Fact of Life.

Steve caught Alex coloring on the side of the house with a black crayon yesterday.

"Hey!" Steve reprimanded him. "You don't do that!! You don't color on the side of the house! Come on, you know better. You know the rules."

"When do I get to make the rules?" Alex sulked.

"You don't. I make the rules. Mommy makes the rules. And at school, your teachers make the rules. When you grow up, you can make the rules. Our job is to teach you what the rules are so you can learn to get along with other people. And nobody is going to get along with you if you're busy writing your name on the side of their house."

Alex didn't like this at all, and why should he? It hardly seems fair to never get to make any rules of his own that Steve and I would be obligated to follow. Unfortunately for Alex and Christopher, that's the way it works in our house.

As far as discipline goes, Steve and I fall in that middle ground of parenting styles, where we don't spank but don't go for that whole non-coercive parenting method, either, where you never put your foot down and tell your lippy five year old to get the hell in the car because today's the day for their brother's doctors appointment and in case they were wondering, the magic word is now.

The way I look at it is this: It is the parent's (utterly thankless) job to guide their Tazmanian Devils toward a type of behavior that won't get them arrested, thrown out of bars, or have various social service agencies after them with past due notices for child support while at the same time imbuing them with a sense of adventure, curiosity, and a strong will that goes with a high sense of self worth. It is in their best interest to trust us, to trust that we love them and that we regard their well-being as our highest priority.

So what do you do when one child will not stop pulling the other's hair, or one refuses to quit playing in the middle of the road, or one thinks it's hilarious to unbuckle himself or his brother out of the carseat and tumble all over the station wagon when it's hurtling down the expressway? How do you get the message across that their behavior can not and will not be tolerated and it needs to stop right this instant? And most importantly, where is that razor's edge of a line that we must walk that separates ineffective pleading with the little criminals from a crushing authoritarianism that breaks their spirit?

Here's the completely wretched, yet totally true answer: There isn't a magic tool you can use or set of words you can say that will get them to stop incessantly pushing the power button on your computer before they destroy your hard drive. With Alex, I searched for the magical solution for over two years. I tried yelling (and um, still try yelling sometimes. Never works.) I tried speaking in a very soft, very serious voice. I tried reasoning. I tried BECAUSE I SAID SO. (this actually sometimes works, if your aim is to get your child to just shut up for one red hot minute.) I tried sitting on him. I tried making him stand in a corner. God help me, I even spanked him once. And then I learned that he had a behavioral disorder, that he is unable to process what I'm saying, no matter how loudly I say it. That sometimes he is physically unable to calm down. That he has a genuine problem with impulse control and writes on the walls, only to wonder later why he would do such a thing. Though therapy, I learned the only thing that really works with Alex is redirection and antecedent planning, i.e. - if I'm taking him somewhere where he needs to be quiet, bring a toy or coloring materials to help him successfully behave himself. Don't send him into as attorney's office for a meeting and expect him to sit quietly for an hour. It's not possible.

We tried the same thing with Christopher, and yes, it works, but you know what else works with him? Making him stand in the corner. It just kills him to have to stand in the corner, and he is very, very sorry he pulled Alex's hair, and won't do it again! Just don't make him stand in the corner! Different children are different people and require different solutions, and damn it, that's hard! That requires a lot of energy and thought and work, and who the hell has time for that? I sure don't. It would have been much easier to have broken their spirits from the get-go, once I got over the obstacle of killing my self-respect and learned to ignore the gnawing ache in my soul that often accompanies the guilt and self-loathing a decent person feels when inflicting deliberate cruelty onto another human being.

Discussions surrounding creative discipline have been all the rage this summer, led by Christian fundamentalist Lisa Whelchel, former child star of the sitcom The Facts of Life and author of Creative Discipline. I had thought I was learning to be creative with my silver dollar buzzwords and catchphrases like "redirection" and "antecedent planning", but that's just pattycake compared to Whelchel's advice. You see, inspired creativity, the kind that's truly memorable, can often be cruel. And by her fundamentalist logic, if cruelty aids in obedience, then cruelty is good.

The most talked about of Whelchel's discipline methods* is sprinkling hot sauce on children's tongues for swearing and lying and backtalk. Steve had a roommate who used to do this to her dog, an American Eskimo who was prone to shrill yapping early in the morning. It didn't work on the dog, who was barking because it had to pee. Steve's roommate put hot sauce on the dog's tongue because she was too lazy and hung over to get up and walk the animal she willingly agreed to take responsibility for. What would have worked better on Daisy the dog? Boring old antecendent planning. Don't get so drunk you can't walk your own dog. Same with a child. Hurting a child by dousing their tongue in a fiery chemical is lazy parenting. You are one lazy mofo, Whelchel.

But Blair doesn't stop with giving bad press to the Tabasco company, no.**

"If your child won't hold your hand across the street, hold her hair," she blithely instructs. "If your child plays with matches, burn a favorite toy to teach him a lesson."

Burn a favorite toy to teach him a lesson. Think about that.

Alex has a Special Blanket. He's had it since he was born and sleeps with it every night. Steve and I refuse to let him take it out of the house (the only exception to that was when I was giving birth to his brother and he had to spend the night at his Uncle Dan's)

He LOVES this blanket, y'all. He needs it. He holds it in his arms when he sleeps at night. He can not sleep without it. The bond he has with this blanket is so strong that I know he'll love it forever, even when he's too grown up to admit it. I plan to save it for him in my cedar chest so he'll always know where it is, no matter where he goes or how old he is. That blanket is home. That blanket is love. That blanket is emotional security and comfort. It's a beacon of his childhood, when the world as he saw it was a simple place, and people were mostly good. When he leaves childhood behind and walks down the path to whatever life stretches out in front of him, that blanket will be one of the lights that he will see shine when he turns back to remember. It is one of the roots that allows him to stretch up and high while still providing the security of a familar past.

