It's official. I'm the adult.

Courting trouble

When I was younger, I did things...  I courted trouble.  I was the brash girl with the great rack who wasn't afraid to use words or breasts to my advantage.  Back in the day, I faked my Driver's License with green liquid paper, a fine-tipped pen and a steady hand.  I shop-lifted bad romance novels and inhaled Clove cigarettes.  I made bad choices, I took a walk, if not on the wild side, definitely adjacent to it.  But I never got caught.  'Cause I was a girl and I was sneaky.

Boys?  Aren't generally as sneaky.  And adolescent boys?  Aren't really forward thinkers. Which is why David and I pretty much caught the kid red-handed.  Actually white handed - because he still had the white spray paint on his hands, even though he tried to hide it.  We also had him trapped inside the skateboard park.  Kids? If you're going to deface public property?  Probably best not to do it in an enclosed space with one gate and a high chain link fence around it where two adults can block your only exit.

We could have let him be.  Could have turned that blind eye.  We started to walk past, then my head fell when my social conscience kicked in.  I could see the word that he'd scrawled on the ramp...

'Fucked' - not terribly original - the 'd' started out as a 'b' - poor kid was probably dyslexic.  If this were a park where everyone tagged the ramps - where there were broken bottles and drug dealers, or I guess, more accurately, if it wasn't part of a park that lots of little kids walked through, where they didn't watch the older kids doing their tricks on their skateboards, I probably wouldn't have called him on it. I could've easily gone the "not my problem" route.

The kid, an awkward guy, probably 11 years old, a little extra weight around his middle, wearing a baseball cap and a jersey from a sports team, was still at the edge of fence, behind the half pipe, disposing of his spray can when we approached the park.  He panicked as he saw me walking towards the fence, reaching for his bike which had been left inside the fence.  David imposingly blocked the gate, all six feet of him true adult menace.  The kid looked like he was going to crap his pants.

"Dude.  Is that the best you can do?" I said.

"What?  No, that wasn't me.  I didn't..."

"Aw hon.  We saw you do it.   We saw you from the road and then we watched you ditch the can to the side there.  Why don't you go pick it up?"

Red-faced, this Campbell's-Soup kid trundled to the side and picked up the spray can.

"It wasn't me..."  He wiped at his hands, probably still feeling the paint on them.

"Yeah... it was.  Let me ask you.  Was 'Fucked' the best you could do?  Seriously?  'Fucked?' This is what you chose to leave behind?  Dude.  Kids come here.  Little kids.  Learning to read little kids who like to watch the big kids skate. What about when they ask their parents, "What does that spell?"  What about when they try to sound it out?"

"I'm sorry," he mumbled.

"Don't be sorry, " I said.  "Make better choices."

"I just wanted..."  he began.

"Just wanted what?"

"I just wanted to know what it felt like to..."

"To what?"

"To do it."

My heart broke a little right then.  God, I could see this kid at 12 just wanting to know what smoking felt like and at 14 wanting to know what beer felt like...  Trying to be the bad kid so that he could have something to brag about.  He was nearly in tears.

"How 'bout this?  How about the next time you get this urge - instead of defacing something - instead of writing 'fucked,' instead of that..."  I grasped for a concept - what could I say to this kid?  "How 'bout... you make art?  I swear to God, if you had been spray painting a mural here, something that had artistic worth, I would have given you props for doing it.  I would have come up and told you how great your graffiti was." He hung his head.

David and I left the fenced area.

"Are you going to... to tell anyone?"  He called out to us.

We turned around.  The kid was holding onto his bike handlebars like they were the only thing keeping him upright.  Who would I tell?  What was I going to do?  Have David lock the kid in the skateboard park while I ran downtown to grab the police?  I figured the terror from having strangers call him on it might be enough for today.  "Nope.  We're not going to tell anyone."  We took a few steps away.  Then I yelled back at him, over my shoulder.   "MAKE BETTER CHOICES!"

This video could cure depression.

