Breaking the Jell-O Mold

In honor of Valentine’s Day this month, I continue to reflect on 25 Years of Wedded Bliss and Blisters

It’s a wonder that the Man I Married and I not only wound up together but stayed together, since from the beginning it seemed that we didn’t have much in common, especially musical taste. MIM liked bands with words like “butthole” and “violent” and “dead” in their names. I, on the other hand, liked pretty much anything that had an actual melody.

A national act coming to Hawaii, where we lived when we met, was a big deal in 1987, as I’m sure it remains to this day. So imagine our disappointment when, early on in our dating life, we learned that we each had a favorite singer coming to town on the same night. We were still trying to impress each other at that point, so we would have gone with the other one to pretty much anything that the other desired. MIM tried out Scottish Country Dancing (once, and only once) for my benefit, and I bought him tickets for us to go see a favorite band of his, The Cult. Only it turned out that I’d gotten mixed up, and he really liked The Cure. Whatever. It’s hard for me to keep men in black lipstick straight.

But with our favorites in town on the same night, which one of us would give up his or her dream concert, sacrificing our own desire?

Neither one of us.

That night was the first on which we inaugurated what became a highly-developed coping mechanism that has served us well over a quarter century.

Which is: We go places separately.

The technical term is: “I Love You Honey, BUT…”

Although we barely knew each other at the time, we trusted the other to go have fun yet not screw around. Our choice also clarified for us that we weren’t the type of people to get in the way of what the other wanted, while it was also clear that we were both strong and independent enough not to give up on something that was important to us. Neither one of us tried to shove our tastes down the other’s throat. We gave each other a great deal of freedom and the green goo of jealousy never entered the picture.

Although at the time I would have said that my musical taste was superior to his, our choices in hindsight clearly demonstrate that he was cutting edge, prescient, and an integral part of the cultural movement of our day. They really broke the mold when MIM was made. He can now, as he nears fifty years of age, gain the admiration of today’s youth by bragging about being at a concert that they would kill to have seen. I really can’t say the same.

On the surface, it must have seemed obvious that night that we were a couple who did not belong together and were headed for the rocks, because I dropped him off at the University of Hawaii campus to see: 

Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys

Yes, that appears to be a man who has lost his pants while eating what I hope is Jello pudding.

Meanwhile, I went in my Toyota to the Blaisdell Arena to see:

John Denver

Mismatch?

You think?

Opposites attract?

Seriously, can you see these two sitting down to dinner together? That would also probably be true of their fans.

Which would be us.

But time proves a lot of things wrong. Or right. If we had made a prediction, I’m sure we all would have bet that, between the two of them, Jello was the one headed for an early grave.

As it turns out, perhaps I was the prescient one. Tastes change, and the Man I Married recently commented, “You know, I’d probably go see John Denver now.”

But he can’t. John Denver’s dead. You missed your chance, bucko.

But Jello Biafra isn’t.

In fact he looks like this:

Jello

I really hope he manages to keep his pants on these days. If he comes to town, I think I’ll let MIM go see him without me. Again.

Going places separately gives us something to talk about.

Also, going places together can backfire. About two decades into our relationship, I took MIM with me to see Rufus Wainwright at the Moore Theatre. I really dug Rufus at the time, and I achieved a state of nirvana at that concert, completely tuned in to the music and the performer. Rufus gave multiple encores. I wanted the concert to go on forever. I could have listened all night. Which is what I gushed to MIM when the concert finally ended and we were walking back to our car afterwards. I then turned to MIM and said, “What did you think?”

“I would have slit my throat if he played one more song,” he answered. “That was the worst concert I’ve ever been to.”

To say that our marriage almost ended on the sidewalk outside of the Moore would not be an exaggeration. How could I spend my life with someone who saw the world so differently from me? Who considered my night of joy to be his worst agony? Who hated the music that enraptured me? I hadn’t been moved by music like that since I was a teenage girl. Wasn’t this the writing on the wall? A sure sign that it was time to throw in the towel? I needed a life partner that I could share moving experiences with.

Here’s how we managed to mend the fence that night:

We managed to agree that we both hated Rufus’s sister Martha, who opened for him and played in his backup band. I noted that she needed to wear a slip under her skirt, although that hadn’t bothered MIM, but we both concurred that Rufus was a model brother to share the spotlight with his less talented sibling.

The bottom line is that we stayed together, and it makes a great story at parties. When MIM went on a road trip with a mutual friend in the friend’s car, the friend made sure to include Rufus on the mix tape he made for the journey.

The next time Rufus came to town, I went by myself.

As years pass, coming up with something we both want to do on date nights or agreeing on a radio station continues to be a real challenge.

But it’s getting easier. These days we both just want to stay home. With the radio off.

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Now on Kindle

The Erotica Writer’s Husband and Other Stories

by Jennifer D. Munro

Kindle Edition Now $0.99 at Amazon.com

 

PRAISE FOR JENNIFER D. MUNRO’S SHORT STORIES

“Jennifer D. Munro had me howling with [her] irony…”  —Susie Bright, Best American Erotica Editor

 “At turns heartbreaking and hilarious, Jennifer D. Munro’s writing crackles with wit and hard-earned wisdom. Her prose is snappy and eloquent, and often laugh-out-loud funny about the most unfunny things…”  —Janna Cawrse Esarey, The Motion Of The Ocean

 “I laughed like a little maniac. I just loved it. Hilarious.”  —Mary Guterson, Gone To The Dogs

 “…poignant…”  —San Francisco Chronicle

 “…touching and funny…”  —Slowtrains.com

Sizing Up Your Betrothed

I got officially engaged on Valentine’s Day twenty-four years ago, eight months after I met the Man I Married.

It surprises me now that we got engaged on a traditional day, because nothing else about our engagement or our wedding four months later was by the book.

The engagement ring was my grandmother’s. We paid to have it sized and inscribed, and even that was a stretch on our budget. Back then my Swatch Watch was a splurge for me.

When we took the ring to the jeweler, the pleasant man with the monocle asked what we’d like the inscription to read.

“How about I Love You, Jenny,” proudly said The Man I Was About to Marry.

The jeweler cleared his throat. I could see that he hated to interfere with such a personal matter but that he felt obligated to assist the clueless bloke with the weird hair standing before him.

“Are you sure?” the jeweler asked.

The Man I Married thought the problem was length (not out-of-line for a man considering his wedding night). The ring was tiny. I do not come from moneyed nor large-boned peoples, so the jeweler needed that monocle when it came to inspecting the diamond pebble on the sliver-thin ring. The ring was really all prong.