And one by one those lights will wink out on him: Steve and I will sell his childhood home, Steve will die, I will die, Christopher will grow up and leave him to live his own life. But if I'm careful, and if he can dig in the cedar chest past my vibrator without freaking out, he'll find that one small piece of simple love left.

And I'm supposed to set it on fire to teach him a routine lesson?

Seriously, what lesson would I be teaching him? That I'm an inhuman monster? What if I had come across Whelchel's book and burned his blanket before I learned of his disability? What then?

One of the customer reviews of Whelchel's book on the Amazon web site was glowingly positive, admonishing parents like me who are horrified by these practices to "grow up and be a parent".

If being a parent means manifesting frightening, abusive, totalitarian control over my small boy, who is more baby than man, then I will renounce the title of parent immediately.

I will never understand why we, as a secular nation, tolerate the subjugation and abuse of human beings in the name of religious freedom and "traditional values". I'm not a religious person. I would never be able to sleep at night after doing something that wicked. And inflicting that kind of psychological abuse on a small child in the name of love is wicked, no doubt. But I'm not a fundamentalist Christian. I can't pawn off my abusive behavior on God and say I'm just following orders from the man upstairs, so what can I do? I have to take responsibility for my actions. And my responsibility to my boys is to make them into men who will not inflict cruelty onto those smaller and weaker than they in the name of "following orders". Men who will question authority when said authority seems to be getting out of hand rather than displaying a blind obedience forced into them when they were babies. Men who can make their own decisions about their destiny. Men who have the courage to refuse to be sent to a foreign country to kill innocent people under clearly false pretenses.

But go ahead and yank your kids across the street by their hair, Whelchel. I can't stop you. Just stop pretending Jesus told you to do it.


*************************************************

*and, of course, that of her husband. Welchel may have written the book on creative child abuse discipline, but as a fundamentalist, I have no doubt she is in submission to her husband and graciously hands over the riding crop when he is in residence.

**The makers of Tabasco, the most popular brand of hot sauce, have issued a public statement speaking out against the practice of "hot-saucing".

Links.

1.) Blog reader Vena provided this link:

Spiderman reviews crayons.

2.) My friend Funnie, who to my knowledge does not have a blog and we as a nation are lesser for it, had the singular experience of going to a Hell House, a haunted house produced by fundamentalist Christian churches with the intention of scaring the attendee with graphically depicted scenes of various Fundamentalist "sins": homosexuality, attending a rave, suicide, and of course, abortion, with the hopes that they will come to Fundamentalist Jesus. Judging from Funnie's behavior both prior to and after her trip to Fundieland, I must conclude that she's still the Godless heathen she always was, albeit a heathen with a new respect for the high production values with which the Fundies display their homophobia.

I prefer to keep religious zealots at more of a distance, but Funnie's adventure did interest me enough to rent Hell House, the documentary. I find it difficult to believe that such hyperinflated melodrama - "You took ecstacy and went to a rave and got gangraped and killed yourself and now you're going to HELL, ha ha ha!" - actually works on anybody, but evidently 1 in 5 people get "saved" directly afterwards by waiting ministry. It's nearing Halloween season again, and look who's doing a Hell House this year.

Featuring David Cross, Sarah Silverman, Bill Maher, and Traci Lords. It opens tonight and runs through October 31st, and is causing me a certain amount of physical pain that I can not go.

However much money it costs, it would be worth it to have David Cross bring me to Jesus.

Mostly Alex's Birthday Stuff, but First: Links and Petty Crime.

Link Number One. This explains so much! Like the unrelenting popularity of both dick jokes and the Olsen twins.
(via Defamer)


Link Number Two. Calling all hot women of the Lord! My favorite part of this site was this dating tip: If he gets angry that you won't put out, clarify to him that W.W.J.D does NOT mean "Who Would Jesus Do". (via Jesus' General)

Now, petty crime: If you're like me, and of course you are, you've often wished you were a much better writer, and read some of the fine blogs I've linked on the right with that special ache in the solar plexus caused by the even blend of joy and envy. I think I've sat here at my desk and pretended to have written something that each person on my blogroll actually wrote. Lately I've really been getting into Amanda over at Mousewords, to the point where I'm about to try and get a friendship going between Amanda and Grace, just so I can share it vicariously. Because they both live in Austin, and I being in Chicago, I can't really hang out with either one of them, but being a feminist matchmaker sounds like fun. And God knows I've spent some time passing off their writing as my own to an invisible audience who are awestruck by my stolen genius and wit. And a lot of people feel that way about Julia from Tequila Mockingbird and Sour Bob, to the extent that their posts have been stolen twice. By the same screwy people. Such is the price of being a hot shit. Now, on to the really important subject: Alex's fifth birthday, and accompanying party.

I've never thrown one of these little soirees before, and the jury is still out on the results. Either it was a refreshing change of pace from the usual affairs or a complete bust, I don't know. Steve and I live in the unpleasant realm of the Broke but Busy, so we just didn't have time or money to rent a pony and a balloon animal-maker and one of those moonwalker tents that kids can crawl into and bounce up and down until they lose the contents of their stomach. What we provided instead was the Fellger Park playground on Sunday afternoon for a couple of hours, a cake, some snacks, and a Spongebob Squarepants pinata. I was going to bring beer, too, for the parents, because God knows I would have appreciated it, but Steve launched into a long lecture about drinking and driving and responsibility and my lack thereof, so the adults were stuck with bottled water.

