Raising a Tweenager: The First Zit

My 11-year-old son has been getting the occasional pimple. Recently he passed a milestone of sorts when he asked me how to pop one.

“Oh no,” my husband interrupted. “Don’t do that. You should never pop a zit.”

Excuse me?

This from the man who has, for the last seventeen years I have known him, assembled a full battle attack on every frontal blemish as well as infrequently begging for some backne assistance? Seriously? Don’t pop a zit?

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m just saying he shouldn’t start. He’ll get addicted.”

“Like you?”

“Like me.”

“And what distress has this pimple popping habit caused you?”

“I’m just saying”

I tried to reason with my husband, tried to impress upon him the social suicide–not to mention the pain–of walking around with a huge festering and poppable boil on your face. He kept repeating his hypocritical stance.

Finally, I took my son by the hand into the bathroom where I showed him the proper technique for removing a pimple. There, I did it. Turned him on to the particular joy and accomplishment of banishing a common whitehead.

I’m really looking forward to the first blackhead extraction.

Caught in the Act

After an enlightening conversation with a new acquaintance, I decided to ask my Facebook Friends if they’d ever been caught in the act by their kids. The response was overwhelming. The situations people were willing to share with me made me insanely jealous, and also wonder if they knew what that little turny-thingy on the door knob is for. Not a surprise: there were a lot of instances of women getting tossed across the room out of sight.

I won’t go into the individual stories, but I thought I’d let you in on the top excuses given to the traumatized children.

• We’re practicing our MMA moves.
• I’m just rubbing Mommy’s back.
• Sometimes Mommy likes to play Cowgirl.
• I’m looking for my phone.
• Oh come on, it’s nothing you haven’t seen on Channel 726.

and my personal favorite…

• Well I guess I’ll never be able to talk Mommy into THAT again.

Charlie Brown Christmas and Mother-Son Bonding

The night we put up the Christmas tree my kids wanted to be done by seven so we could watch the Charlie Brown Christmas special. I was impressed they wanted to watch it because it’s so simple and sweet compared to the quick, stylized stuff they’re used to. I loved watching them watch the Peanuts choose the ‘Charlie Brown Christmas tree’, hearing them laugh each time all the needles fell off, and knowing they’d forever be in on the joke.

My favorite part was bonding with my son over Charlie Brown’s wit.

“This is from when I was a kid, you know,” I told him.

“Yeah, I can tell.”

“How can you tell?” I thought he’d say something about the animation, or the corny music and ridiculous cartoon dancing. I was wrong.

“You can tell this is old school,” he said, “by the sarcasm.”

“The sarcasm?”

“Yeah. You just don’t get this old style sarcasm anymore.” I didn’t know. “Yeah, like ‘man’s best friend’, that’s classic. You don’t get that these days.”

“What do you get? What would they say in the shows you watch?”

“They’d just say ‘you stupid dog.’”

How did I get so lucky to have a kid so damn smart? He gets it, and me.

Can Someone Please Explain Cotillion?

I sent my son to cotillion and I don’t know why. I mean it was cute and all, seeing him dressed like a little yachtsman, a miniature polititian, but what was the point? Over the course of ten weeks the kids learned some dances, which they will never use in actual social situations except for maybe at their wedding. If my prayers are answered that won’t be for at least another two decades and they’ll forget by then, right?

The culmination of cotillion was the Holly Ball. We parents dressed up and joined the kids in the gymnasium of the Boys and Girls Club. There were jackets and corsages. I’m not sure what it is we’re preparing them for. Maybe if the dances were held at a country club — if we belonged to one of those, and if it were the type that hosted formal dances and not just happy hours where surgically enhanced housewives got drunk and rationalized screwing the service guy at the Lexus dealership – maybe then it would make sense. But from where I stand, it doesn’t.

This year I had it easy. I had a boy in cotillion. That meant one outfit, week after week. If the girl wants to participate, I’m into it for eight dresses. But I don’t think she’ll bite. She’s smarter than the rest of us. One look at the panty hose and white gloves and she’ll call bullshit. God, how I love that girl.

Trotting Out My Turkey

This is the November 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!

In the third grade my son’s class put on a Thanksgiving program. Imagine my pride at having him appear as both a turkey and a rapper and read the essay he wrote about being thankful for his education. We value overachievement here. As it turned out, he wasn’t the only one expected to perform.

Two weeks before the show, I received a note from the music teacher saying that because my child had been chosen to be a turkey, I needed to cover a white t-shirt completely with feathers. Use a hot glue gun, it said. The tone had a distinct air of condescension: if you’re not able to make the costume, please call the music teacher. That’s a dare if I’ve ever heard one.

I’m not too interested in competing with other moms via my child, but I’m also not one to back down from a challenge. I skipped off like a good mommy to Hobby Lobby where an entire aisle is devoted to feathers. These are not cheap, especially the turkey-appropriate colors like brown, white, and black. How badly could a fuchsia and chartreuse turkey stand out from the crowd anyway? I compromised, buying one packet of the good feathers and a value pack for filler.

I also bought a natural colored t-shirt because I figured that might make up for my feather scrimping. At least if I ran out of feathers he’d have a turkey-ish color showing through. I bought glue sticks and said a little prayer that my trusty glue gun still worked, because no way was I buying another one of those. At the register I smirked at my ability to get out of there for under ten bucks.

That night I waited impatiently for the glue to melt in the barrel of my ancient gun and started sticking. I attached a few feathers to my own shirt and burned off some fingerprints, but overall I rocked the turkey shirt. After about a half hour, I called it good, even if there were a few spots of natural showing through.

Judging from the feedback I received the next day after the dress rehearsal, I should have kept going. 