I freely admit that I'm jumping, gleefully I might add, onto the viral bandwagon here.  Yesterday I discovered Ylvis:

After the initial "what the fuck...?" during the first verse, I got it.  I got that Ylvis are possibly the most brilliant and surreal musical comedy peformers - IN THE GALAXY.  (Or they might just have better financing than the others.)  I knew I was right when I shared it with David and we turned to each other and said "Rissa HAS to see this."  By now, I'm sure she has memorized all the lyrics and will be dancing it at school today.  This video could cure depression.  It needs to be on speed load on the tablet at the psychologist's / psychiatrist's office. 

And right now?  When the world outside our North American sphere seems to be on the brink of war, again, where children are being murdered and women are being raped, I desperately search for ways to keep the panic at bay.  So I'm stock piling things that allow me, even for 3 minutes and 35 seconds at a time, to ignore the state of the world.  So I give you these.  These comic geniuses who will bring you joy.

 Flight of the Conchords,

The Smothers Brothers

 The Arrogant Worms 

Moxy Fruvous

and I get intellectually (and truth be told, a little bit physically) wet, for Tim Minchin.

How about you?  What do you distract yourself with when today's news makes you want to head to a bunker and die?

SUPER SPINATUS!!!

Or at least that's what I thought the physiotherapist said it was.  It's actually SuPRAspinatus.  Supra - Latin for above and Spinatus from the Latin 'spina' which means thorn - which really has nothing to do with the spine, other than the vertabrae to which the muscle attaches look kind of spiny I guess, but that's only if you're looking at the actual bones of the spine - which begs the question, were those Romans looking at peoples' spines - like outside of their skin?  When did that sort of thing start happening?  Who was the first guy to think "I know, let's cut this person open and look at all their bony bits?"  Course that would have been in Latin so it would have been more like - "Scio, quis sit iste interficiam aperire et vide omnia frena suis ossea," but I guess WAY back when, when those Romans were naming things they got sort of literal.  But me? I'm sticking with SUPER SPINATUS - it makes me feel like Super Grover.

Your SUPER SPINATUS is the top muscle in your rotator cuff.  Mine is angry. It got pissed off about a month ago and apparently, when one continues to use said muscle, it'll say FUCK YOU and just decide to stop working.  What's truly sad is that I didn't even really injure it doing anything.  I felt a wee twinge one night doing some pushups.  And it's not like I decided one night Hey!  I know!  I'm going to do 100 pushups and completely fuck up my body! after having not attempted them in decades.  That's not what happened.  I worked up to it - you know, gradual-like.  I went the girly pushup route for a while - then I did half and half - then I was doing 10 full-on pushups every night before bed.  Whereupon, one night, I had a small twinge and then a few nights later that twinge became more aggressively ouchy. Now I'm going to have to lie and invent some shit and say that I fell dramatically or did it bungy jumping - I can't say that my body can't handle 10 measly pushups.  I was so proud of those pushups.  What has happened to my body that doing 10 freaking pushups can put me out of commission?

So here's where I started to fuck up a bit.  Once the pain started, I didn't really stop using the arm. The twinges started and I just figured that I'd move through it.  I will admit that was an error on my part.  I was lifting things and holding things and high-fiving things and by the time I got to my physiotherapy appointment yesterday, my shoulder was an achy mass of irritated muscle - even when it was hanging limply by my side.

Then, when you're recounting your behaviours over the past couple of weeks to the physiotherapist it becomes clear that you've been an idiot.  And not just 'cause you can see the look of disappointment on the physiotherapist's face, but because you realize, in your own brain, that you're a complete moron and that your body does not bounce back the way it used to when you were younger.  And everything that they tell you makes complete sense and would be the recommendation that you'd give to your friend the next time that they injure their SUPER SPINATUS.  So now, as I hold my elbows into my body as I'm typing and thrust my shoulders back to improve my posture every time the tape pulls (the tape that the physiotherapist has placed on my back to remind me to sit up straight) I know that it is my own stupidity that will have me visiting the physiotherapist twice a week for the next couple of months. 