While Alex was in school on Friday morning, Christopher and I went to Party City to load up on supplies, paper plates, napkins, forks and spoons, cups, and most importantly, bright yellow gift bags stuffed with, how shall I describe this? Cheap crap from the clearance bin. I had wanted a summery August theme for the party decorations, and the God of Cheap Crap was clearly smiling on me, because all the summer Crap was reduced for quick sale. Here's what you get if you are a five year old attending a Wilson birthday party: remarkably shitty neon Terminator style sunglasses guaranteed to have the lenses pop out at the merest brush of a two-year-old's finger, a plastic royal blue Hawaiian lei, bubbles cased in a plastic ice cream cone (this was actually pretty neat), miniature soft footballs, dinosaur stickers, a plastic jointed snake, a sample-sized jar of Playdoh, and a miniature plastic gas pump stuffed with foul tasting Nerd-sized hard candy. Friday night was devoted to stuffing 10 bright yellow bags and cursing the horrible people who did not RSVP. People? Respondez, s'il vous plait. So I can know how many gift bags to make. Out of the 15 children invited, nine responded. Only one person responded to say no. So I had 8 confirmed guests. If the other six had showed up, four of them would have been shit out of luck, and that's not right - not right for your kid to go without a gift bag because you were too lazy to call me, and not right for me to get stuck with six extra snakes with lame sunglasses and nasty candy.

I finished complaining about the gift bags and hid them on top of the bookshelves before working on the pinata. I was parked in front of the TV while I worked, glassily watching the first season of Oz. I had bought a bag labelled "Pinata toys" at Party City - more cheap plastic crap - and had shoved about a fourth of the bag into the pinata when I glanced down and noticed that I was shoving in, along with the Groucho Marx glasses and tiny tops, a bunch of candy colored toy guns. Oh no! How very Charlton Heston of me! This would not do. I picked through the rest of the bag and pulled out about 13 guns and threw them away. I estimated that roughly 5 had been lost inside the pinata. Good enough. My PC pinata was loaded for bear, my back hurt, I had to be up with Christopher in five hours, time for bed.

At seven the following morning, I was asleep on the floor inside a Spongebob tent that Steve had bought Alex for his birthday. Lately it's been impossible to get Christopher to cuddle up with me after his bottle of milk and go back to sleep like he used to, so I lie there until Alex wakes up, ignoring Christopher's VERY LOUD demands for a 5 a.m. playmate. The door to his bedroom opened up and I heard him sneaking down the stairs.

"Hi, Bro!" chirped Christopher, running to the foot of the stairs.

"Shut up, butt pirate," whispered Alex.

There are only two phrases that Alex has been expressly forbidden from uttering. Guess which two? (I say "only two" because, despite having me for a parent, he has yet to shout "fucking shit!" when frustrated.)

The next thing out of his mouth? "Will you get those yellow bags down for me?"

I sat up and carefully explained to him that those were gift bags for his birthday guests on Sunday, and that he would be getting plenty of presents, presents that would not crumble into bits after a round of tepid play.

He asked for the bags all day long. Fucking shit!

Sunday finally rolled around and the coveted bags, tablecloths, party supplies, beach towels, diaper bags, camera, cake, and three coolers were loaded into the station wagon, and off we went. We tried to get there early, and actually were ten minutes early, but were still beaten to the park by one of the moms who lived in the neighborhood and hung out at Fellger Park with the kids every day.

"Did you bring any beer?" she asked.

My friend Elle showed up. "So, no beer, huh?" she said.

Alex's school friend Pascal, a recent French-Canadian transfer, showed up with family in tow.

"Capri Suns for the kids in the blue cooler, drinks for grown ups in the white cooler," I told his parents.

"Ah, some wine would be great," said Pascal's mother.

Stone cold sober, we kept an eye on the kids while more guests trickled in, and three uninvited guests made themselves at home - a boy, a girl, and a squirrel. Of the three, the squirrel was the most obnoxious. We all watched as it climbed down from a nearby tree and into the Pascal family's red backpack. The back pack twitched and jumped, and after a few seconds the squirrel emerged with a large red sack of raisins.

Ben's mother hurried over to the squirrel, using the time-tested reliable squirrel repelling trick of waving her hands and it and scolding "Shoo!" The squirrel astonished everybody by standing its ground and feigning aggression.

Never in my life have I seen an aggressive squirrel before, and evidently neither had Ben's mother, because she looked around, totally nonplussed. Steve and George's dad marched over in order to swell the ranks against the squirrel. Now outnumbered three to one, it reluctantly crawled up the trunk of the tree, stopping halfway when it looked like The Raisin Defenders were going to leave the battle too soon and rejoin the party.

"Hahhhh!" said Steve to the squirrel.

"Hahhhh!" it said smartly right back.

Steve took a picture of it, for, you know, display at the Post Office, and it disappeared to the upper branches of the tree and into a big sloppy nest.

"I'd never thought of squirrels as vermin before until just now," said Ben's mother. Five minutes later the squirrel had found the birthday cake. Steve got to it before it managed to lift up the Saran Wrap, but there was a slight squirrel indention in the frosting nonetheless.

Despite the squirrel and the throngs of pigeons divebombing us, we still managed to get squirrel cake served and "Happy Birthday" sung and the pinata pulled (in today's child safety age, we no longer blindfold children and hand them a baseball bat. Now they march up and pull rigged strings. The winning string, pulled by Christopher, unleashes the trap bottom and the candy and toy guns fall out.) and only two children cried, one due to a see saw incident and the other out of pique. By then end of the party, Alex, Tom, Grant, Pascal, and Pascal's older brother were chasing each other all over the playground, shooting each other with the toy guns and screaming hysterically, while the rest of the loot lay on the ground while the toddlers listlessly picked through it.

And that was our supercheap, activity-free birthday party. Alex had a wonderful time, and loved his gifts. Here's the best thing about five-year-olds: On Tuesday, when I was taking Alex to school we stopped at a red light next to a very dirty, wild-looking man with a cardboard sign that read, "Homeless please help".

"Why is that man standing in the middle of the road?"

"He wants money," I replied.

"Well, we should give him some. We have lots of money, and I had a great birthday party."

As long as he's got friends and a birthday cake, he thinks he's rich.

