Lions and Tigers and Bears

Something about today is not going well. I’m puttering around the house, cleaning, dusting, organizing—some of my least favorite activities. Every few minutes, I go into the kitchen to send the fax I’ve been trying to send for the last day. Finally, it occurs to me to check the jack with an old rotary phone I keep around for its vintage charm. Nothing. I try the jacks in the dining room and all of the bedrooms. Nothing. I say the F word every twelve seconds, sotto voce, because my son has a friend over.

Perhaps it’s the presence of the friend that has me off kilter. Playdates—there should be a special place in hell for whoever invented them. “Hey, why don’t you trap yourself in your house all day with your own kid and someone else’s. And try not to go insane!”

Just when you’ve figured out a few things about your own child, he enters the era of playdates, and you have to figure out all of his friends. Some of them are picky eaters. (“You’ve never had a cherry?” “You don’t like pretzels?” “You won’t eat anything green?”) Others, more irritatingly, want to be fed all the time. (Your son has learned not to expect food very often, and when he does, his standards are low. Buttered noodles are haute cuisine. High-fructose corn syrup and Red Dye No. 5 are your frenemies.)

Some children are rude, asking pointed questions about things that are none of their business, like why your dog is so badly behaved, or what that funny smell is in the basement. One wants to know why your teeth are so crooked; another wipes a booger on your front door, where it bakes in the sun and you can’t get it off for several weeks, because every time you try, you gag.

Still others want to sit on your bed and watch TV, and the sight of their dirty socks makes you tremble and shake. They eat Doritos and touch your couch. One does not seem to be accustomed to benign neglect, and follows you around the house wanting to know what you’re doing and why it’s taking so long. Perhaps he thinks the playdate is with you, rather than your son.  

Some kids seem to think you come from another planet, a very distant one, where customs are different from their own. Every question, no matter how innocuous, will be greeted with a blank stare, as though the poor child is trying to figure out the right thing to say to prevent the alien across the table from sprouting tentacles and eating him.

You are not used to these kinds of kids. You are used to kids who are tiny 40-year olds. Kids who read the jokes in The New Yorker and laugh, even if their interpretation is not the same as yours. Kids who profess to like the taste of coffee and declare the one sip of wine they had once was “fruity!” You are used to kids who play videogames rated “M” for mature (“The blood’s fake, Mom!”) and who read over your shoulder, pointing out typos.

When a friend recently asked me if I knew anybody who might want a job teaching at her son’s preschool, I said, “What about me?” It sounded like a cushy job, a cute job. Toddlers would hug and kiss me, cry when we had to be parted at the end of the day and they were returned to their mothers, with whom they’d grown bored. I would never, ever be bitten, vomited on, or pooped on. Plus, every two weeks, someone would give me an envelope with a couple of bucks in it. Sweet!

“You have to like kids,” my friend said drily.

“Oh. And I guess it’s in the morning, huh?” That left me out.

Still, I was stung. I’d always assumed I was a good mother, a loving mother. I had a vagina, how could I not be? It’s not that I don’t like kids; I do! I just like them just fine … from afar. I like them the way zoo-goers like their lions and tigers and bears—behind glass. I like them in small numbers, ideally one at a time. As the mother of an only child, I’m easily overwhelmed when small creatures, no matter how dear, outnumber me. Bunnies are adorable, but I don’t want them crawling all over me. Mice are adorable, but put me in a room full of them and I will faint dead away.

If you’re a friend of mine, I’ll forgive your kids for their little peccadilloes, like correcting me when I say “crap” or when I introduce topics of discussion they don’t think are appropriate, such as when I point out “the boobies” on the figurehead of the pirate ship ride at an amusement park.

If I really like your kids (or you, more accurately), I will suck up to them to try to make them like me. I will—as with my imaginary preschoolers—hug and kiss them, buy them presents on their birthdays and at significant milestones. I will “like” their funny anecdotes on Facebook.

But today, well, I just can’t seem to get my groove on. Perhaps it’s the rain—thirty straight hours and my neighbors are building an ark. Or maybe it’s that my husband’s out of town and I haven’t spoken to another adult for more than five minutes, except the woman behind the counter at the duckpin bowling alley.