One good thing to come out of this adventure is that I get to be stoned for awhile, you know, until the swelling goes down.  Like right now?  I'm totally stoned on Aleve.  The good thing - strike that - the GREAT thing about having my particular body chemistry is that naproxen can make me loopy.  So can 1/2 a glass of wine.  Mix 'em together and you've got a really happy Heather Bunny.  But don't. Seriously.  Drugs and alcohol don't mix kids.  Even better?  I don't have to do exercises yet.  I LOVE this physiotherapist. I have damaged myself so much that it's probably going to take a week or two to take the swelling down.  I'm sure that after that, when I've gotten to know Jeremy really well over the next few months I'll be cursing him when I eventually have to do exercises, but for now?  I just get to lie on the table and let him ultrasound me.  Yeah, that's right.  I'm getting ultrasounded.  And while he's ultrasounding my shoulder I know he's thinking Man, for someone who is 45 her shoulder is freaking hot.

Elbow Licker

"BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAAAAA!"

Rissa was laughing... maniacally... behind my back.  We were waiting for our luggage to be pulled from the storage room so that we could all pile into the van and head back home from our girls' dance weekend in Toronto.

"What are you doing?"

"I just totally licked your elbow and you didn't notice!"

"You did not."

"I DID!!!"

"Seriously?"

"Seriously."

"No way."  I turned away only to have her dissolve into cackle once more.

"BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!!"

"You didn't just..."

"I did SO just...  BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!!"

Thing is?  When Rissa starts laughing like that?  Those belly laughs?  It's hard not to join in.  I didn't know if she was lying or not, but man she was having fun on whatever crazy train she was riding, so I too, climbed on board. We were laughing so hard that the desk clerks started looking like they might ask us to vacate the lobby. We moved out into the valet parking area before the concierge picked up the phone to call the cops. As I was waiting to help load our luggage into the van, Rissa was again pitched into the throes of lunacy.

"I licked THAT elbow and then I licked THAT one right after - and you totally didn't feel it!!  BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAA!!!"

By the time we recounted her elbow licking rampage to David, Rissa had surreptitiously licked my elbow 7 times.  There might have been a slightly cool feeling upon my funny bone, but not once did I catch her actually doing it.

So of course, in bed, I had to try it with David.  But just thinking about it gave me the giggles.

"Don't even try it," he said.

I was laughing so hard by this time that I was snorting.  "I won't.  I won't."  I tried to calm myself with deep cleansing breaths.  "Besides, you'd be all prepared for it, so it wouldn't work."

"That's exactly right," he said, eyes half closed, one arm under his head.  "I think that Rissa is making this up anyway."  His elbow was out there... in the open... right there... inches away from me...

I held my breath, my eyes laser beams boring into his closed lids.

"This is just one of those things where an urban legend..."

"BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!!!"

"You didn't!"

"I totally DID!!  And it was awesome!"

We did have a stern conversation with Rissa before she left for school yesterday - letting her know that we didn't want to receive any phone calls from the Principal's office when she started licking strangers' elbows.

"Mummy.  Please.  I would only lick the elbows of people I know.  Stranger licking is just gross."

Where did the time go?

For all you parents dropping off your children (of all ages) at school this week...  an excerpt from More Work Than a Puppy (or what your mother never told you about procreation).  I was told by the mother of a university-aged daughter that I'd missed an important demographic.  I added this particular monologue in 2005 with a few revisions this past spring.  Keep a tissue handy...

I’m dropping her off at university today.  And as we’re driving there I hope that I haven’t screwed up.  Have I given her the right values?  Will she make the right choices?  Will she ever need me the way she did before this day?

Home movie flashbacks fill my head.  She was so accident prone.  At two, she was riding one of those springy horses in the playground.  Giggling and smiling – until her hands slipped and her chin went down on the handle and I’m looking at her chin bone.  My two year old’s chin bone is visible, and I’ve gone to that calm maternal place where I have to be in control and make sure that she doesn’t panic—but her chin bone is showing—but I still smile and tell her everything will be okay... And as her arms encircle my neck, she doesn’t even realize that she’s bleeding. 