He's awesome.

The Smaller, Sadder Cousin to the Supervillan.

Seriously, now: If you were a criminal, and you'd spent a considerable amount of time removing each lock from the door of a sex toy shop, including removing the deadbolt completely, only to hear the alarm sound, wouldn't you at least grab a hand full of DVDs before the cops showed up? I sure would, which is why I ended up mulling all weekend long as to why someone would go through all the trouble of getting our store open at 3 in the morning and then taking off without stealing anything.

Not that I'm condoning the break-in, and not that I'm not grateful that nothing is missing. It just doesn't make sense.

Okay, so: you're going to break into a store. The front door is too risky, so you try the back, where there's less chance of getting caught - that is, if you can get past the two locked outside doors to get into the gangway, plus a third to get into the building. You've got to expect a burglar alarm. To play it safe, you'd figure on a quick response time, so you'd come in when the store was open to pick out what you want.

Which brings me to my second question: why would anybody want to steal a bunch of vibrators? What is the exchange rate on the street between the Rabbit Pearl and some crack? Will it buy an 1/8th of pot? I have no idea.

This was the single most baffling crime that I had ever been a victim of. You know what it looked like? A mistake.

"Oh, sorry, my bad. I thought you had something worth taking. I'll just let myself out."

So today the locksmith came and butched up the door for us. He ended up doing a good job, although my confidence in him was shaken when he first arrived and was unable to open the door and had to come and get me to help him. I excused myself briefly to the woman who had just walked in and went back to the office to lift the hook out of the eye. You know, that old hook and eye latch they put in old gas station unisex bathrooms that make you push really hard to pee as fast as possible before Bubba gently pushes up against the door and that flimsy excuse for security pops right open? The locksmith got trapped by that kind of lock.

I came back out of the office making a mental note to check his work. The woman was waiting at the counter for me.

"Did you get broken into this weekend?" she asked.

"Yeah, I did. Why, did you?"

"Yeah. I just wanted you to know that I know who did it. My ex-boyfriend has this friend - well, not really a friend but some guy he parties with - anyway, this guy wanted to bring a girl over to our apartment and fuck in our bed. My ex (we're still living together, but I'm moving out next week) said no, which I can't believe he took a stand about something, but whatever. Anyway, this stoner guy got really pissed and broke into our apartment with this girl and they broke a glass in our bedroom, by accident I think but there was glass everywhere, and they fucked on our bed anyway. Before they broke into our apartment they broke into your store by mistake."

"They went through all that effort just to have sex? Wouldn't checking into a motel or doing it in the park be easier and, I don't know, not a felony?"

She shrugged. "He's a drug addict," she said, as if crack heads breaking into people's apartments to have wild monkey sex in strangers' beds was an established pattern of behavior.

"Did they steal anything from you?"

"No," she said, "and I had a stack of cash sitting on my dresser. Never touched it."

By this time the locksmith had joined us, managing to escape the office without snagging his sleeve on the office door and getting hopelessly caught.

"Some guy broke into two different places just to have sex somewhere?" he said, shaking his head.

"Yeah, I think he's pissed at my ex about something and wanted to get back at him."

"Man," said the locksmith, "I've really heard everything working this job. Yesterday a couple came in and the woman was handcuffed, hands and feet. The man had an overcoat draped over her because you can't get dressed when you're handcuffed [note from me: a big nightgown might have worked better than a coat, but she doesn't really sound like a big nightgown kind of girl.] And then lots of times we get cops bringing perps in when their handcuff key stops working. That's the worst! The perps kicking and swearing and fighting, and we gotta deal with that.

"Hey," he said, looking around cheerfully, "maybe those guys bought the handcuffs from you!"

"Not me," I replied. "I don't carry metal handcuffs."

"Why not?"

"You just told us why not! Use velcro instead. Less risk for embarrassment."

"My God, I didn't realize what kind of shop this was," giggled the woman. "He didn't even take any condoms?"

"Nope," I said.

"Damn," she snorted. "That is dumb."

Gold.

I remember getting into a discussion about marriage with my dad a couple of years ago. His view: Once you get married, you have to stick with it, no matter how completely and utterly miserable you are. My view: Augh! There's no way I'm doing that! That's bullshit!

Although neither one of us managed to convince the other that day that our own point of view was the correct one, I still admit to feeling a bit of awe that my mom and dad reached their 50th wedding anniversary yesterday. Fifty years! And in all of those fifty years, neither one of them got arrested for trying to strangle the other one. I still think my dad's not factoring in all the million what-ifs that I always come up with that necessitate divorce, but I don't think he was talking about situations of abuse or incest or non-stop infidelity or a piano drops out of the sky onto your spouse's head, leaving them a vegetable for life. Rather, I think he meant that after 50 years 25 years 10 years 6 months awhile in an average marriage, you're going to come to a point where the sound of your spouse's even, rhythmic breathing late at night will propel you to stand over their sleeping faces with a pillow clutched in your feverish hands. (Not that I've ever done that. I can't speak for Steve.) Instead of calling it quits at that point, my dad believes, you live through it until it gets better. I would also add that, in addition to suffering through, you might want to remind yourself of what you liked about your partner in the first place that made you do something as crazy as getting married to them.

But my kinder, gentler editorializing aside, that's my dad's marital advice for the New Millenium: Suffer through it, you whiny fucking baby.

Oh, and it helps to be married to someone like my mother, who frequently offers advice such as this:

Mom: I came up with a new slogan for your store.

Me: Great! Let's hear it.

Mom: "Shop with us and we'll get you pregnant."

Me: Jesus, Mom! Steve's tired enough as it is!

Mom: That's not what I meant!

That's fifty years of quality entertainment right there, folks.

We Probably Won't Be Getting That Starfleet Academy.