Still, I loved it. It was a shiny heirloom that would soon be given to me by the man I’d already proposed to. The prongs were apt, rather like metaphorical pitchfork prongs I’d used to persuade him to tie the knot.

“Um,” MIM considered. “How about I Love You, Jen?”

“Well,” the jeweler said kindly, “normally the inscription includes the name of the ring giver.”

“Oh, okay,” said the Man I Married, as open to suggestion then as he has remained to this day. “How about I Love You, Rick?”

Magnifiying the Actual Marriage

The jeweler sighed. I wish I could have repaid him for his patience back then in 1988 by assuring him that two decades down the road that monocle on his head would make him the epitome of cool as he ushered in steampunk.

I used to remember the final inscription, but although I vividly recall that scene in the jeweler’s, twenty-four years later I pulled a blank on how the ring was finally engraved.

I also used to be able to read the inscription.

I easily found the ring but had to borrow the Man I Married’s drugstore magnification lenses that are littered all over the house, so that they are within easy reach whenever he wants to read something that proves that he is right and I am wrong.

I donned the glasses, squinted, held the ring far away, held it close up, held it directly under a 100-watt lightbulb, angled it this way and that, and finally made out:

Love Always, Rick

Ah. And I suppose he has. So far.

At least I still have my ring. MIM didn’t have an engagement ring, but he lost his first three wedding rings, so I can logically conclude that he would have lost an engagement ring, too.

It’s a wonder I can still get that ring on my finger. It’s not that my fingers plumped up along with the rest of me—it’s that my knuckles beefed up. Forget admiring your youthful skin and hair; appreciate your sleek knuckles while you can. Getting that ring over my knuckle is like squeezing an embroidery hoop over a fire hydrant. But with enough ice and soap, I managed.

I still love that ring. The one I gave him to give to me.

On our fifteenth anniversary he gave me a new ring that he chose himself. He presented it to me at a bar with a bullet hole in the wall, and everyone there thought I was luckiest girl this side of the interstate.

But in the end it’s not the jewelry that matters. The real reason to plan out a memorable engagement or a wedding is that it’s a great way to suss out the true character of your chosen one.

If your bride or groom is a closed book to the expert advice of others, I’d suggest closing the book on the upcoming nuptials.

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Now on Kindle

The Erotica Writer’s Husband and Other Stories by Jennifer D. Munro
Kindle Edition Now $0.99 at Amazon.com

 

PRAISE FOR JENNIFER D. MUNRO’S SHORT STORIES

“Jennifer D. Munro had me howling with [her] irony…”  —Susie Bright, Best American Erotica Editor

“…utterly new and eccentric…really a great piece of wit…[with] magnificent brevity…”  —David Lenson, Editor, Massachusetts Review

 “Not since reading David Sedaris have I laughed so hard…talented, funny and insightful.”  —Gitana Garofalo, Hedgebrook

 “…made me laugh out loud…I still chuckle…” —Samantha Schoech, Editor, The Bigger The Better The Tighter The Sweater

Weighing in with my Advice to Brides

In 2012 I will have spent a quarter century–more than half my life–with the Man I Married. As I look back upon my youthful folly, here is my only suggestion to engaged ladies:

Do not lose weight before your wedding like I did.

Gain weight before the wedding. Lots of weight. Then lose it (for your health) after the wedding. Who cares about the photos? Photoshop them. Airbrush the extra chin out. What matters is how much you eat in the marriage that follows the wedding. Don’t give yourself an unrealistic number on the scale that you will battle for the entire duration of your marriage.

I lost eleven pounds between meeting my husband and stupidly marrying him a year later. I say stupidly because I was twenty-two when I met him. I thought my time was running out so I’d better get hitched right quick before I became Emily Dickinson or Jane Austen or Charlotte Bronte—I had the obsessive scribbling part down, so I needed to head spinster off at the pass. So it was a gunshot wedding, only there was no ammunition, just duds. Sort of a nerf-gun wedding. No pregnancy but a whole lot of bladder infections.

I think the reason I went through with the wedding was because I was at the gym all the time instead of getting to know my boyfriend better. Then he went and had a Traumatic Brain Injury (by doing something stupid–twice), so whenever I got home from epic bouts on the Stairmaster (a fancy pants new piece of equipment on the market at that time) he was asleep, beginning a long recuperation that has lasted twenty-five years. So we never got to know each other well enough to call it all off. In fact, at the seven-year marriage point, he blinked, and his eyes came into focus as he said to our marriage counselor (our second of four), “Hey! I never really agreed to getting married. I was fresh out of a coma!”

To which I cried, “You proposed! You gave me an engagement ring on Valentine’s Day!”

To which he responded, “It was your grandmother’s ring! How did I get it? You must have given it to me in order to give it to you.”

So busted!

He agreed to remain married, which in retrospect doesn’t surprise me, since at the time I was the only one with a paycheck. Plus, you know, I’m a bit of a catch now, even if I was desperate way back when. He’s not so bad himself. He reinvents himself every few years, so it’s like I’m Liz Taylor (unfortantely in more ways than one, and I’m not talking jewelry collection), married eight times but never having to go through all the nasty divorce paperwork.

I intended to dye my wedding dress so that I could wear it later to…well, I’m not sure where, because this was the eighties, and with its freakishly huge bow, the only place I could wear it would be a Cyndi Lauper concert. But I never had to figure out a venue, because I couldn’t fit into it three days into the honeymoon.

I gained back the eleven pounds plus some (the “some” amount varies, depending on how much I’m stress-eating because my husband is driving me bonkers with whatever new plan he’s hatched, maybe sailing around the world today, starting a hard cider business tomorrow, while yesterday it was running a treehouse campground).

Now if I proudly say, “I’m only five pounds heavier than the day I met you,” he says, “Yeah, but fifteen pounds more than on our wedding day.”

It’s odd that he does this, because, as long as we’re having sex, he doesn’t care what I weigh. He calls me gorgeous no matter what size my jeans are. I think it’s one of those male “just the facts ma’am” things that’s not intended to be a hurtful dig.

I then continue to set facts straight, without any intent of a hurtful dig whatsoever, no sirree bob, by pointing out that he weighs a hell of a lot more now than I do over meeting or wedding point. This is true, because he was a spindly twig at the time. He was a vegetarian, which meant that he ate peanut butter. That’s it. Peanut butter and Diet 7-Up. I sniff peanut butter and loosen my belt a notch.