Then she’s 4, playing with her friend on the concrete stoop across the street.  She’s wearing a red nylon jacket with a hood, you know the ones - that have that soft white flannel inside?  She’s swinging from her knees on the metal railing and in slow motion I see her fall - on her head - on the concrete.  In the 5 seconds that it takes me to reach the other side of the street, the white flannel of the inside of her hood has turned literally blood red.  The doctor says that it it’s a cut no bigger than the tip of her baby finger.  But to me, at that moment, her brains were probably seeping out into the hood.  So I tie the strings tight around her chin to make sure that no brains fall out.

At 11 she falls through our glass table in the rec. room.  (She’s trying to jump over it after using the couch as a trampoline.)  I hear this crash from the basement and fly down the stairs even before I hear the crying. She’s lying there in the middle of transparent shrapnel – her left leg bloody from the knee down.    And as she reaches for me, she’s saying “Mummy – Mummy, I broke the table.  I’m sorry.”  She hadn’t called me Mummy since she was 6.

I look at the young woman she is now.  She’s 18.  So self-assured… and right about absolutely everything.  Everything’s black and white for her – there are no Fifty Shades of Grey for her.

Have I told her everything she needs to face the world?  

“DON'T DO DRUGS!”  

She looks at me.  

“I mean, don’t do the bad drugs.  Organic is okay. Stick to organic... Don’t do acid! Oh God, do they even DO acid now?  Is it Ecstasy now?  DON'T DO THAT!! ...  Pot’s fine – it’s great with sex... OH!! USE CONDOMS! – I know you’re on the pill, but use condoms – PROMISE ME YOU'LL USE CONDOMS!  ... And act crazy on the bus if you’re riding late at night.  If you act crazy on the bus, people will stay away.” 

We pull up at her dorm.  She had the option to go to Trent, but she wanted Queens.  What the hell has Queens got that Trent doesn’t?  Besides all the good stuff?  The reputation stuff.  Everyone knows that a reputation can be totally wrong.  Reputations are like rumors.  Who started this one? Queens isn’t so great.  It’s 2 hours and 8 minutes away according to the Google Maps.  What if something happens to her?  It’ll take me 2 hours and 8 minutes to get to her!! 

If she had gone to Trent, she could have lived at home.  She’d be getting free food with me.  I’d make sure that she was eating balanced meals.   I would do her laundry.  I’d even fold it and everything!  She’s going to be living in a dorm.  With other kids, and I don’t know these kids.  These kids will be a bad influence.  They’ll lead her into stuff.  Bad stuff.  If she stays at a dorm, her life will go to hell.  She’ll hang out with the wrong crowd.  What if they turn out to be small-minded and prejudiced?  We always took her into Toronto once a month so that she could see that there was more to life than small-town white-bread people.  We had dinner in Little India, we went to Chinatown.  She knew that there were different colours of skin.  Does Kingston have a Chinatown?  Or is it going to be one Chinese restaurant that serves bad fried rice?

I’m trying so hard to be the cool Mom who can let her go and trust that she’ll make the right choices.  I wonder if she knows I’m faking it.  I’ve been crying myself to sleep for the last six nights. 

God, what am I thinking?  She’s not dumb.  She’s never been prone to peer pressure.  What, she’s going to stop using her brain now?  Now that she’s been accepted to Queens with a 93 average?  If I were a sane, rational mother I would know that she’s going to be fine.  I would know that.  But she’s my baby.  I breastfed her and snuggled her and scared away the dragons from under her bed. 

How did 18 years go by so quickly?  In my head she’s still 5 years old, ringing the doorbell, wearing her little yellow duck boots - completely covered in mud - and she’s holding a bouquet of dandelions that she picked especially for me. 