Did I mention that my friend Elle took me to see Madonna at the United Center last month? Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis were very dismissive of her, of the show she put on, and, in particular, the cover of John Lennon's "Imagine" that she did. It's true that if she had just stood on stage for two hours with a guitar and did nothing else I probably would have resigned myself to getting drunk and sleeping through the acoustic strains of "Papa Don't Preach". I saw Melissa Etheridge play an acoustic set at the Chicago Theatre three years ago and she kicked ass, but I might very possibly have died of ennui had Madonna done the same. But, being the smart cookie that she is, Madonna instead built a gorgeous spectacle featuring circus performers, dancers, costumes, and staggeringly beautiful, slightly disturbing video imagery playing behind it all. Totally worth spending Elle's money to go see, and I highly recommend you start sucking up to her now to pave the way for Madonna's next world tour.

I'm not going to harsh on Kot and DeRogatis too much here, mostly because they are directly responsible for saving my life on several occasions. Sound Opinions, their weekly radio show, has proven to be the only thing that manages to keep me fully awake during the long drive home from work. Kot & DeRogatis once managed to snap me out of a literal dream I was having while I was doing 65 mph on the Stevenson Expressway. If I ever do plow into the side of an overpass and perish in a fiery death, I can guarantee it won't be on a Tuesday night. That being said, they gleefully picked apart her cover of "Imagine", saying it was the worst cover of the Lennon song ever done. I don't know about that, since I haven't heard them all, but I will admit that if you needed to make a beer run during the show, that was the time to go. I think that was actually when Elle went, and trust me when I tell you that she lost her mind during what she called "Madonna Week". She blew off company meetings, she posted spies outside Madonna's hotel, she prowled city playgrounds in hopes of catching a glimpse of Lourdes and Rocco, and she went to every single Chicago show. And bought a ticket to one of the shows in Miami, too, but I think she may have drawn the line there and re-sold it. So if Elle's walking out on Madonna in favor of a Goose Island brew, I think we can safely conclude it was one of the show's weaker moments.

I stayed to listen to it, though, and watch the suffocating imagery of war-damaged children that ran during the number, and I came to a slightly different conclusion than our city's venerable rock critics did; that being, it's really difficult to ruin this song. Madonna doesn't have a very strong voice, the musical arrangement wasn't that hot, and the video footage was so over the top it almost gave me the rebellious urge to tell a small child there is no Santa - But - the message of "Imagine" is so strong that it surmounted all the negatives.

And I'm one of those people who thinks it should be illegal for anybody but Bette Midler to sing "The Rose" or Leonard Cohen to sing "Chelsea Hotel".

I didn't actually want to talk about Madonna, though. I wanted to talk about Andrea Nemerson and San Francisco Sex Information.

She wrote a very nice blog post yesterday about me, which of course I love. However, it was her lead-in about her work at San Francisco Sex Information, a non-profit sex education center where she works as a volunteer that was the eye opener for me. She spoke of the discouragement she feels when the center is forced to disconnect their toll free number - not due to lack of funds or government interference, but too many people insisted on trying to use the volunteers as unwilling sex partners for whatever perverted little fantasy they felt like indulging in but were too cheap to pay for, so now their toll free number is history. The SFSI was one of the only places in the country where you could call to get accurate, detailed, non-judgemental sex education for free. Now you can't. This lifeline has been cut off for everybody else because, as Nemerson said, so many people refused to stop being dickheads.

Yeah, it sucks for me when some conniving asshole throws a tantrum in my store and hurls bad erotica at my head, but let's be clear: I do what I do for money. Nemerson and her coworkers at SFSI take time out of their week to educate others for free, out of the goodness of their hearts. The information at SFSI is based on factual research, with no religious or political agenda behind it. You might call Nemerson with a question about how to practice coprophilia, and she will give you just the smelly facts, ma'am, with no personal opinion behind it. Does she have a personal opinion about it? I'm sure she does, but SFSI's goal is to educate, and nobody wants to listen to a contemptuous teacher. In the current political climate where the administration is telling people that condoms aren't all that effective for pregnancy and AIDS prevention, is yanking prenatal and gynecological funding across the globe because abortion is mentioned as an option, and married women in countries like Nigeria who have no legal right to refuse sex from their HIV positive husbands are told abstinence is the only way to go, it should be painfully clear how important an organization like SFSI is.

I've never discussed this with Nemerson, but I'm willing to bet she doesn't lose any sleep over any condemnation she gets from people on the religious right. I'm sure she believes, like me, that being called a whore by a tight-assed minority is a small price to pay for contributing to the common good. And I'm sure she and I also feel that people are not only able to handle accurate information on sexuality, pregnancy, sex education, abortion, and STD prevention, but also have a right to receive said information.

What gets us down are the people who take advantage of the services we provide and use it in a manner that is harmful to our respective organizations. What gets me down, personally, are feminists who phone me to tell me I'm not really woman-centered because I won't take their used vibrator back, who tell me I'm not really a feminist because they don't like the name of some of the bath products I carry, who tell me the war in Iraq was all my fault because NBC did a story on the Honeysuckle Shop and during my interview I didn't mention that our troops were being exposed to uranium, and they're going to tell the whole wide world that I'm NOT A REAL FEMINIST AND THEY WON'T STOP UNTIL I GO OUT OF BUSINESS.

You might think I carry some fucked-up shit. Hell, I think I carry some fucked-up shit. But next to that fucked up shit is me, telling men not to put numbing cream on their wives and coercing them into having anal sex, and telling them exactly how they're causing physical damage to their woman and emotional damage to their marriage, donating money to non-profits who provide prenatal and gynecological care to low-income women, donating part of our profits to .Howard Brown and the Lesbian Community Cancer Project, and if the stuff you think is bad goes, odds are the good is going to go, too. Same with Andrea Nemerson. I don't agree with every single thing Nemerson says. In fact, I've strenuously disagreed with her on a couple of issues. I know damned well, though, that she's on my team. Heck, she's even on George Bush's team in that she feels he has the right to the very education he seeks to deny others. Losing her voice, and the other voices at SFSI would be a great loss indeed.