After this calm, rational, emotionless, and quiet discussion about how fat the other one is now, we pop open an imperial stout and break out the cheese. (We’d have makeup sex, but by then we’re too full and tired.)

Brides, I suggest you do the same, now, before your Big Day. Have some brie with your peanut butter. Do you want to never ever again look as bony as you did when you marched down the aisle? And believe me, you’re marching, because you’re hungry and you want to get to the damn cake. Who cares that everyone is staring at your ass that day? Just plant a big bow on your bustle like Fergie did and shake your booty.

The Famous Fergie of My Day

(She’s another one who lost weight before her wedding, and look where it got her in the long run.)

Just think. In a couple of decades you could take your dress in and dye it so that you can go see the Justin Bieber Comeback Tour (it happened with one-hit cutie Rick Springfield in my day, so I’m placing bets on a bald Justin touring in 2032).

Wouldn’t you rather have your husband introduce you like this at parties when you’re 35, or 47, or 59: “Look at how great she looks! She weighs less than the day we were married! C’mere, gorgeous, lay one on me.”

Here’s the thing: The Man I Married got rid of his wedding pants the second they didn’t fit. Which I think gives him a psychic freedom, the freedom to dream. He’s thinking about motorcycling to Tierra del Fuego while I’m tracking my weight. I’ve hauled my dress in a hermetically-sealed box from Hawaii to Seattle, from Seattle to New Orleans, and back to Seattle again. Do you really want a dress that you never wear taking up psychological and literal closet space for the rest of your life?

Also, like all men I know, the Man I Married freely and publicly divulges his weight no matter how fat or thin he is. Perhaps we women would have more space to dream if we weren’t trying so hard to keep our number on the scale a secret. As if no one can tell what size we are?

The sad fact is that I’ll only fit into my wedding dress again someday if I am seriously ill. And, what? Like the first thing I’m going to do when I hit 123 again after perhaps facing death is put on an old dress? At my age I’m going to wear sequins? Honey, if I survive a wasting disease and am thin again for the span of three minutes, I’m marching my shrunken rump and my charge card straight to the mall.

All I know is this, if that day comes, I’ll be glad it’s the Man I Married who’s at my side. I know he’ll still be there, because we’ve made it this far: through two severe head injuries, seven miscarriages, 483 bladder infections, an earthquake, a blizzard, the first difficult year of the Little Monster, and the nine-page UnaMomber Manifesto I composed about my mother-in-law and mailed to all living relatives. I might be bald and scarred, but he’ll still love me. As long as we start having sex again once I feel better, but that’s as important to me as it is to him.

It’s doubtful I’ll even weigh again what I did the day I met the Man I Married. How I wish I’d known at that tender young age that I was perfect that day, before I lost eleven more pounds. Beautiful and perfect. Blessed enough in health to still be walking this planet at a brisk pace a quarter century later. And gorgeous enough for someone to fall in love with me (with the help of a whack on his head).

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Now on Kindle

The Erotica Writer’s Husband and Other Stories by Jennifer D. Munro

Kindle Edition $2.99 at Amazon.com

 

PRAISE FOR JENNIFER D. MUNRO’S SHORT STORIES

“Jennifer D. Munro had me howling with [her] irony…”  —Susie Bright, Best American Erotica Editor

 “At turns heartbreaking and hilarious, Jennifer D. Munro’s writing crackles with wit and hard-earned wisdom. Her prose is snappy and eloquent, and often laugh-out-loud funny about the most unfunny things…”  —Janna Cawrse Esarey, The Motion Of The Ocean

 “I laughed like a little maniac. I just loved it. Hilarious.”  —Mary Guterson, Gone To The Dogs and We Are All Fine Here

 

Sometimes a Daft Notion

The week before last, Seattle Schools closed for a full week because of snow. More often, the schools here close because of the mere possibility of the suggestion of snow. If someone on the top of Queen Anne Hill accidentally drops a bag of ice on the sidewalk on their way to a kegger, Seattle Schools shut down. If someone on Beacon Hill shakes a rug out of a window, releasing a cloud of dust that might be mistaken for snow, Seattle Schools shut down. If 7-11 has a sale on ICEEs, Seattle Schools shut down. I pass no judgment (and I’m a skinny blonde Olympic skier). Clearly three of those days needed to be cancelled, so let’s not go into the school closure on Tuesday (NO SNOW) and how often the schools here close unnecessarily. I know it’s complicated, and I know that the bottom line is that the schools are trying to keep our kids safe in terrain that can be unpredictably treacherous.

Despite the difference in weather, last week brought back visceral memories of last summer. Visceral as in viscera, blood and guts and tendons and stuff you would rather not think about nor touch. Here in the Skinny House (where I got wider during the week because of compulsive snacking on peanuts and abstaining from my recent abstinence), the Little Monster practiced math every day during the unexpected week off. Not only did he practice math, but the Man I Married suggested that it would be a great opportunity for the Little Monster to learn long division. The long division unit is coming up in school, and MIM insisted that he’d already taught this minor skill to the Little Monster, so it would just be a teeny weeny recap.

Had I learned nothing since last summer? 

School let out for summer on June 21.

Math lessons began at home on June 22.

During the entire 77 days of summer (why does that number seem so much smaller than it felt in reality?), the Little Monster missed only a single day of math. He did math every day even during our two-week car camping trip. He did math on his birthday. Which means: his mother missed only one day of math, too. Genius Mom bought a book that didn’t include answers at the back. All of that work had better help to ward off Alzheimer’s for me. (But don’t tell the Little Monster that I still don’t know my times-twelves. I kept a cheat-sheet handy for those.)

But it’s only fair. If LM had to do math all summer long, why shouldn’t I? Oh, yeah, because I didn’t goof off and play Class Clown during math for the entire third grade, because I processed $1.5 million in payroll every month for a decade and thus am quite done with math and its negative connotations with calculating raises that were never mine, and because I can use something called a calculator.

He’s a stubborn thing, though.

“These are all great, Little Monster,” I might say when he brings me his completed homework, covered with holes that he’s drummed through the paper with his pencil so that it looks like it doubled as target practice. “You’re doing really well. You’ve got almost all of these correct! Wow! You’re making so much progress, but number six is not right. So please go back to your desk and see if you can correct that one.”

Let’s say that LM has written 13 as his answer.

He will return after a few minutes with his first 13 crossed off, with 13 carefully written above it, darker and bigger this time.

“That’s the same answer, Little Monster. It wasn’t correct the first time, and it’s still not correct. Try again.”

He will return a few minutes later with an arrow drawn toward the 13, and a note saying, “It’s correct.”

