- Video with children dancing to a hard rock/metal song
- Women: HOW THE FUCK COULD THEY EXPLOIT CHILDREN WITH THAT SATANIC MUSIC? THIS IS NOT OKAY... THIS IS NOT OKAY IN THE FUCKING SLIGHTEST GET YOUR FUCKING PITCHFORKS EVERYBODY. WE WILL ATTACK THIS ARTISTS AND BANDS AT FULL FORCE TO GET THEIR MUSIC OFF THE SHELVES IN STORES.
- Video with children dancing to pop/rap song with lyrics about doing drugs and having sex
- Women: DAAAAAAAAAAAAW. AIN'T THAT ADORABLE?? THEY ARE SO TALENTED THEY SHOULD BECOME FAMOUS! SO CUUUUUTE!! LET'S LET THEM MEET THESE ARTISTS THAT THEY WERE LISTENING AND DANCING TO!
Lucy, you got some splainin to do
Since I’m sure you’re still staring at my blog in awe of the photo posted below, I thought I’d take a moment to explain.
I have my mind set on finding an awesome career. It could lead me to a new, big, exciting city. I also admit that my only self defense lessons are from an Oprah episode a million years ago. So, when I heard that my gym* was offering a self defense class I decided to sign up.
In true suburb fashion it was me, seven soccer moms, one soccer mom’s son and a retired military instructor.
After a two hour lesson, if a man grabs my wrist I am prepared. Actually if a woman grabs my wrist I’m prepared. And, if there is a six by one board preventing me from attaining my goals I will crack that baby in two.
Unfortunately, although going an hour over the allotted time, those are my only forms of defense. I asked what I should do if I was seated when grabbed or if the attacker was too tall for me to knock in the chin (apparently there is a button of nerves in the chin that if hit appropriately, hence the wood chop, will send him stumbling), but the instructor said we didn’t have enough time to learn things like that.
I’m still a little better prepared than I was. Maybe YouTube will offer some defense moves and I’ll always remember SING (solar plexus, instep, nose, groin) compliments of Miss Congeniality. And, I must admit, I love bragging about the piece of wood that I broke. Take a moment to be impressed again.
*This gym is also where I accidentally attended a “Silver Sneakers” (aka senior citizen) yoga class. I wasn’t alarmed that everyone in the class was 70+, however, it did bother me that we continually placed blocks under our hips for comfort and were told not to stretch too far. Oh the suburbs.
In which I'm a soccer mom...
My eight year old daughter T is something of a dilettante when it comes to sports. She’s getting to the point where she’s now played a lot of them—swim team, baseball, basketball, some track—but she doesn’t really like any of them. I think this is okay. She reads a ton and she’ll spend hours just drawing. These are things she likes and I’m not a believer in forcing kids to do things they don’t like, just so long as they’re doing something constructive. I suspect as she gets older she’s going to veer towards theatre and academic competitions and that will be great. But for now she’s still in that trying everything out phase and this fall she’s trying out soccer.
She’s on a team of a bunch of very nice girls, most of whom have been playing together on the same team for four years now. As such, all the moms know each other super well and discuss the ins and outs of being moms to no end during practices. I watch the practices and cheer the girls on. It’s weird being a crowd of one, not only as concerns my approach to practice, but also due to the fact that I’m the only dad out there. The moms are cordial enough to me, but they aren’t exactly warm. The first day several told me how hard this would be for my daughter as she’d never played soccer before and their girls had been playing together for years. I watched practice for five minutes and my suspicions were confirmed: these are eight year old girls, and they just aren’t very good at sports yet and having not played comes with zero disadvantages at this level. T will be just fine, because she too isn’t particularly aggressive and spends equal parts of every practice not paying attention at all, happily kibitzing with the other girls, and playing hard and well in very short and unpredictable bursts. Not that the moms would know that, however, because they don’t pay any attention and are too busy talking about the challenges of being moms who have kids involved in multiple activities.
The other day the subject turned to religion, and they started discussing their respective churches and gossiping about various attendees that they all know. It’s such a small town. The tacit shared understanding in the conversation was that even though they don’t all go to the same church, they do all GO to church—in an established Christian religion—because what kind of an American wouldn’t? At any rate, it got to a point in the conversation at which every one had spoken but me (not unusual) and there was a kind of awkward pause as they looked at me and waited for me to chime in. I just smiled, offering nothing, but knowing I would tell them I was a Scientologist looking for converts if they asked. I think they sensed the coming of a rocking of the boat, for they turned away and the conversation went elsewhere and I turned back to practice just in time to see my daughter score a goal, to which she responded by bending over and picking a fat fall dandelion from the ground and happily blowing its seed parachutes into air.
