next.

“Fac you Mamy!”

I gasped. David choked. Jennifer said, “Oh!” stuttering to recover, “oh, I don’t think that says what we think it says.”

And I say, “Because it looks like Fuck you Mommy!”

“Yeah, I don’t know what it is . . . “

Instantly, I am cursing myself for cursing so much at home, thinking that finally, my trucker mouth has rubbed off on that sweet child, imagining the days of detention ahead, when David exclaims:

“No! It’s supposed to be a “th”! He gets “Th” and “F” confused! It’s “Thank you Mommy!”

Huge communal sigh of relief. We all laugh. Then Jennifer jokes. “That’s a good thing, because between his sister almost falling off the balcony and Fuck You Mommy, I was starting to worry.”

Yeah, she’s funny, too. Sigh. For Christmas, I’m thinking about buying her a pony.

My daughter sounds just like me. This is not a good thing.

Her two favorite expressions are, “You’re driving me nuts!” and “That’s very annoying.” It is something she tells Primo frequently, which isn’t such a big deal because, hey, she’s right, he can be very annoying, and its infinitely better than her stabbing him in the cheek with a pencil, which is how she used to respond. But when she says it to other two year-olds on the playground -- as in “Stop singing that song! Its driving me crazy!” – well, its embarrassing

Its also embarrassing when I hear her playing with her Wizard of Oz action figures.

“Glenda, you are being SO NAUGHTY!!!” she has Dorothy shriek, “You need to have a TIME OUT and you can FORGET about having DESSERT!!!”

But neither of those is as bad as when she gets to cursing. Last week, she called a little blond-haired boy a son-of-a-bitch. I could have died. I guess she wanted to be on the ladder he was on and she started off by demanding, “Move out of the way!!!! I need to go here!!!” but soon it devolved into her screaming crazy shit in his face like, “You’re not in charge of me!!! You’re a bad fussy!!!! FUSSY FUSSY!! Get out or I will spit at you!!! Son of a BITCH!!!!!”

Of course, sometimes it’s very affirming when she sounds just like me, especially when she takes on the role of Primo’s cheerleader. Like yesterday, when he was sitting quietly drawing one of his mega-opuses and she walked over and put her hand on his back.

“Oh Primo,” she said, breathless, “It’s so AMAAAAAAZING!!!” And them clapping her hands in delight, “I am so proud of you!!!!”

So, I'm not such a bad mom after all.

Creepy Uncle Jerry

So David and I were in the car, driving to New Jersey this past weekend, and we were listening to an old Music Together CD from when Primo was a baby and we had money and time to sign up for fancy classes like that. It’s not what we normally groove to in the car but I unearthed it in a desperate move to break Seconda of her fixation with “Glad to Have a Friend like You.” I mean, I like that song and all, but it gets a little grating when you hear it on repeat play for two hours. Sometimes she concedes to shake things up a bit by listening to “Little Red Caboose” by Sweet Honey in the Rock, and again, while I think the song is great, I feel like Phantom of the Opera after I’ve heard it five times in a row.

So there we are listening to the opening tune of Music Together, entitled, “Hello everybody.” If you’re not familiar with the song, trust me when I say you’re not missing much. It goes, “Hello everybody, so glad to meet you.” And then the singers introduce themselves, like, “Hello, I’m Grandma Yvette, so glad to meet you.” There’s a male singer called “Uncle Jerry,” who David and I agree sounds like an unsavory character. He just really seems like the uncle you don’t want to invite to birthday parties, and his name doesn’t help. So Uncle Jerry sings in his weird sugary voice, “Hello, I’m Uncle Jerry, so glad to meet you.”

David says, “What a perv.”

To which I issue the rejoinder: “There are kids in the car! Shut the fuck up.”

Birthday and etc

Today is David's birthday and I've got some pressing matters to attend to, such as baking a cake from a box, acquiring his other presents (tradition calls for a bottle of beer and a BJ), and preparing my home for the arrival of my whole in-law family from Tennessee, and LA, so my point is, this post will be short and sweet.

A glimpse of last night:

7:45pm. When Primo complained that his sticky white rice was too "boring" (isn't that the whole point, you picky little sucker?) I added some soy sauce, and he said, his brow furrowed with worry: "I hope that's not beer!"