“Still not right.”

This will go on and on (not quietly on his part, I might add; he could put a grieving Ancient Greek to shame with his wailing and gnashing of teeth). He will fill up all of the white space on the page detailing why his answer is correct. The author of the math book is wrong (I did break down and buy a different book with an answer key, after I had a different kind of breakdown). His mom is wrong. The professors at MIT would be wrong. He is right, absolutely. He is eight, but he is correct.

One look at the math book and our little terrier begins trembling like cottonwood leaves in a stiff wind. At least she doesn’t piddle.

The only smart one in all of this is the Man I Married. “Great job, Mom!” he says to me. “You are really onto something with this. Wow. This is really good for him. Go, Mom!” He waxes poetic on the praise as he passes the math over to me to correct. The only time he couldn’t manage the handoff was when I was driving.

Somehow this happened again last week, when after suggesting that we “review” long division, he sealed himself off in the Barage to bottle cider.

Why do we torment the Little Monster like this? you ask.

Why not let the poor kid off the hook for a summer? Or for the snow week? Smell the daisies, eat the yellow snow (which he told me he did, reminding me of the toilet water conversation), blah blah?

Believe me, I asked myself that question every day last summer. Isn’t life good? Do I have to make it difficult? Who the hell cares about how to find the area of a square? Or the perimeter of a rectangle? Or how many weeks are in a year? Or what the equivalent fraction to 6/8 is? A machine can do all of that for us, now.

But on Monday, August 8, the Little Monster, for the first time, got every single problem correct on both sides of the homework page. I hung it on the refrigerator. We high-fived. We hip-bumped. We extra-desserted. This success was repeated on August 10. By jove, I think he’s got it! That’s why I’m doing it. No meltdown, no agony, no crying, no yelling, no tantrum, no Greek chorus. Breakthrough!

The Little Monster consistently tests right at the border of two grades. If 300 is the cutoff between third and fourth grade level, LM tests at exactly 300, across the board in all subjects. Not 299, not 301. It reminds me of my brother, The Agitator, who spent a great many hours computing the lowest score he could get on a test but still pass—instead of just studying for the test.

When the Man I Married voiced his concern to a friend about LM’s borderline passing of his grade level, the friend said, “Gee, considering his history, seems to me like that’s actually doing really well!”

Duh. Gosh, it’s nice to get an outside perspective.

But because of the work he did over the summer, LM successfully mainstreamed into the regular math class with his fourth grade classmates. He’d been having to take a hike down the hall to go to a “special” math class, and we all know how cruel kids can be to those taking the metaphorical short bus. So although we don’t necessarily care about his someday solving for pi, I realized why this arduous daily math was important: because it’s good for his morale and self-confidence, both of which are understandably well-below par. Helping him to be good at something is worth the time and aggravation, because he wants so badly to be liked (don’t we all?), and he makes bad decisions in order to fake everyone out, like being the Class Clown. And as he gets older, Class Clown will pale next to grim possibilities like gangs and drugs. Confidence and safety are the biggest gifts given to MIM and me by our parents, and I never even knew that until I met the Little Monster. I took both for granted. As all kids should.

Between LM’s achievement and the observation of our friend, I decided that maybe I could back off from the poor little guy. At the beginning of the school year, I met with his teacher and school counselors and confided that I thought that the math was hurting my relationship with LM (another DUH), and considering how hard we’d had to work on our relationship, I suggested to them that I not even look at his homework as I had in past grades. I needed to remove myself from the math equation. They heartily agreed. Not checking his homework every night made me feel like a bad, lazy parent, but the dog was happy. Everyone was happy. We were all so happy that we adopted LM, reaffirming the cosmic belief that math equations—particularly word problems—are the root of all evil.

When he asked me the difference between mean and median one night, showing me a chart he had to figure out and fill in, I refrained myself from saying, “Who cares? I’m 47 and don’t have the slightest idea, but that hasn’t hurt my career trajectory one bit.” The fact that my career trajectory is downwards is irrelevant. But I shrugged and said, “Ask your teacher.” It’s a feeling like when you finally cave in and buy a bigger size of pants. Such liberation! But also guilt and self-loathing. Ultimately this can’t be good but right now I can breathe a sigh of relief. Sure, I’ll have another peanut.

But a week of no school in January? No nothing? I could just as well allow that as I could keep my hand out of the peanuts during a claustrophobic, housebound week in which I ran out of gin. It’s one thing to abstain from alcohol while you have gin, which I’d been doing for months. But abstaining from gin while you have none is like having a loudspeaker in your kitchen cabinet making martini-shaker and ice-clinking noises, and then comes the dreaded “neener neener” taunts through a bullhorn.

Enter MIM and his suggestion of a long division “refresher.” Great. Easy. It’ll give LM a nice head start on the next unit, and won’t he feel great about that? Ahead of the mainstream class!

I came up with a strategy, because LM loves to dawdle and waste time. “Okay, Little Monster,” I said after going over a few dozen division problems with him. “Here’s a page of problems. As soon as you can get one page of problems done correctly, the rest of the day is yours to play.”  MOTIVATION is key.

Three days later, with the dog a nervous wreck, I begged MIM to try explaining long division to LM; sometimes a difficult notion can click in to place just by having someone else explain it differently. MIM returned from his mission at the kitchen table thirty seconds later to announce to me, “He can’t do division because he doesn’t know multiplication.”

“Yes, he does. He had the whole multiplication table memorized last summer.”

“Not anymore, he doesn’t.”

His current teacher tells them that it’s fine to use their fingers, so he does. Of course he’s going to do what everyone else is doing. All of those hard-won memorized multiplication tables were out the window. I cast no blame on the teacher—I’m filled with wonder and admiration that the teachers manage to teach anything at all with kids like mine disrupting their classrooms. Plus, as a couple of friends reminded me, it’s possible that the kids still need this aid in order to understand the concept. The Little Monster is a haptic and kinesthetic learner (blame MIM that I even know words and concepts like that), so he learns best with touch and movement. Still, he had the mother f&ckers memorized, and we were back to square negative one.

“What are you looking for?” MIM asked me as I rifled through the yellow pages. “Math tutors?”

“Pawn shops.”

“But you can’t drive anywhere.”

“I’ll manage.”

“What, another tiara?”

“No, a gun.” For me, of course. Someplace where I wouldn’t leave a mess, and the gun would be loaded with just the one bullet so as not to cause an inadvertent gun accident if it went off after my swift demise. 