Nitpicking and petty manipulation is a large part of why John Lennon's song is imaginary and why making it a reality is so very far away. Wil Wheaton found a blog written by a woman who spend quality time with her little boys watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. The boys would watch the show in their Starfleet Academy uniforms. They wanted to know why there wasn't a real Starfleet. Wheaton feels, and I think he's right, that Starfleet is a fantasy for a lot of people, mostly because in order for a Starfleet to exist it must mean we've surpassed the crap we're currently deeply mired in and are moving forward together as one. It might be the dream of the Comic Book Guy, but it isn't that different from Lennon's dream of no religion, no country, nothing to kill or die for, brotherhood of man and all that.

It's depressing to realize that humanity is only smart enough to band together to fight a common enemy, but not smart enough to band together for the common good. We only snap out of it by trying to assist one person at a time, inching rather than leaping forward. And you know, most of the time that works. If we all spent our time doing that rather than calling up Andrea and pretending to be a woman with enormous, out-of-control boobs, the world would be a very different place.

But eh, fuck it. The bottom line is: If you feel like doing something good today, or tomorrow, or when you get an extra twenty bucks in your pocket, give it to SFSI. And if you need them, their number is (415) 989-SFSI.

The Wall.

Him: So I bought the new Pink Floyd album yesterday at Woodruff's. (I know you want this album. I have it. Therefore, you will want me.)

Me: Oh my God, you bought it? There was only one left at Woodruff's yesterday. I was going to ride my bike over after school on Monday when I got my allowance and get it. (Shit.)

Him: It's mine now. (And you will be mine, too, once I lure you in with Pink Floyd.)

Me: Could you make a tape of it for me? (Could you make a tape of it for me?)

Him: Sure. Or I could make a tape for myself and sell you the album. (Aren't you impressed by my generosity? Have sex with me.)

Me: You would? How much do you want for it? (Wow, that would be great!)

Him: I don't know...Three bucks? (Crap. Why the hell did I say that?)

Me: Okay! (Three dollars? That album cost 29.95! Score!)

Him: Do you want it now? (I want to see you now.)

Me: Sure! (Company!)

*Five minutes later*

Him: Well, here you go. (I love you.)

Me: Thanks! (Three dollars!)

Him: Do you want to get high? (I can kiss you when I'm stoned.)

Me: Yeah! (Pink Floyd and pot? This is a great Friday afternoon!

*Ten minutes later*

Me: Pink is sooo sad. (I love drugs.)

Him: Yeah. (If I agree with every trite stoner comment she makes, she'll let me kiss her.)

Me: Oh, the phone. It's Lisa. She's coming over. (More company!)

Him: Cool. (It's never going to happen. I'll just sit here quietly and ache.)

Me: Are you hungry? (I'm hungry.)

Good Sport.

"Hi. I know you don't remember me, but I came in here last year when I was on my way to a Cubs game and bought something from you for my wife. I'd been wanting to buy something for her for awhile - a couple of years - but I wasn't comfortable buying her anything from any of the other sex stores I'd seen. I don't think she'd like using anything from those places.

We've been married for over forty years, and she's always liked sex until about three years ago. She just stopped having orgasms. Her doctor said sometimes that happens, that women sometimes just lose interest. But I don't think it was a lack of interest, she still wanted to like it, you understand?

I never wanted to push her, but she wanted to make me happy, so we'd do it, and she never enjoyed it. I stopped asking her after awhile, but she'd bring it up. She always wanted to make me happy.

I've never been unfaithful to her in forty four years, and I'd rather do without than look elsewhere. I guess I'd rather do without if she wasn't enjoying it, too.

So I came in here and bought something, thinking it would help. When I showed it to her, she wouldn't even try it. I had to beg her. I really begged for two months, just try it. Finally she agreed.

And it worked! She had an orgasm for the first time in almost three years. She was always a good sport about it, a real good sport. But I didn't want a good sport; I wanted my friend back. We lost three years, three years we can't get back, and I feel so badly about that.

Anyway, today's another Cubs game, and she's sent me back to get something new, and here I am. And I just wanted to say thanks, I guess, so thanks."

Open Letter to the Man Who Called Me a Douchebag Last Week.

Hi, it's me again, and no, this isn't an invitation to come back to my store. I don't think either of us wants that. I mean, our last meeting was so unsatisfactory. You wanted to rip me off, I wanted you to stop being a dick. In the end, you didn't get me to open my cash register, and I couldn't get you to behave like a civilized human being. It's really best if we agree to avoid each other in the future.

I can't really blame you for trying, though. You were about a foot taller and quite a bit heavier. You're a man, I'm a woman, Cole Porter music is in the air. How could you resist trying to return a book which had a title we don't carry, with no receipt or store bag to back up your claims? My favorite part was when you revealed that you didn't actually buy the book yourself, that your girlfriend bought it on her credit card. But I should give you cash anyway, you said, because "you pay for everything for her, anyway."

No! Wait! My favorite part was when you started shouting at me to give you cash.

No! Wait! My favorite part was when you started shouting "I work in retail and I know the customer is always right!" when I told you to stop being rude.

No! Wait! My favorite part was when you threw the book at my head before stomping out.

No, seriously. My real favorite part, and the part I'm writing to thank you for, was when you called me a douchebag after you'd walked out the door.

I mean, of all the the obvious things you could have called me - bitch, cunt, whore - you chose "douchebag", a more gender-neutral insult.

Thirty years of second-wave feminism has really taken its toll on you, I see. But never mind. The fact is, right there at the end you managed to put a little creativity into what was otherwise a pretty lame scam, and I, for one, salute you for it.

Kisses,

Douchebag.

Apple for the Teacher, Peeled, Cored, Poached, and Covered With an Amaretto Glaze.