Whatever the reason, my heart or my shoes, I think wine-thirty should start a little early today. Say, right after I take that the nice little boy home to his mother, who he’s pretty sure is not going to sprout tentacles and eat him, no matter what he says.

   

My Trip to Crazy-Town

If you’ve never slept in the backseat of your car, you really should try it, if for nothing else than the novelty of the experience. True, there are many novelties that shouldn’t be tried. Pink hair, Justin Bieber concerts, fish served with the head attached—but don’t let that stop you. I didn’t.

As you try to “sleep” in your makeshift bed, you’ll soon find yourself wishing you could lop off your legs at the knee. There’s no way for the human body to accommodate itself to the back of a Toyota, unless that body is two-years old and 35-inches long. You can try wedging your feet in front of you, between the seat and the door, or try placing them flat on the floor while the rest of your body slumps sideways, as though you’ve been shot while sitting there, minding your own backseat-of-car business. Neither of these approaches will work.

Something weird will happen to your blood pressure. The slight elevation of your hips—or your waist, more accurately—at the bump between the seats will cut off circulation to your brain. Your nose will begin to feel stuffy. Your eyes will bulge. You’ll wonder if you’re losing consciousness. 

Perhaps a little fresh air might help, but you’ll be afraid to crack the window, although you know for a fact that not even Cujo can violate an intact automobile. Not even an axe-wielding killer in the woods can get you, as long as you stay where you are. It’s the fools who get out of the car who run into trouble, and despite the fact that you’re sleeping beside a dumpster in a parking lot to begin with, your mama didn’t raise no fools.

Of course you’ll sleep in your shoes, so that you’re ready to run at the slightest hint of danger. You’ll be frightened as the first few cars pull up beside you. You’ll hold your breath. You’ll try to appear small. Surprisingly, none of the teenagers intent on using the pool at the Hampton Inn will bother to look in the backseat of the “mom car” parked next to them. No one will shriek at the sight of the presumably dead body, curled—or crammed—in the backseat. What’s a girl gotta do to get a little attention these days?

Imagine the embarrassment if you are caught. Will the Hampton Inn night manager call the police? Will they suspect you are homeless, indigent? Your clothes are a little rumpled by this point. Your breath not-so-fresh. Your car looks as though it’s on the verge of being abandoned, but it always looks that way.

Eventually, the teenagers go away. The guys in the pickup with monster-truck tires bigger than your car go away. Everybody’s snug inside their rented rooms, with pillows and blankets. With mattresses. Soon, all you hear are crickets chirping and semis trundling up and down the highway. All you see is empty sky and the insanely bright glow of halogen street lamps.     

This gives you time to think. Time to wonder if this is the best course of action, if perhaps this particular domestic dispute could have been solved in a more reasonable fashion. Perhaps you don’t have to run away from home when your spouse disappears with your child and doesn’t answer your calls or texts for seven straight hours. Perhaps he said good-bye, but you were busy with your spade and your iPod and didn’t hear or even notice his absence for several hours, until you wander inside, hot and tired from gardening, to see if anyone will feed you. Perhaps he’s not abandoning you, but afflicted with poor cell-phone reception. Soon you begin to wonder if you’ve come unhinged. Now there’s a scary thought.

Your phone pings reassuringly, voicemail or e-mail. Somebody loves you. But how to go home without losing face? Fortunately, you are rescued by your own body. You have to pee. It’s a good hour-long drive, so you leave at once. You sneak inside at two a.m., whispering to the dog to be quiet, leaving the light off in the bathroom. You slip beneath the covers, you cuddle up with the eight or ten glorious pillows on your bed.

Your husband touches your shoulder. “Where were you, Honey? Where were you?”

How to explain that you’d been to Crazy-Town. That you nearly set up residency. But you came back.

Your husband looks at you. Tomorrow you will apologize, using the words “ridiculous” and “miscommunication,” punctuated with lots of eyelash fluttering. One of your friends, when you tell her the story later, will comment: “You must be good in bed.” Hmm, you hadn’t thought of that. You will think back on your arsenal, trying to come up with something extra good.

But for now, you close your eyes and go to sleep.