“Okey dokey, how ‘bout I take over with the multiplication tables?”

“That’d be swell, sweetheart.”

“No problem, honey. You know, I think the road’s are clearing. How about I go get you some gin?”

“Thanks, shnookums. Just no bottom shelf stuff, okay, Bubba?”

“Of course not, Bubba Lu!” He returned home with a nice gin for me and a scotch that cost twice as much for him. Once I had a full bottle of gin in the cupboard, I had no need for it, and the cupboard harumphed itself back into silence.

I make suicide-by-gun jokes, although it still makes me sad that Meriwether Lewis took himself out that way. The man accomplished the unaccomplishable yet still felt hopeless. I use gallows humor because, 1) it’s in my DNA, and, 2) to illustrate how f&cking bonkers many moms I know felt during the housebound snow week. And they, to my knowledge, were not even doing long division. But they all, to my knowledge, were running out of booze and/or chocolate, and the distress signals from moms needing a fix or a break from their kids–or even a fleeting moment in which they felt like they’d accomplished one small task from start to finish–began to sound like Starlight Barking.

So now that LM’s re-learned his multiplication tables with the help of MIM and has returned to the classroom, do you think I’m going to be able to resist the urge to check his homework every night?

Damn straight I am. I’m going to beat that mother-lovin’ notion off with a stick.

I may have some daft ideas, but I’m not STOOPID. Parent involvement is important, but parent uninvolvement is more important for me and the Little Monster. We worked too hard to get to this happy place where I feel no anxiety about a small stranger who by some miracle and some tragedy became my son, and I can’t afford for that to go out the window in favor of 8×7. If I did that, somebody should hit me over the head with a 2×4.

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Now on Kindle

 

FREE KINDLE DOWNLOADS ON SUNDAY 1/29/12

The Erotica Writer’s Husband and Other Stories

by Jennifer D. Munro

Kindle Edition $2.99 at Amazon.com

 

PRAISE FOR JENNIFER D. MUNRO’S SHORT STORIES

“Jennifer D. Munro had me howling with [her] irony…”  —Susie Bright, Best American Erotica Editor

“It was wonderful to read Munro’s eloquent, funny frustrations and confirmations.”  —Eden, Clean Sheets Reader Comments

 “…a resonant hoot!”  —Paula, Clean Sheets Reader Comments

 “…devastatingly relevant/funny…”  —Rob, Clean Sheets Reader Comments

The Cider Maker’s Wife

I’m constantly worrying about our safety, especially here in earthquake country. Now that we are responsible parents, the Man I Married finally agreed with me that we should earthquake-proof the house as much as possible. He went to the hardware store to buy a kit to strap our water heater to the wall.

A darn good thing, too, because look how handy the strap came in:

Keeping Us Safe From Keg Bungs

 

Not exactly what I had in mind, but in case of an earthquake, at least we’ll have something to drink.

 

We’ll need something to drink, because you know how they tell you to fill up your bathtub with water at the first sign of disaster? Cormac McCarthy’s hero does it right quick at the first sound of explosions in The Road, enabling him to continue his cheerful, ash-filled existence so that he can finally consent to appearing on Oprah. (Yes, I am conflating the author and his protagonist, so sue me.) 

 

But we won’t be able to drink the bathtub water, because: 

 

Not that I’d necessarily be inclined to drink the bath water from the tub where the Little Monster bathes. Well, bathe wouldn’t exactly be the correct word. Let’s just say that his lower half gets damp from sitting in soapy water.

I recently had the opportunity to instruct the Little Monster about drinking water from the toilet tank in case of an earthquake. The toilet runs and runs and runs for some reason when LM flushes–note the “when” LM flushes, a sporadic occurrence at best. Oh! the lovely surprises he leaves for me to find after he’s gone off to school. How can such a small child manage such awesome mementos?

When he does remember to flush, something about his technique causes a thingie to get stuck under the sealing thing, so the water keeps draining out of the tank. So one morning I lifted the lid off the tank and instructed him on how to fix it if he heard the toilet running. I commented that he could drink this clean tank water if our water supply was ever cut off.

“Why would there be no water?” he asked.

We try hard to keep the Little Monster’s world as stable as possible, because life gets a little too interesting around our house when he experiences emotions that other kids handle with simple screaming meltdowns. He’s had his share of worry and trauma already. We didn’t let him know, for instance, when I went to the emergency room because the room was spinning and I had no martinis to blame. I refrain from voicing the constant thoughts in my head about earthquakes striking when the Man I Married is on the unstable viaduct or of imminent nuclear disaster (although I do teach him how to correctly pronounce nuclear, as in nuclear power plant, not nuclear destruction). I did not state that I was instructing him on drinking clean tank water now because he might have to do it himself if his mommy was squished flat under a fallen house beam.

So I answered, “Oh, you know, in case someone at the water plant turns the wrong knob.”

That’s when he hit me with one of those out-of-the-blue comments about his past.

“I used to drink toilet water at the last house where I lived,” he told me.

The Mask of Neutrality can be really, really hard sometimes around the Little Monster. “Hm, that’s interesting,” I said. “Thank you for telling me. Why did you drink toilet water?” La la la la la, this is just a normal, everyday conversation that all mothers have with their sons. ‘Would you like milk, juice, or toilet water with your lunch, honey?’

I knew his former foster home stocked plentiful supplies of sodapop, so LM wasn’t slurping toilet water because of a lack of options. Also, for being a nine-year-old, LM is a fairly fastidious guy.

“Mm, I dunno,” he answered.

“I don’t know” doesn’t normally fly as a good reason in our house, but in this case it was probably true. Kids who have been through the sorts of trauma that he has seem to be very confused about urine. I imagine the synapses in their little forming brains are a jumbled mess, rather like the tangle of wires running from our stereo/video/computer/lamp/digital photo frame shelf.

One boy that we met during our Child Search peed into cups and then hid the cups throughout the house, which charmed his foster mother to no end. Our poor dog was unfairly blamed for certain incidents before the Little Monster got over a similar delightful phase. Luckily, being a fastidious guy, he always told us what “the dog” had done, so we never had to play hide-and-seek with urine samples.

At this moment over the toilet, I found myself heavily invested in the “got over” part of that last paragraph. Not that we didn’t expect relapses now and then, which is why we didn’t tell him that I was hooked up to tubes in the E.R. when he asked where I was, and I answered that I was relaxing with friends. Which I was. Friends with lovely drugs that made my world a nice, flat place again.