The first time I saw Julia Child, she was Dan Ackroyd. I was spending the night at my friend Amy's house, and the babysitter let us stay up with her to watch Saturday Night Live. Amy was asleep on the couch, and I was curled up next to her as Ackroyd cut off his finger.

"Oh my goodness, I've cut my finger!" he exclaimed. "I seem to be bleeding quite profusely...getting light...headed."

"Did she cut off her finger?" I asked the babysitter worriedly.

"No, no," she assured me, "that's not really Julia Child. It's a man pretending to be Julia Child. It's just a joke."

"Who's Julia Child?" I asked.

"She's a chef. She says if you make a mistake, you just keep on going. That's what Dan Ackroyd is doing, but he's just making it silly - if you cut off your finger, just keep on. Julia Child never did that; she just dropped a turkey on the floor and threw it back in the pan. Kept on going."

Julia Child brought gourmet French cuisine to the United States. She was a brilliant chef, intelligent, witty, graceful, charming. She was a genius artist who surpassed her medium and what she taught was more than Duck a l'Orange. She made you feel that French cuisine was something you could do, that anybody could do. She made it look fun and made you feel like you could be as stylish as she. She was warm and good-humored and her kindness made you feel like she was a friend.

She was a cultural icon, and one of the greatest teachers the world has ever known. Julia Child taught every one of us who was fortunate enough to watch her one of the most valuable, most universal lessons of humankind, and it had nothing to do with French cuisine.

While filming her cooking show, she dropped a turkey on the floor. Without missing a beat, she scooped it back into the pan, winked and said, "Remember, you are alone in your kitchen."

If you make a mistake, keep going. Don't quit.

Thank you so much, Julia. And bon appetit.

Julia Child, 1912-2004

Kids Today

1.)My Dinner With Alex

Alex: Tell me about your first kiss.

Me: You want to know about my first kiss?

Alex: Yes.

Me: With Daddy?

Alex: I said your first kiss.

Me: Oh, all right. I was 14 years old and went to see Ghostbusters with a boy named Jeff. We kissed each other while the credits were rolling. It was about as romantic as putting on deodorant. After the movie, his mother picked us up in a brown station wagon and took us to Mr. Gatti's restaurant for pizza.

Alex: When was my first kiss?

Me: If you've been kissing somebody, I'm not aware of it. Maybe you'd better tell me.

Alex: Well, I was alone.

I crack up. Alex laughs, too, in the way kids do when they don't know what they've said that is so funny, but they're happy to have said it if it makes people laugh. He says it again, because if it's funny once, it's equally as funny the next five thousand times you say it.

Alex: I was alone!

Me: I'm not sure we're working from the same definition of "first kiss."

Alex: When are you going to grow taller, like Daddy?

Me: Moving on, are we? Okay. Never. I'll never be as tall as Daddy. I'm as tall right now as I'm ever going to get.

Alex: Oh, I feel so sorry for you!

***********************************

A Million Monkeys at a Million Typewriters.

Steve and Alex are watching a new video that Alex received for his birthday, featuring a female pirate singing about the goodness of vegetables.

Alex: She's a butt pirate.

Steve: What??? What did you just say??

Alex: She's a butt pirate.

Steve: Why would you say that?

Alex: Her sleeves are ripped. They look like butts. (They sort of do.) She's a butt pirate.

Steve: Oh.....Did you just make that up?

Alex: Yeah!

Steve: Okay. Uh, that's actually not a very nice thing to say. That's sort of a grown-up word, so don't say it anymore, okay?

Alex: Daddy, why is Mommy crying?

Steve: She isn't crying, she's rolling around on the floor laughing.

Alex: Why?

Steve: Because Mommy's crazy.

***********************************

Other people's children.

Christopher has reached that age where he gets in A Mood and attaches himself to my leg like one of those parasitic fish that make their homes on shark lips, feeding off whatever bits of random pink flesh that don't make it into the gaping maw. Sometimes he does get cookies or a bottle of milk if he will agree to disengage, so the similarities are greater than you might think. In the greater scheme of things, it's not the most irritating of toddler behaviors, but when he does it, say, when you have diarhhea or are two hours late for changing a tampon, the stakes grow considerably higher indeed to get him to STOP.

Alex does not do this anymore, and I don't find myself wishing he still did, is what I'm trying to say here.

I thought kids outgrew acting like they wanted to crawl back up into your uterus at the age of three or so, but last week I saw a mother try to shake off a parasitic fish of her own that was at least 18 and well over six feet tall. The mother, who for descriptive reasons shall be known as Large Facial Tattoo (LFT), ran into the store hissing at me, "Hurry! Help! Hurry!"

"What's the matter?" I said, reaching for the phone to call 911.

"My daughter! She's down the street at Disgraceland Vintage Clothes and I don't want her to know I'm her....oh, shit."

The door opened and in came the daughter. LFT wheeled around, demanding, "Why aren't you at Disgraceland?"

The daughter shot back, "Why are you in here?"

"Go away."

"No, what are you doing?"

"What do you think I'm doing? Go away!"

The daughter shrugged, and moved closer to her mother, who began an evasive dance and chanted, "I'm serious, get out. I need privacy! Really, get out. Get out. Get out."

The daughter refused to leave, but compromised by moving up to the front of the store where the lingerie is, and limiting herself to craning around to see what LTF was looking at. I murmured to LFT, "Maybe you'd be more comfortable coming back another time?"

"I can't," she replied, moving a cigarette lodged behind one ear to the other. "I only have one day off a week, and the next few weeks I've got to get the kids ready for school. This is my one shot. I really thought I'd be able to shake her for five minutes. I don't know how they know when you're up to something, but they do."

"Well, if you want privacy, just point to something and I'll pull it later and ship it to you."

"She'd just open the package while I was at work. Let's just get this over with."