I feel like I’m leaving that 5 year old on the curb with her suitcase in hand – not this woman who is ready to start her own life.  She’s following her own yellow brick road, and I’m Glinda the Good Witch... just pointing her in the right direction.  And she’ll be okay.  She smiles as she waves to me.  I start to drive before I cry.  As I’m pulling away, she runs up to my window and knocks on the glass.  I roll it down and she gives me a great big, wet, sloppy kiss.  And then she says:  “Don’t worry Mom, I’ve got my ruby slippers.”

© Heather Jopling 2005, 2013

Creation of a Psychopath - just add dead squirrel

There were two girls, seven, maybe eight years old, on the sidewalk a couple of blocks ahead of us.  They had a stick.  They were moving something onto the road with the stick.  Having walked down the road earlier that day, I knew that the thing they were moving into the road was a dead squirrel.  See, I remembered, because I'd thought to myself upon viewing it earlier, I wish I had a bag.  I could pick the poor bugger up and take it home and bury it.  But I hadn't had a bag, so I'd left it there, dead on the side of the road.

But these little girls, done up in barrettes and braids, clad in colourful dresses, were moving this dead squirrel further onto the road.  David and I shared a look.  I ain't gonna lie.  A shudder literally went down my spine.  Why would two little girls push a dead squirrel further onto the road?  Most little girls wouldn't go near a dead animal even with a stick.  I found myself thinking, If that was two little boys, they'd be doing it to watch the squirrel get flattened by oncoming traffic.  I caught myself short.  As if a lack of empathy is a predominantly male trait.  Like only boys burn ants when they get a hold of a magnifying glass.  As if the male of the species has the market cornered on the steps to psychopathy.

The Grady Twins from Kubrick's The Shining

So we watched from a distance, as these two giggling girls pushed the squirrel carcass out and then hid behind their privacy fence.  As we passed, we could hear them tittering.  We really should have stopped.  We really should have asked what they were doing.  We really should have called them on it.  Or at least drawn the attention of any proximal adults. 

"Hey!  You!  Yeah, YOU, with the stick in your hand and pink barrettes in your hair!  What are you doing to that squirrel?"

"What squirrel?"

"The dead one, the one that we just watched you push onto the road."

Shrug

This is when I should have crouched down and got eye to eye with those girls and said,  "Being cruel to animals, even dead ones, isn't cool kids.  It means that you lack empathy.  And when you lack empathy, your bladder weakens and soon, very soon, you'll not only wet the bed, but you'll pee your pants while you're awake and everyone at school will point and laugh at you and say, 'Those are the girls who did bad things to animals.'  You will be labeled as 'troubled' and spend all your time in the Principal's office and never make more than minimum wage.  Nobody will ever date you and when you are old and ill, your wheelchair will be left on the shoulder of the 401 with a sign on it that says 'HIT ME.' "

That would have only been too much if I'd actually said it out loud.  Instead, I kept my mouth shut and will have to live with the fact that Sally and Susie Psycho will continue to roam the streets.

Our daughter has gone blind!

We didn't realize for the longest time.  She was masking it so well.  She was coping.  But it became apparent this morning that my daughter has... she has... dishwasher blindness.  (sob)  Comparable to night blindness, dishwasher blindness tends to hit at a much younger age.

Early signs of dishwasher blindness seem innocuous.  Dinner ware might be left in unexpected places: the living room end tables, the backyard.  The sufferer will become adept at depositing dirty dishes in the sink. You may find the dishwasher open but not loaded; conversely, a dishwasher full of clean dishes will not be unloaded.

When a full complement of breakfast dishes are left neatly stacked on the countertop above the dishwasher, it is too late.  There is little hope for the sufferer - true dishwasher blindness will be diagnosed at this point.  Strident physical therapy can help the process, but it will be a long road to recovery.  Months, even years of conditioning may be required to help the sufferer strengthen the muscles it takes to open the dishwasher and the coordination to load dishes and cutlery into their respective places within the appliance.

You might think that you are alone, that your child or spouse is unique.  Talking about the affliction, sharing one's own experience is the only way the general populace can be educated.  Dishwasher blindness can happen to anyone at any point in their life.  Recognize the signs before its too late.