How did we get to the “got over?” Patience. Just like untangling those wires. We kept our cool and treated it no differently than someone accidentally tracking mud in the house; admit the mistake, help clean it up, and there’s no problem. He could not be faulted or disciplined for kneejerk urges that had no logic. He simply (quite literally) needed to work old toxins out of his system. We stressed that blaming the dog was worse than the mistake he’d made in the first place.

Also? We ripped up all the carpet.

“Well,” I said during our head-to-head over the head, trying to keep my voice from climbing a half register, “you don’t do that anymore, do you?” La la la la la, no hysteria here, nope, this is just a hunky dory mother-son bonding moment.

“Yuck, no,” he said.

“You know you can tell me and you’re not in trouble.”

“No.”

“Anything else you want to tell me? Now’s the time.”

“No.”

It gets complicated. Because it’s possible that he never did drink toilet water, but he’s just telling me he drank toilet water. Why would he want to tell me that he did something that might get him into serious hot water even if he didn’t do it? I might as well ask why half the planet can’t pronounce nuclear correctly. Surely it’s one of the most important words in our lexicon, deserving of a respectful accuracy. But I’d drive myself crazy if I needed answers to questions like that.

At least I can have peace of mind that if The Big One hits, LM will be ready, willing, and able to drink toilet tank water.

We will be able to save all of the safe water for him, even if the Man I Married and I both survive the initial catastrophe, because we’ll be drinking this:

The Cider Maker

 

 

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Now on Kindle

The Erotica Writer’s Husband and Other Stories by Jennifer D. Munro
Kindle Edition $2.99 at Amazon.com

PRAISE FOR JENNIFER D. MUNRO’S SHORT STORIES

“Jennifer D. Munro had me howling with [her] irony…”  —Susie Bright, Best American Erotica Editor

“[I] was fixated. I really laughed out loud (by myself)…”  —Bobbi, Literary Mama Reader

“…marvelously refreshing…”  —CleanSheets

“Munro writes with an honesty and rawness… a brilliant piece of writing…”  —Innsmouth Free Press

It’s All In a Name-Spelling

The Man I Married wrote me a check and spelled my name wrong.

“You’re joking,” I said, hopefully.

“Just tired,” he said.

He wrote me a huge check. We were transferring money to my bank account, where it would earn more interest. This kind of home activity is one of the signs that you are getting old.

Seriously, I could understand if he spelled my last name wrong. His entire family still can’t spell it right, although I think this is a subtle form of Midwestern protest that I kept my birth name. But my first name? After almost twenty-five years? That’s officially half his life.

In the For__________ line at the bottom of the check, he said he’d write Sex.

That gave me a huge belly laugh. He can still make me laugh like that after all these years. Kind of balances out the name-spelling thing. I suppose as long as he calls me by the right name at key moments, we’re still good.

A couple of days later, MIM said, “I need to write you that check.”

Hm, should I tell him that he already gave me the check? I wonder how many times I can get him to write me a big check? My passport is renewed but his isn’t, so it would take him quite awhile to catch up to me on a Mexican beach.

Truthfully, there’s no one else I’d rather be on a beach with than the Man I Married.

On a somber note, studies have shown that folks with Traumatic Brain Injuries are more likely to develop unhappy conditions like Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia later in life. MIM has had two serious brain squishes; it’s a good thing he still has a lot of hair, because he’s got one gnarly scalp. So now that we are officially “later in life,” I could theoretically spend many sleepless nights worrying if the memory lapses are harbingers of doom.

Oh, wait, that’s what I do every night, anyway. So, business as usual.

*     *     *     *     *

Up next week: The Cider Maker’s Wife, in which the Man I Married appropriates home safety preparedness items for making hard cider, a humorous post that gets a little heavy when I sidetrack to discussing unsettling behaviors by traumatized kids.

---

 

Now on Kindle

The Erotica Writer’s Husband and Other Stories

by Jennifer D. Munro

Kindle Edition $2.99 at Amazon.com

 

PRAISE FOR JENNIFER D. MUNRO’S SHORT STORIES

“Jennifer D. Munro had me howling with [her] irony…”  —Susie Bright, Best American Erotica Editor

 “…beautiful essay…with wit, humor, and ultimately an encouraging understanding of how to take that which [her] body has thrown at [her] and press on.…” —Mama Speaks

 “It was wonderful to read Munro’s eloquent, funny frustrations and confirmations.”  —Eden, Clean Sheets Reader Comments

 “…a resonant hoot!”  —Paula, Clean Sheets Reader Comments

 “…devastatingly relevant/funny…”  —Rob, Clean Sheets Reader Comments

Torque: Necessary Force Used by Wives

I tried out a new book group. They were meeting at a bar, so I said sign me up.

I used the excuse that I was leaving the house to be literary, but really it was all about the Copper Gate’s Manhattan (which featured a fantastic maraschino cherry, nothing like the icky sweet red-dyed kind that I give to the Little Monster if I discover one lurking atop my dessert; that it was soaked in rye whiskey didn’t hurt the taste any).

This book group had a nice blend of folks, with actual males in the mix. I’ve been in a few book groups over the years, and nary a whiff of testosterone has been present at any of them, unless the host had a tomcat. I wouldn’t go so far as to call this group diverse—c’mon, this is Ballard—but it was nice to see a broad age range and mixed genders engaging with each other.

And they all read. Seriously read. None of them write. Wow. I’m lucky to be surrounded by writers, who, yes, do read, but I’m rarely out with the group of folks we are writing for—passionate readers. They discussed the characters in the book as if they were real people who actually existed. I’d like to hang out in a bar with them every night.

The most exotic creatures to me at this book group were the man and the woman who were married to each other. They read the same book. They attended the same book group. They discussed books. I wonder if that’s better than sex? I’ll never know, since I’ll never be able to compare one to the other. Add one more thing to the list of things I want to do before I die: have sex with a man who is reading the same book as I am.

Here’s what the Man I Married is reading:

Yes, the Man I Married is the proud owner of a tractor. An Allis-Chalmers. I’m in a ménage-a-trois with Alice.

Torque can be defined as:

the force that impels a wife to escape a house in which she shares her husband with a tractor, so that she can discuss the book she is reading with a group of total strangers at a bar.

A girl’s gotta get her rocks off somehow when the Man She Married starts dressing like this:

 Hubba hubba.

*     *     *     *     *

 Up next week: It’s All In a Name-Spelling, in which my husband of nearly a quarter-century spells my name wrong.

