Compliments Are Never Weird

Thanks to Kim Enderle at Peekaboo Magazine, I’ve had the crazy good luck to be read by a lot of Northwest Arkansans over the last year and a half. I don’t know how many people actually read After the Bubbly and Chasing Date Night, but I do know that I can’t get out of any social situation (yes, that includes Walmart) without someone mentioning something they’ve read.

I cannot tell you how happy this makes me. Deliriously, giddily, stupidly happy. That some snot mouth remark hatched in my highly scattered mind made you laugh? When I hear that, it’s the highlight of my day.

At a party the other night I introduced myself to someone who mentioned she was just reading me today and almost sent me an email to let me know how much she enjoyed my column.

“But I thought you might think that was weird.”

Let me state very clearly: compliments are never weird. Honestly, the more effusive the better.

What’s weird is when you compliment me once and I subsequently harass you each and every month to make sure you have not only read my columns, blog, and assorted Facebook and Twitter status posts, but that you were also so entertained that you had to stock up on Poise pads. That would be weird.

Thank you, Dear Readers, for playing along. And thank you, Kim, for creating a magazine people want to pick up!

26 Ways to Torture Children

This is the August edition of the print version of After the Bubbly, an award winning family humor column. If you’d like to see it in a local publication, let me know and I’ll do my best to get it there!

This is a revenge column. Before school let out in the spring, my son’s class was assigned to write an ABC book. They could choose any topic they wanted as long as they came up with 26 things. My dear son decided to write 26 Ways to Annoy Your Mom. I had to get him back. There are many, many more, but here are my favorite 26 Ways to Torture Children.

A – Always serve spinach, occasionally with a side of mushrooms.
B – Beat them with a stick. Not hard, just enough to get their attention.
C – Cuddle them in public. Singing a favorite lullaby also works well.
D – Drone on about how totally rad the 80s were. Like, they, like, totally were.
E – Eat the last cupcake. Also, lick the frosting off their cupcakes. They hate that.
F – Fail to wash their soccer socks three times a week.
G – Gush over their dimples when their friends come by.
H – Hug your husband and call him Babe.
I – Invite the boy or girl over that they like, and cue up Barry White.
J – Just say no – to Poptarts.
K – Kiss them hello at soccer practice.
L – Limit Nintendo DS use to times when it is convenient for you.
M – Move the chips to the top shelf.
N – Never give extra chocolate sauce.
O – Order broccoli as a replacement for fries.
P – Punish them with chores. Start with poop scooping.
Q – Quit buying bread that that is softer than your pillow.
R – Remind them to pick up their rooms. Again.
S – Sing along to the radio during carpool.
T – Talk about puberty in front of the opposite sex.
U – Underestimate how long it’ll take if they come to Wal-Mart with you.
V – Voice your concern for their safety. Over, and over, and over, and over…
W – Withhold allowance.
X – Xerox their baby pictures and decoupage them on their lunch boxes.
Y – Yodel.
Z – Zing them with retaliatory comments in a public forum.

Are We There Yet?

This is the July edition of the print version of After the Bubbly, an award winning family humor column. If you’d like to see it in a local publication, let me know and I’ll do my best to get it there!

Are We There Yet?

This year I bought airline tickets for August in April, which made me wonder when summer vacation changed from a time of pure freedom to just another set of squares on the calendar to coordinate. After a frustrating afternoon working out travel details, I realized there is a life cycle to summer vacation.

When we were kids the last day of school and the first day of the next year may as well have been decades apart. Life consisted of trips, reading lists, and sleeping in. We lived for waterslides, watermelon, and trout fishing. The end of summer was too far into the future to imagine. Just like those long car trips where we simply could not help ourselves from asking, are we there yet? Read more

Get Busted, aka Parents Gone Wild

This is the June edition of the print version of After the Bubbly, an award winning family humor column. If you’d like to see it in a local publication, let me know and I’ll do my best to get it there!

Get Busted

When my kids were little, their doctor busted me.

“Anyone in the house smoke?” she asked.

“No,” I said, totally telling the truth.

“Mom!” My five-year-old daughter looked at me wide-eyed, as if I’d said a bad word. Then she turned from me to her new role model, the kind and presumably honest lady doctor. “My dad smokes.”

“Busted!” said the doctor.

Cut to me backpedaling and using way too many words to explain away my husband’s weekly cigar. Or was it nightly? Either way, he smoked outside so it didn’t really count. Right?

“Right,” the doctor assured. She was nice, unlike the little traitor I’d been feeding for half a decade.

That brush with not-even-bad behavior made me want to let out a rebel yell. Being a grown up can be so lame. It reminded me pool party where, by the time the cops showed up, we had dwindled to a dozen thirty-somethings around a half empty keg making really bad karaoke.

Back in the day, I rocked a pretty hard Love Shack baby, but that involved way more alcohol than my adult liver cares to process. But now I have fun in a mature and non-rebellious way, drinking beer not purchased by anyone’s older sister or boyfriend, but by tax paying and law abiding adults.

We’d started to gather bags and say our goodbyes when two young officers appeared inside the gate. I would have sworn they were strippers. (That, or our host had put them up to it to make us all feel younger and badder.) But they were completely serious. After interrupting a particularly heartbreaking rendition of Prince’s Kiss they said to the homeowners – and I quote – “don’t make us come back out here.”

Had someone been watching Cops? I ached for the DJ to cue up that Bad Boys song. What-chou Gonna Do? The guy who’d had to stop mid-Falsetto looked like my eight-year-old when I say lights out. Just a little longer? Pleeeeeze!

I wondered what the police expected to find. No rebels here – just a bunch of grown-ups amid a sea of mayonnaise-based salads and a beer fridge full of milk. My husband, who hadn’t been too hot on the party idea in the first place, gave me a look that said this never happens while watching World’s Greatest Engineering Feats. But we’d had a great time. Who can argue with burgers, brew and ‘tater salad? The only thing missing were his cigars.

The big question – other than don’t the police have some Meth labs to eradicate? – was who would call the cops on us? Did the shrill of our under-primed voices at 10:15 on a Saturday night rile the neighbors? Was backyard karaoke now a crime? Bad words crowded the tip of my well-behaved, un-pierced tongue.

We shared stories from Fondmemoryland where life was one big kegger. We recalled busts long past and embellished tales of daring escapes and stealth camouflage in basements and shrubberies. Now our booze is tempered with chips and dips, the babysitter needs to be home by eleven, and we really shouldn’t swear, but can’t we have any fun at all? On the drive home I wondered if the OnStar people could fine me for singing off key to the radio.

I wanted to be irked about the cops showing up to ruin our fun, but truth was, the party was pretty much over anyway and there’s nothing to make you feel like your old rebel self than getting busted by the cops. Even if it was only for really bad singing. So slam one back, light one up, sing off key. Get busted! I dare you.

Lela Davidson is a Northwest Arkansas writer with a mean Dixie Chick impersonation. The closest she’s been to busted lately is when her family almost turned her in for serving past dated potato salad.

« Previous Page