5 For Friday: 📋 Things I Never Thought I’d Say To My Girls

Welcome to the jungle.

Here, things aren’t always as they seem. Survival becomes paramount. Expect the unexpected. Know that the deck is stacked against you. The odds, not in your favor. Things will never be the same.

We’re talking parenthood, y’all.

There are good things. Like when your kid hits a home run. Or aces a spelling test. Or picks her nose at the buffet undetected. There are tough times, too. Like when your kid scores in her own goal.

Or forgets a major project is due in the morning or someone does see her pick her nose in the buffet line.

In between, there are absurd moments. Times when logic is a silly notion. Days when you’d need about 17 sacks of normal just to get back to register your day as bizarro. That’s where this blog lives and thrives.

SMH

These statements aren’t good.

They aren’t bad, either. They’re uttered, followed by a shaking of the head, then attention to the matter at hand. Forgotten. Swept up at the moment and meshed into the psychedelic fabric that makes us moms and dads.

Unless you’re a blogger.

Unless you remember them and write them on a napkin or therapy bill. Or type them directly into a post window on your blog for safe keeping.

Here are five recent utterances I’ve made that not even Nostradamus or Ron Jaworski could have predicted, and a slice of the absurdity that surrounded it. I’d love to know your utterances, too, and the absurdity that surrounded it.

For posterity. For clarity. For unity.

Photo by hermaion on Pexels.com

1. Camdyn, don’t jump rope with toilet paper in your mouth!

It takes an extraordinary turn of events to produce the right circumstances for this sort of statement.

A mouth injury. Minor. A lack of gauze in the house. A little 7-year-old ingenuity, to stem the negligible bleeding. The impatience you need for such a kid to begin jump-roping without waiting for the toilet-paper bleeding deterrent to take effect.

That very sentence hasn’t been uttered since.

Photo by Eugene Dorosh on Pexels.com

2. Hayden, come help me destroy the Eiffel Tower

Blogging about this, I understand, might lead to a visit from Homeland Security. But let me explain. This Eiffel Tower was rescued from her big sister’s eighth-grade dance. It’s made of cardboard, Christmas lights, and a couple of cinder blocks (not included).

I stuffed it – oh, about 12 feet of it – into my Grand Am after my clean-up shift post-dance.

I took it because Madison has a Paris theme going in her room (I know! After all that rhetoric about hating other countries. We agreed to hate only those countries who’ve tried to kill Indiana Jones. Sounds completely reasonable to me.)

Back to the tower, Mr. President.

Madison took a panel of the towel to use in her room, leaving 72 percent of the tower remaining for the recycling truck. Thing is, even for replica international landmarks, you must make your recyclables fit in the bin.

So, the girls and I disassembled the Eiffel Tower in a blur of scissors, manual tearing, and well-placed karate chops. And we did this weeks before the Olympics ever started.

3. Madison, good thing your short shorts are so short.

Yeah. My oldest baby is not a baby anymore. So I spend an appropriate amount of time walking between her and the lusty gazes of boys and men who don’t realize how close they are to suffering an accidental yet still quite debilitating eye injury.

Or sternum fracture.

One day, in McDonald’s, Madison had a close call with a glob of ketchup that, had she been wearing school-uniform-compliant shorts and not short shorts, might have caused a laundry disaster.

Luckily, the ketchup slopped from her overtaxed french fry and onto her bare leg.

Hey. Are you looking at my kid?

Photo by Emre Can on Pexels.com

4. Camdyn, get out of the refrigerator.

Haven’t we all wondered if the light bulb stays on when the refrigerator door closes? Out of the corner of my eye, I thought she was searching for a secret stash of cheese, rogue tortilla, or hidden package of kiwi.

She was pushing the light button and watching the light bulb turn off. Lesson learned, right? Not quite.

She held the button down and attempted to close the door behind her. Not a great idea, unless you’re Indiana Jones, trying to survive a nuclear holocaust.

If you’re a curious 7-year-old, you’ll just wind up on the news. And so will your daddy.

5. Hey girls, I finally heard the unedited version of wil.i.am’s “Scream and Shout.” And I thumbs-upped it on Pandora.

There’s a lot of station-button pushing done in my family. I assume it’s that way for you, too. That Bruno Mars song, when he sounds like Sting in a Police song? Way cool, but the lyrics … make me squirm.

My beloved Ke$ha can’t sing for 17 consecutive seconds without a cringe-worthy lyric.

I’d heard Camdyn singing the “ooh, ee-oh, ee-oh EE-oh” part of this wil.i.am song (featuring Brittney Spears), and it was really cute, but I didn’t know the lyrics until I heard it on Pandora.

When I told Madison and Hayden I’d heard it on Pandora, the unedited version, they chuckled a little. Meaning, they’d already heard the saucy version, somehow.

Of course, I thumbs-upped it on Pandora, ensuring it’ll play on a more frequent loop, right along with other saucy songs from Red Hot Chili Peppers and the like.

They’ll probably come on right after Charlotte Church.

I wonder if the FBI puts you on a special list if you get Brittney’s curses and Charlotte Church’s verses playing on your Pandora. Probably.

Especially if they see you with your teenager in short-shorts in McDonald’s.