---

 

Now on Kindle

The Erotica Writer’s Husband and Other Stories by Jennifer D. Munro
Kindle Edition $2.99 at Amazon.com

PRAISE FOR JENNIFER D. MUNRO’S SHORT STORIES

“Jennifer D. Munro had me howling with [her] irony…”  —Susie Bright, Best American Erotica Editor

“…utterly new and eccentric…really a great piece of wit…[with] magnificent brevity…”  —David Lenson, Editor, Massachusetts Review

 “Not since reading David Sedaris have I laughed so hard…talented, funny and insightful.”  —Gitana Garofalo, Hedgebrook

 “…made me laugh out loud…I still chuckle…” —Samantha Schoech, Editor, The Bigger The Better The Tighter The Sweater

Venting

An actual hot and steamy email exchange between the erotica writer and the erotica writer’s husband after he reorganized the laundry room (to create room for his cider bottles) and then went to work:

From: Wife
To: The Man I Married
Subject: Can I use the dryer?

BTW, nice change with re-routing the vent so it doesn’t block the storage door anymore.

—–

From: The Man I Married
To: Wife
Subject: Re: Can I use the dryer?

Hopefully it holds- I can always use some duct tape for the dryer duct if needed.

———-

From: Wife
To: The Man I Married
Subject: Re: Re: Can I use the dryer?

So I can use it?
 
And how will I know if it comes loose so that I can turn it off?

———-

From: The Man I Married
To: Wife
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Can I use the dryer?

Yes, use it-

you will hear a rumbling right before it explodes- turn it off before it explodes

———-

What can I do but laugh?

Speaking of The Erotica Writer’s Husband, my collection of short stories is now available as a Kindle e-book ($2.99). Thanks to my publisher Tod McCoy at en theos press for formatting it for the 21st Century.

---

 

Now on Kindle

The Erotica Writer’s Husband and Other Stories

by Jennifer D. Munro

Kindle Edition $2.99 at Amazon.com

 

PRAISE FOR JENNIFER D. MUNRO’S SHORT STORIES

“Jennifer D. Munro had me howling with [her] irony…”  —Susie Bright, Best American Erotica Editor

 “At turns heartbreaking and hilarious, Jennifer D. Munro’s writing crackles with wit and hard-earned wisdom. Her prose is snappy and eloquent, and often laugh-out-loud funny about the most unfunny things…”  —Janna Cawrse Esarey, The Motion Of The Ocean

 “I laughed like a little maniac. I just loved it. Hilarious.”  —Mary Guterson, Gone To The Dogs

 “…poignant…”  —San Francisco Chronicle

 “…touching and funny…”  —Slowtrains.com

What are the Two Biggest Parenting Mistakes?

At the end of 2010, I blogged about the books I’d read that year. My comment about a book featuring a kilted-hero significantly drove my blog traffic up. Based on the number of people directed to my blog by searches about kilts, what’s under (or not under) a kilt appears to be a cultural obsession.

I noted that I read one parenting book in 2010 (The Three Martini Playdate, highly recommended because, for one thing, it’s short). I also viewed one parenting DVD, Magic 1-2-3, recommended by our Harborview specialist, who looked young enough to be studying for the SATs.

As a result of the new parenting skills I’d learned based on the DVD, I posed a question to my readers:

What are the two biggest mistakes that parents make (according to the author Dr. Thomas Phelan)?

Nobody responded.

I wish they had, because a year later I totally forget what the answer is. I’m too busy making the other 7,493 parenting errors I commit on a daily basis. But if I could just cure myself of those two, whatever they are, I’d be down to 7,491.

By admitting to countless daily mistakes, I’m not being humble. I’m not flagellating myself and calling myself a poor mother. We live in an age of vilified Bad Mommies, which I have been called. According to my observations, it takes one of two things to be sent packing to the Bad Mommy camp, where 24/7 the loudspeakers play, “Can I have another one? Please? Can I have another one? Please? Can I have another one? Please?”:

1) we murder our children, or, 2) we write truthfully about our mothering experience.

I can say only one thing for sure about Bad Mommies:

We Good Enough Mommies can handle a situation badly with our children and then look in the mirror and say to ourselves or our partners or our friends, “Well, sh&t, I sure f&cked that one up.” Then we knock back a stiff one, hike up our stretched elastic waistbands, and vow to do better next time our Little Monsters try our patience. It’s their job to try our patience—to push boundaries so they can figure out where the limits are. Dr. Phalen declares (and this I do remember because I loved it so much) that it’s the parents’ job to constantly irritate their children—to push back harder at the boundary lines. Huzzah, I get a perfect score on constantly irritating the Little Monster.

I can’t imagine the gall it takes to call someone a Bad Mommy. Because if we are judging another mother, that must mean we think we are ourselves perfect. Which we are not. Oh, believe me, my eyebrows raise sometimes at other people’s parenting, and the Man and I Married and I congratulate ourselves heartily on the vastly superior job that we are doing. Then the very big Little Monster does something like have a protracted, screaming meltdown in the middle of K-Mart, a store that I’d largely managed to avoid for the last quarter century, and the eyebrows all raise in my direction. I pat myself on the back for allowing all of the parents in the store to feel smug about themselves for that small moment.

Because the Good Enough Mommies I know are a lot harder on themselves than on other mothers. So they need a smug moment or two.

I know only one mother who was not capable of admitting her mistakes and wasn’t hard enough on herself, and the sad fact is that I am now raising her child. Her biggest mistake was my greatest gift.

Is it tempting to call her a Bad Mommy? Sure. Especially after two martinis (with the Little Monster tucked into bed with the stuffed animals that are frighteningly adept at procreating), and I find myself waxing poetic about the answers to all of life’s questions. She helps me to understand during these ridiculous Mommy Wars that it’s not about how much sugar or television we allow them, or what our discipline methods are, or whether we said a really bad word when the dump truck almost pancaked our car. It’s about doing our damndest to keep them safe.

How about we eliminate the term Bad Mommy and rename it Struggling Mommy?

Which is also what Good Enough Mommies are, if we are honest: Struggling Mommies.

Which means that we are all in the same camp, doing our best.

 

Pictured throughout this blog post are the motherhood memoirs I read in 2011.

Just seeing if you’re paying attention on that last one, The Vibrator Play. I did read it, and it is about motherhood, among other things. I had to read it because what mother has time to go see an adult play? No mother does. But we need to make the time, because when we mothers go to see plays about things like vibrators, we are happier, and a happy mom is nice for her kids to have around. And when our child asks us where we were, we can grin widely and say, “Oh, I went to learn about inventions after the age of electricity,” confirming to our children that we are uninteresting.

