Dear Stepford Wife, Let Me Rephrase That.

Last weekend at my son Derek's baseball game, this British man/husband/father of one of the boys on the team, asked if Derek would like a playdate with their son Kyle. I graciously reciprocate the offer, but we decide on his house in the end. Several hours later, I go to pick up Derek. Here's how it went down:

Ding dong (...I wait..............................)

Door opens... wife is there.

ME: "Oh Hhhhiii!! How are you!!! (big Dawn smiles) I'm Derek's mom, Dawn? So nice to meet you!!!! " ( I solidly shake her hand )

ME: " I'm soooo sorry I'm 5 minutes late, i forgot I was picking him up here-because you're sweet husband usually always drops him off with me after the boys play, but i spaced there for a minute. " I giggle.

(no response)

(I enter the house.)

ME: "Woww!!! What a beautiful home. This is great!! So clean. My god!!! How do you keep it like this??!

Did you guys just move in?!!! It's so pretty! Wow this is great..." (I get the infamous female up and down scan...)

MOTHERS RESPONSE: "Ehm..no.. we've been here....'Derek! Your mother has arrived."

(I nervously giggle.)

ME: " Thank you so, so much for having him over this afternoon. He loves your son. Anytime you'd like your son Kyle to come by me, just call- he's welcome anytime. (pregnant pause)

MOTHER: 'Derek!.....your mother is here!" (I get the scan again.)

ME: " I'm so sorry hes taking so long...I think he likes it better here than at my house. haahahaaa. "

(awkward silence)

*throat clear*

ME: "...So what are you guys doing for the memorial day weekend? Just chillin out here? it's so beautiful out, it almost doesn't matter what you do right?" (I'm thinking, did i just say 'chillin'-this woman doesn't have a chill bone in her body. I'm 100% sure she thought I was there to mug her).

(I get no smile back.)

THE MOTHER: " Well I'm trying to have a rather big dinner party / get together tonight..."

ME: " OMG, I'm sooo sorry...I had no idea..Derek!!...come on hun, Mrs. Smith has some people coming over soon...we need to go, can you put some gas on it please?"

ME TO MOTHER: " Yeah I know how dinner parties are- so much work, I try and do it whenever I can...I love cooking for people...but it's not easy when the kids are home...giggle...I'm such a scatter brain that I actually have to write everything down that I'm doing- with the exact time I'm supposed to do everything, or forget it- the pastas overcooked, the chickens dried out, I forget something in the oven... if I don't write it down, I'll forget to even take a shower haha. ha. ha."

(stares at me)

(long stare)

MOTHER: "Yes. Derek's a wonderful child. Oh you have another child? "

(scan #13)

ME: "Yes. I have another KID. Justin. He's 13. Great kid. But was real challenging to deal with when he was Dereks age..." (Ooops, maybe too much information there. Because I'm getting the 'WE DON'T TALK ABOUT OUR PROBLEMS HERE' look.)

Derek rounds the corner in his baseball uniform I left him in after the game, but wearing his friend Andrews T-shirt instead of his own. ME: " Hi baby..wheres your baseball shirt honey? "

DEREK: " Oh they washed it for me and gave me this one to wear instead. "

She walks into the kitchen to grab Derek's T-shirt that she washed for him, that he initially came to their house wearing.

As I quietly follow behind her, I see the live-in housekeeper / nanny subserviently postured in the kitchen over a bowl that has about 15 nachos in it. I glance at the dinner table and see its set for 8.

Once again, I apologize for Derek being such a grassy mess in her house. She sort of musters a grin in my direction, and responds rather tersely and indecipherably as she escorts Derek and myself to the front door. I thank her again profusely for having Derek there, give a big toothy smile and wave goodbye to the housekeeper, wish her a wonderful weekend, and step outside with Derek and get in my car.

That's how it went down.

But here's how it REALLY went down, in my head:

DIIIIIING DOOOOONG.... ( Jesus Christ, what the hell was THAT.....guess I'm here to see The Wizard.)

(...waiting...) 

(.........judging......)

Door opens, "(Holy Fucking Never Got Laid) ... I mean, "Hi!!! ... I'm Derek's mom Dawn!...and yeah it'd be a super deal if you actually smiled back."

ME: "So not nice to meet you! " I firmly shake her hand and step inside.

ME: " Question...Does your hand actually have any muscles in it that contract, or have you been paralyzed by some unfortunate tragic accident. Wwwow....Sooooooooooo.....this is your lovely home... *snnnort* ... I'm guessing that either nobody lives here....or you're doing a commercial shoot for Pledge in 5 minutes. So I'll try and be quick then.

