Now my husband and I were shifting into hard sell mode. We whipped out my lap top and pulled up a U-tube of Hacksaw and Hammer effortlessly spinning basketballs on their fingers and balancing them on their noses. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words. It took about 20 seconds and one particularly humorous play in which Flip loses his shirt and shorts and powers down the court in his underwear before Eli was hooked.
I acknowledge that I am surely the only parent who continuously breaks the unwritten rule to use only Websteresque appropriate language in the presence of children. But have you checked the dictionary lately? Not that this makes it right, but the “F” word is in there, right between “fucoid” (relating to or resembling the rockweeds) and “fuchsite” (a greenish variety of muscovite, high in chromium).
“She did nothing. Like she always does,” he said in a cheery, non-judgmental tone. He was simply stating a fact, as he knew it. I was crushed. Memories of my tween pals and me sitting around after school lamenting the uselessness of our stay-at-home mothers flooded my memory banks. Pay-back really is a bitch.
He was so irked that he placed a leftover empty salad plate at the edge of the table to tempt one of the passing waiters. But as soon as she eyed it and moved in for the kill, he swept his napkin over it and slid it to safety beneath the table. Then, not finding this at all amusing, she outstretched her hand like a stern school teacher who had discovered the classroom clown hiding a perilous pea-shooter. “I’m going to take it anyway,” she chastised, “so you might as well give it up.”
I tried to prime Eli that it might be scary, hoping that maybe he’d opt out before I had to plink down 7 bucks and swelter alfresco in a long line of muggles outside the theatre
I want to be the June Cleaver of sitcom fame. But I’m not. I’m more a child-laden version of Mary Richards from the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Imagine me, in the middle of a snowy Minnesota roadway, tossing my infamous beret into the air and trying to catch it victoriously while also reigning in two impish little creatures who think it’s just fun to dart into the street between racing taxi cabs.