That I read this many motherhood memoirs surprises me in retrospect. While I read zero parenting “manuals,” I hunger (apparently) to hear the shared experience of other mothers. It surprises me even more that I not only started but finished them. I’m further surprised that I vaguely remember a small amount of what I read. Sometimes I wonder why I bother to read, since I can’t seem to remember most of what I’ve read since becoming a mother. But I read for the same reason I have sex: because the intimate experience is pleasurable and I’m connecting with other humans (just to clarify, that would be plural humans for reading and singular human for the hanky panky). I thank these authors for their courage in sharing their truths, which twisted a lot of knickers in some cases, causing such an uproar that Oprah herself had to mediate. Hmm, note to self: Writing a book that calls forth the Bad Mommy Police could mean selling lots and lots of copies.

I long for us to return to the halcyon days of Shirley Jackson in Life Among the Savages (1953), when she freely wrote, with no one condemning her of being a bad mother, such scenes as smoking in the back of a taxicab while in labor and on her way to deliver her third or fourth child (I’m sure there’s a difference but both are unimaginable to me). I’d share more scenes but I can’t remember any. She wrote of her children as “savages” and “demons,” but nobody questioned her mothering. They just thought she was funny and that she brilliantly understood the realities of the human condition, which she explored equally well in her horror stories. There’s not much difference between horror and humor in my book.

Because it’s horrible and hysterical that despite the overwhelming problems in the world, apparently what we really want to know is what’s under that darn kilt, anyway? My guess is that my mentioning a vibrator will lead a lot more people to this blog than people interested in books. Not that books are superior to vibrators! Just saying. If anyone’s going to get their knickers twisted, I hope that it’s a result of charged batteries and certain inventions.

 

 

When Lack of Lingerie = Legumes

My brother’s Kansas Picture Bride and I arranged for a late birthday celebration for the two of us. Kansas and I use any excuse to get our families together when our schedules calm down, which is rare, seeing as Kansas is in nursing school, having a rip roaring time with studies that include studying cat cadavers. She’s a farm girl, so she’s not squeamish and she tells it like it is no matter what we’re eating.

Since we tend to discuss things like cat cadavers with Kansas, no point going for a highbrow establishment for our birthday dinner. We’re usually laughing so hard that our stomachs hurt, so why waste money on haute cuisine? If I even mentioned haute cuisine, Kansas would give me the Heimlich, thinking I had something caught in my throat. Kansas has taught me many things since she moved to our moldy shores, such as the wonder and necessity of Velveeta. Kansas also cured my brother the Agitator* of Vegetarianism. They hang you for less in her home state.

So we chose the Olive Garden. In Lynnwood. I wouldn’t recommend taking a person with any hint of dementia to the Olive Garden in Lynnwood. They would be disoriented, because they could be anywhere. They might think they were in New Jersey, or Ohio, or Indiana.

If the economy’s tanked, there was no sign of it at the Olive Garden on a Saturday night. They don’t take reservations, but the host on the phone had said they didn’t get busy until 6:00, so we figured 5:15 was early enough to beat the rush. 5:15 for me of course meant 5:00, at which time the Little Monster and I arrived to find people spilling out the door to stand in line for fifteen dollar spaghetti. (I continue to expect bland places, replicated like guppies by the hundreds in bland neighborhoods across our country, to have bland prices.) Our wait time was projected to be 20 minutes. Although the Little Monster had groused a bit that his Momster was getting us there so gosh darned early—again—he was thrilled to hold the flying saucer that would vibrate and light up when it was our turn. The flying saucer made no sense, since the host also yelled out our name when it was our turn, but it kept LM happy, so what the heck.

Kansas and the Agitator arrived early and helped us pass the time, so we were warmed up for good conversation by the time we were guided to our table. We were so merry, laughing and talking, that we could have been filmed for an Olive Garden commercial. Except we’re not blonde and thin. But, gosh, free bread sticks are such a gas! Everyone else at the Olive Garden was ecstatic about their free bread sticks, too, so it was pretty loud in there.

Of course 5:15 for the Man I Married, who was meeting us there, meant 5:30. When I phoned him to ask where he was, he said I told him 5:30.

Did not.

I asked if I should order for him. Sure, he said. Order anything. He didn’t care.

Really? Hm. I got that feeling. You know the one. The Bad Marital Scene About to Happen Because I Know I Am Going to F&ck This Up Even Though He Said ‘Anything’ Feeling (otherwise known as the BMSAHBIKIAGFTUETHSAF). I called him back. “Can you give me a general category? Chicken? Pasta?”

“No pasta,” he said.

“We’re at a PASTA RESTAURANT and you just said order anything. Anything at a pasta restaurant generally involves pasta.”

“No noodles. Anything else, though. And you did say 5:30gottagobye.”

I ordered him ribs, which he approved of when he arrived. Marital harmony saved by listening to the BMSAHBIKIAGFTUETHSAF.

I was a vegetarian for many more years than the Agitator, even, but something about sitting with Kansas brought out the snarling carnivores in us. We both ordered steak. Atop a bed of pasta.

Kansas and I were the only ones at the table drinking wine, so of course, being sisters now, our conversation got intimate. In fact, we started discussing intimates, or lack of wearing intimates. The Little Monster was across the big table, focused on a computer game that the Agitator had wisely brought along for his amusement, but he perked up. “WHAT DID YOU SAY? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?” he yelled, knowing as all kids do the instant the conversation turns to something interesting amidst all of the boring adult droning.

“Nothing,” I said. I said to the Agitator, thinking the Little Monster wouldn’t know the term, “We’re just discussing Going Commando.”

“NOT WEARING UNDERWEAR?” the Little Monster shouted.

“How did you know about Going Commando? Who taught you that?” I snapped.

“I don’t know. We just say Going Commando.”

“Saying Going Commando is NOT appropriate,” I said. “Only adults can say Going Commando. Only at the Olive Garden in Lynnwood. Never for kids to say at school.”

The Agitator sat between us during this exchange, looking back and forth at us like a spectator at a tennis match. At its close, he said to me, “I have no idea what you all were just saying. I just kept hearing something about garbanzo beans?”

Say it out loud:

Going Commando. Garbanzo Beans.

I get it. At least the garbanzo part.

We all laughed so hard we about pumped our own stomachs (which would have helped with my caloric intake count), and then we moved on to discussing farts. When the Little Monster was out of earshot, of course.

Private Parts & Bums In Need of Tighty-Whities

 

—–

*The Agitator can stir things up, or, like a washing machine, he can get the scum out.