Hey, do you and your husband perform surgeries here in the living room, or is your home possibly always this devoid of love and life. I'm getting the distinct feeling that i should've been wheeled in here on a hospital gurney. My apologies for walking... I think my dirty flip flops may cause your Infra-red dirt detecting laser beams and alarm systems to simultaneously go off. Should I maybe start crawling on the floors to avoid the poison blow darts, or am I cool. If you'd like, I'll take my sandals off. Really. I will. It would give me great pleasure to see you wince at my calloused feet. So just say the word.

Hmmm. I see no cats or dogs either...maybe that's what you're eating for dinner. Well, I guess everything warm blooded and living is off limits here. So I'll make my visit quick. " Ooooh look...the diminutive housekeeper. Let me guess, you're here to whisk something off the floor in case it so happens to God forbid fall there. But yay. At least a person of color. Maybe you, Mrs. Buckingham, are an open minded, 'people person' after all. Or do you perhaps have a cotton grove in the backyard, behind the labyrinth. And you too could smile a little Miss Bodyguard of the nachos.. Unlike your master, I wont beat you if you should decide.

Let me see..what the fucks hiding in this bowl.... 15 chips?...for an 8 person get together? That's 1.195 chips per person. Lady, Auschwitz death camps gave more food. You call this a get together??? I call this a Get The Hell Outta Here As Fast As You Can, Together. And I smell a big fat nothing cooking. Not one braised or sauteed anything. All I smell is disinfectant combined with Febreze, and some odorless gas I call frigidity. So toots, a party huh? So wheres the wine? Where's the frivolity? Where's the laughter? And where the hell's a smidgen of dirt? Oh wait, THERE he is! Its my son Derek! The other pigmented person. But this one comes fully equipped with a big ass smile, and chunks of grass and soil and some decapitated slugs pressed into his knee caps.

ME : " Hi sweetheart! I'm so glad I got here before they performed surgery on you in their boiled living room and extracted your heart. Phew. Just in time." " So honey...how the fuck did you play in all this ....lack of fun. And where's your shirt Derek.....you know.... the one that I left you in this morning after the game that resembled 'The Shroud Of Turin'? "

DEREK: "Oh, they washed it for me and gave me this one to wear instead. "

ME : "Oh they gave you one of their sons to wear while they washed yours? Awww so delightfully germiphobic of them. "

ME: "...So....wheres that pompous British husband of yours that incessantly flirts with me at your sons games that you're too detached to come to.???... You know, that guy that's always bragging about his dumb ass sailboat to me? Oh right, you have him on another Decontamination Run. Got it. Then again, I understand why hes not here... if this mausoleum is what your house feels like, i can only imagine what the sex feels like. You know...sex? a man, a woman? passion?? ...eh never mind." "OK, well bye bye miss housekeeper... I'll pray for you, and I'm growing rather concerned about your lack of ability to smile by the way. And I've convinced myself that its due to embarrassment because you most definitely have a mouth full of broken teeth as a result of these hi-resin, ice skating rinks you call 'floors' (...and so you know, the key to your shackles are under the Soul Vaporizer machine in the vestibule, I peeked). "

ME: " Well, Gotta run Mrs. Buckingham, have a wonderful time starving your friends. And by the way, your little 'chip off the ole ice block' son is never allowed in my house- since i never did care for statues. And I'm sure you wouldn't approve anyway, because I, on the other hand, have 3 dogs, and cats and plants, and framed family pictures, and some dog nose smudges on my doors, and prefer a slight degree of chaos, rumpled pillows and litter pan aromas in my house to remind myself that i have blood coursing through my veins...unlike yourself, who I'm convinced, like a scallop, would not bleed if I cut you. But i wont stab you with a steak knife to find out, seeing that this is only our first meeting.

...and please...don't forget to tell your arrogant, bumptious husband that I'll see him next week at the game, where I'll continue to pretend I'm listening to him as he's waxing eloquently about his haughty, pontifical nautical adventures while I fart in the wind. " "Well, I gotta get the fuck outta here before my face cracks off from all this fake smiling. It was an absolute nightmare to meet you. Goodbye, and...goddamn. And I hope to never see you again."

Ta-Ta. For now.

;)

Raising Your Own Backyard Pig

   

9 dirty socks, 8 empty, crushed bottles of Poland Spring, 7 multi colored sticky guitar picks, 6 wrinkled, stained t-shirts, 5 blankets, on the floor of course, keeping a 5 week old dried doody log company, 4 drinking glasses fused to the nightstand, 3 crusty forks, 2 empty family size bags of Doritos, an empty, archival container of chicken... or pudding, hard to tell, and probably 1 dead partridge somewhere, which I assume used to live in some sickly, withering pear tree.