7:50pm: My daughter felt compelled to remind me: "Goddamnuit is not a nice word, Mommy." I need a swear jar.

8:30pm: After all the pains I've taken making the kids' bedroom into an outer space paradise, like something out of Cookie magazine, I asked Primo if he liked his room, and he said apologetically, " I like it, but not severely."

Happy birthday to my hunky and chronically under-appreciated hub.

Deep Thoughts

My children have made some very illuminating observations to me over the last day or two, and I thought I’d share them with you.

Primo:

“I used to think Stonehenge was in New Jersey but now I know it is in a place that snows a lot and people make a lot of snowmen.”

“6 + 6 is 11.”

“An archaeologist is a doctor who takes care of people’s hearts.”

Seconda:

“This rocking horse is fucking crazy.”

“When I grow up, I’m gonna go back in your belly.”

“When I’m grow up, I’m gonna chew gum.”

But Primo was quick to correct her, O, innocent, ignorant babe that she is:

“You can’t Seconda, because only daddies can chew gum.”

Sometimes I do wonder if these kids will make it through all right.

Why buy the cow . . .

So, I know I said I was time-releasing my haikus, tantric-style, to tease you along, giving over just the bare minimum necessary to keep you longing for more, and more, and more. But I’m the kind of girl that gives it up easy. The kind that gives the milk for free so you never have to buy the cow. So without further ado, here is the fast and furious finish to the What My Son Said Haiku Collection.

No.2

I already know
what coffee tastes like Mommy --
smoke and marshmallows.

No. 3

We’re doing a play.
I’m Hook, Peter, and Wendy.
Sec can be the plank.

No. 4

“Bitch” is not a nice
word. “Gun”either. What about
“son of a pork bun.”

Wash My Mouth Out

I just realized that Easter is almost here which meant Lent has pretty much come and gone without me noticing or observing in the slightest. If I had known, I’d have given up cursing. David thinks this Lent business is kind of far-fetched and wants to know what my not using the f-bomb has to do with Jesus.

“Oh don’t be so literal,” I say, evasively, “You don’t understand because you’re not a Catholic and you don’t know the meaning of sacrifice, like I do,”

The truth is, I’m not a hundred percent sure either. And my packed schedule chasing children out of traffic doesn’t offer my much time to reflect. Suffice it to say that it feels right to make myself suffer a little bit, in homage. I used to give up chocolate but let’s face it, those were the days when I was drinking and smoking and dating, one might say, liberally. Now, I need the friggin’ chocolate. I am not, believe it or not, a saint. The chocolate is all I’ve got in the way of pleasure. Let me amend that since David will be reading this: its all I’ve got besides mind-blowingly, wall-bangingly raucous, incomparable sex with my husband. The point is, I need that chocolate and I know that Jesus understands. But he’s probably wondering why I curse like a sailor, in front of my young children.

“Son of a BITCH,” Seconda said this morning, when she spilled her yogurt on her lap.

“What did you say?” I gasped.

“Son of a BITCH,” she enunciated more clearly, like she was the one teaching me how to talk. And then, with flourish, she added, “GodDAMNit!”

It can’t be good, I thought, that my two year-old talks like she’s in a David Mamet play.

This is when I realized I needed to tone the language down. It didn’t help that a week or two before, when Primo’s pencil broke, he exclaimed, “This fucking pencil won’t work!”

The worst part is, he was so earnest, with no sense that he was using a bad word, or crossing a line. He was just trying to find the appropriate word for that particular scenario, the same way he does when he invokes the phrase “my hideous bumps” to describe the eczema flare-up on his legs.And thanks to my modeling, he thinks that word is a four-letter one. .

“Oh honey,” I said somberly, “That’s not a nice word. And its Mommy’s fault because I use it too much, and I shouldn’t because it’s an ugly word and not nice at all, so I’m sorry.”

So, I’m not feeling like such a stellar mama today. I have single-handedly tarnished my children, flawless vessels of purity. Although, to be fair, Seconda doesn’t look so pure when she’s beating down defenseless infants on the playground with her sappy cup. And neither does Primo when we’re on line at the grocery store and he screams,

“You better get me those marshmallows, you SCOUNDREL, or else!” But, still . . .

Are there others like me among you, readers? What horrifying curse words have your kids whipped out in the least appropriate places?