By this time the daughter had heard us mumbling and had crept to the toy section. She stood so close to LFT that her breath parted her mother's jet black hair in the back.

"Dammit, I told you to wait up front. Why won't you mind me?"

The daughter feigned deafness and shuffled her feet around. A cell phone rang. LFT rummaged around in her purse until she found the phone.

"Oh no," she groaned. "It's your sister."

The daughter snatched the phone away.

"Don't tell her where I am!" LFT hissed.

"Ummm, she's shopping," said the daughter into the phone. Cupping her hand over the mouthpiece, she addressed her mother, "Sarah wants to know what time you have to be at work tomorrow."

"7 a.m.," replied LFT.

"Ugh," I said.

"I know it."

The daughter continued, "She wants to know if you'll decorate a cake for her tonight. You have to go to Dominick's for frosting and jimmies."

"Oh, for crying out loud!" exclaimed LFT, and abruptly began pulling vibrators off the shelf. "Screw it. I'll take this one and this one."

She grabbed a butt plug off the shelf that she handed quickly off to me, and I think I managed to get that one into a bag without the daughter seeing it.

Of course, we all know how LFT could have driven her daughter back over to Disgraceland - by giving a thorough description about exactly how she and Dad would be using that butt plug. However, being a loving mother she showed more pity on her daughter than her daughter showed her and took the high road.

Even if you aren't a biker chick mom with a facial tattoo on your forehead who has a five minute window in which to buy your vibrators and buttplugs, I think all parents can relate to LFT's frustration in this little anecdote. As someone who has had to exchange quality thinking time on the toilet for reading The Runaway Bunny with a toddler on her lap on the toilet, I sure can.

Stupid, Stupid Parenting Decision.

It wasn't the decision to feed them cake and ice cream at 7:00 a.m. on the morning of Alex's 5th birthday. It wasn't the decision to spend the day at Six Flags. It was the decision to take them on a roller coaster that we didn't check out thoroughly before strapping them in with us. The "Whizzer" had a measuring stick at the line's entrance that forbade people under 36" inches from riding on it. Christopher is 35 1/2" tall. Close enough, we thought, and marched right up to the front of the line.

We weren't that worried about Alex. He'd earned his roller coaster stripes before, albeit on a lesser scale, and was ready to fly. Christopher, on the other hand, isn't even two years old. He still drinks milk from a bottle in the small hours of the morning, falling asleep with his hands twisting in my hair. He's a baby! We piled into the front car, Alex in the lead with me sitting behind him so I could hold him down, then Christopher and Steve behind us.

I changed my mind about the whole thing when the coaster was corkscrewing up to the first hill. I looked back at Christopher. He was sitting with his arms outstretched, a hand on either side of the car. The wind was blowing in his hair and Steve's arms were locked around him as tightly as mine were around Alex. He had a happy little smile on his face. I stared at him until it occured to me that I might not want to have my neck twisted around while zipping down the hill.

The downslide of the ride was wretched, as I was convinced that at any second I was going to see Christopher hurtling through the air over my head.

The Whizzer twisted and turned.

Alex took a break from giggling to ask, "Hey, Mommy? Why are you holding me so tight?"

"Uh, Mommy's being paranoid," I told him.

Both boys initially refused to get out when the ride was over, chanting, "Again! Again!"

We convinced them there was more to see and do, so they reluctantly got out and we walked through the park. Christopher no longer wanted to hold hands with me, but instead strode jauntily ahead, hands clasped behind his back. It was clear he thought he was more of a man, more seasoned, more worldly, for having had the experience.

He's wrong, though. He isn't a man. He's a baby. My baby. And he'll be my baby even when he's forty.


More Old People Antics at Work.

A popular gripe among senior citizens is that "young people think they invented sex." And it's true, you know. We really do. Point of proof - I don't believe there's one person under forty who, in their heart of hearts, really believes that Hugh Hefner has any sort of sex with the bevy of blonde 25-year-olds who sign contracts promising to pretend to be his girlfriend for a year. I don't care how much he raves about Viagra, I am convinced the most that goes on in his bed now is his occasional turn from right to left when he's taking a mid-afternoon nap.

And as big a soft spot as I have for older people, I still admit to being surprised when a pair of 75-year-olds with hearing aids and walkers come in to the store to buy butt plugs.

I can't possibly be alone on this one.

It's not because I think it's gross or that they have no business shopping for sex toys. It's because I, as a young person, think I invented sex. And I sure didn't tell them about anal sex and butt plugs, so how in the world do they know?

But know they did, and they didn't need me telling them a damned thing.

In addition to the butt plug, they bought a couple of vibrators for her, a cock ring for him, lube for both of them, and a video made for older couples that featured older couples doing the nasty.

The man asked me if he could have a "senior citizen's discount." I don't enjoy doing that, because we're broke, but I said yes anyway and gave him 10%. Which he then complained about on grounds of not being big enough. This pissed me off and put ideas into my head about a different sort of use for that plug.

If someone gives you a discount when they don't have to, it's a gift. SAY THANK YOU. Don't start kvetching about its worth. With the discount I gave them, that butt plug was free.

Okay, so young people didn't invent sex. But if anything, this proves that old people didn't invent good manners.

I'm Back.

Sweet merciful crap, that took forever.

We asked SBC to send us a CD-Rom to re-install internet access on our healthy new computer. Sure, they said. We'll do that. You just sit by the mailbox and wait for it. Three weeks, several pissed off customers, and one badly neglected blog later, and voila!

Many thanks to Frog for her periodic updates, and many more to all of you for sticking around until I got back online.

I'll be back tomorrow with the usual crap I throw up here. Today I've got to get caught up on work-related things that have also been neglected.

Thanks again, everybody. It's good to be home.

A transcript
frog: So, what's going on with your Internet access?

flea: Fuck if I know.

And that's the latest, as of about 10:45 p.m. last night.