This is my sons room. Well, not the picture above, but that's what it feels like. Walmart's Day After Christmas Sale.
(The anal retentive in me had to make sure you knew that.)

However, I think it's safer to assume that canoeing through the Amazon river, sans malarial shots, is less deadly than it is to embark upon a seedy journey into my son's room to change a lightbulb. Whatever the deal, I'm sure I should've called the CDC before I volunteered for helping out with something this categorically cootified.

In nature, there's a fascinating bird called the Bowerbird. The male Bowerbirds collect and artfully arrange color and object specific collections to attract a mate. And the males with the most spectacular displays in their lairs, win the female. The collections are varied things ranging from piles of nuts, heaps of specific flowers, piles of dead beetles, heaps of deer shit, and even color coordinated garbage. It's a trait fascinating for a bird from Papua New Guinea. And a borderline repulsive / heave worthy trait if you're a human. If my sons lair were the basis for any long standing relationship, it would only attract the head custodian of a hazardous waste removal company, a senior archeologist, or a herd of protozoologists. You shouldnt need tongs to clean a bedroom.

I'll try and give you a better visual: If his room were the first thing you saw when you opened the door to your house, you'd immediately smack the security alarm button, and call the cops because you'd think your house was ransacked by an irate band of bat wielding meth addicts that had a particular hankering for 2 week old ham and cheese sandwiches during their heist. And then you'd find the nearest shovel, pick it up and swing it around every blind corner you turned, hoping to bring whoever did this to their knees.

I'm a little nicer than that. I don't use a shovel. But I'd be lying if I said yelling with flailing arms, and a cattle prodder weren't involved.

A total pig sty. I have to say 'pig sty' because thats what my mom always called it, so for nostalgic reasons, filthy room must under all circumstances, equal "pig sty". I've never really hung out in an authentic pig sty, but I can promise you this; there's no loose leaf binders stuck to the walls there. And about the dried dog poop on the floor that I found-- pigs will at least eat shit. My son just leaves it there waiting for the fine art of disintegration to show us how it's done.

So on second thought, it's not like a pig sty at all, It's more like the 'after' scene of a Fall Out shelter, where someone forgot to install the door.

Bottom line is, unless you enjoy the sensation of deli meat caressing your scalp, laying on the remnants a 3 day old turkey sandwich is not an acceptable substitute for a pillow.

I guess the ability to live amongst viruses and newly unearthed species of cream colored fungi are one of those teenage milestones I just have to get used to. But how could it not bother him. You'd think that rolling over to go to sleep, and crushing nachos with your ear, or pulling up a blanket, but not being able to, because the gum and soda you spit out 6 weeks ago has welded the sheets to floorboards, would force upon him some type of personal intervention. I'm sure this is how the first Glue Trap was invented. Walking barefoot onto a teenage boys bedroom floor. Then I think, eh, stop complaining. At least it's still just gum. Innocent, little fruit scented gum. I seriously dread the day that used condoms become part of the harvest.

Thankfully, he does shower every day and spends more time coifing his coif than Justin Beiber ever did.
But showering is clearly his ploy to make his friends think that his cleanliness factor somehow infuses the rest of his life as well. And that he doesnt fall asleep on Village Bagels # 6 sandwich. Well ladies, let it be known that this cleanliness ends as soon as the last bubble encapsulating his filth goes down the shower drain. The waterlogged towels are thrown to the ground, where his wet, stanky clothes will lay for days, mulching into crop fertilizer.

So once more for clarity purposes: The showers are merely to fool the women. Not THIS woman, of course. The other ones. The ones who dont have to blow torch his underwear off the floor.

Now I don't expect a 12 or a 9 year old boy to have the same level of fastidiousness as their slightly anal retentive, moderately OCD, stain removing, rug cleaning, toilet scrubbing, sink bleaching, laundry doing, stink removing house maid of a mom does, who showers three times a day, periodically gives the vacuum cleaner attachments herbal baths, and rearranges the magazines so they stack in the proper descending color spectrum.

But I do expect him to know that when the sheets crack, it's time to wash them.

I finally decide I can't do it anymore. I walk into his room to make my last plea for cleanliness, but wearing socks now for protection. We make a truce. Sign peace treaties. Chest bump. And I walk out. I feel a cool breeze on my feet. I look down and see my socks are missing. I turn back and see that I walked out of my socks, because they're stuck to his bedroom floor. Stuck to the floor like 2 dead war flags waving in the toxic wind. Symbolic of my futile efforts.

So before I fall victim to some rare airborne e coli saprophyte, I'd like to extend an early apology: In the event of there being a sudden resurgence of the Bubonic Plague, or some other virus where your skin and appendages melt off and my kids indirectly wipe out your entire family, I'm truly sorry. I tried. I really, really did.