“You forgot the sleeves,” a neighbor girl noticed. As if turkey legs have feathers. Sheesh.

My son, ever the encourager, pointed out that one kid wore a plain t-shirt. Plain! I’d done a better job than at least one mom. That was good enough for me. 

On show day, as I took my seat in the cafeteria, tens of turkeys graced the bleacher stage. Some of them looked like Vegas acts and others looked like, well, kids being forced out in public with feathers glued to their shirts. My son may not have been the most attractive fowl, but his ‘Turkey Boogie’ blew the others’ out of the barnyard and his essay proved that he is one smart bird.

I just feel sorry for all those competitive moms whose kids had no t-shirt showing through.

Smartass Family Politics

At breakfast the other day my daughter was being especially sweet to me. In an effort to extend this kind of treatment to my husband and son I told her how much I loved her, my sweet little sweetie pie.

“At least someone around here is nice to me,” I said.

“Sure,” my husband said. “You should hear her when we get in the car. She’s real nice then. That’s when she really makes fun of you.”

Not wanting to break the spell, my daughter launched a protest. “No I don’t. Daddy’s just saying I’m a bad person.”

I didn’t know how we’d gotten from teasing to morals. “Oh no, Sweetie,” I said. “He’s not. Besides, making fun of someone doesn’t make you a bad person.”

My son, who’d stayed out of it up to this point, let out one of those puffs of air that says oh-give-me-a-break-would-you?

“Mom,” he said. “You’re just saying that because you make fun of a LOT of people.”

This is the part where I stopped talking.

Will My Husband Survive the Teen Years?

We’re sitting around the dinner table the other night when the phone rings. Three of us at the table know who it is. It’s the cute girl my 11-year-old son is ‘going out with’, the one I describe as a ‘fellow 4.0 student’ and my son describes and ‘nice’ and ‘accurate’, the one who has very good posture.

The only person in our family who doesn’t immediately know who is on the phone is my husband, John. In his best 1950s Father voice he asks, “Who could be calling so late?”

It is 6:30.

I answer the phone and tell the sweet girl that my boy will call her back. Then I tell John he may have a very difficult decade ahead.

Mother Daughter Bonding at the Miley Cyrus Concert

My daughter went to her first concert last weekend: Hannah Montana. But instead of Disney’s wholesome tween creation, it was the next phase of the Miley Cyrus business plan who took the stage. You can’t blame her for tarting it up. She’s sixteen after all. It’s time for the next step in her career. I believe we’re at the point that correlates to Britney’s “I’m Not a Girl” release.

Still, there are good reasons for moms to take your daughters to see Miley Cyrus. Among them:

• To point out the specific moves that will ensure your daughter can pay her own way through college.
• To teach her the importance of creating an alter ego for her personal brand so that she can move seamlessly from exploited girl to exploited adult without the bother of releasing a poorly lit sex tape.
• To confirm that skin-tight spandex hot pants really are in style.
• To learn how to straddle a motorcyle. Or a rope, apparently.

To be fair, there are good reasons for dads to see Miley in concert too, but they’re almost illegal.

Most Dangerous Thing About Hockey: The Ads?

My nine-year-old daughter plays hockey, primarily because her daddy thinks it’s cool. My son has played, taken a break, and plays again, but his heart’s not in it. It’s the girl who lives for the scrape of skate blade on ice, relishes the stink of a closed up bag of gear, shows off her pink tape and socks with Title 9 pride. She’s the only one who looks at the hockey magazine that USA Hockey sends to our house once a month.

Because we’re out of hot pink tape and the socks are full of holes, I decided to flip through the magazine when it arrived last week. After the stories about stick handling, the growth of youth hockey programs, and not one but two stories on the girls’ team going to Vancouver for the Winter Olympics, I flipped to the back cover where was reminded that hockey is all boy.

The ad featured two hot girls in white t-shirts baring perfectly flat and inviting bellies. One is holding a sign over her head with ‘call me’ and a phone number written in curly-cue. The other has her hands pressed against the plexiglass.

The ad is for a glove. It reads: Hyperactive thumb and bone sytem – Who can resist that? I couldn’t, so I checked out the website where a video provided two minutes of the same two girls jumping up and down in their white t-shirts. The only saving grace: the brunette was hotter.

I knew it was dangerous letting my baby play with the boys, but I never figured she’d get slammed into the boards by the advertising.

When You Want to Run Away

This is the September 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!

When I was a kid I never wanted to run away and join the circus. Now that I’m older, I get it. Although it’s not my dream to tame lions or become the bearded lady, I understand the lure of escaping to some exotic life where the tightrope you walk is literal as opposed to the figurative balancing act we do here in the world of diapers, homework, and ear infections.

My mother tells a story about her mother, who would tell her children that if they didn’t behave she would run off to Tucumcari, New Mexico and they’d never find her. To which my mother calmly responded that they most certainly would find her – in Tucumcari, New Mexico.

Mom shouted similar warnings to my brother and I as kids. She would run away and never return. We didn’t have reason to believe her empty threats, but then again, you never knew. Moms are crazy like that. Our mothers and grandmothers didn’t mess with balance – work-life or otherwise. They didn’t have spa days or antidepressants or Oprah. They just woke up in the morning and did what needed doing. And if they lost it once in a while, well, they were entitled.

Genetics notwithstanding, I have yet to issue such a circus-running-off sort of threat. I prefer short periods of actual escape to fantasies of long-term flight. Running off for weekend writing classes and conferences recharges my depleted mama batteries and gives me strength to face the days of infinite laundry and incessant requests for Nintendo DS cartridges. I schedule my respites months in advance and write them on the calendar – in pen. In Sharpie even.

My retreats may not be as exciting as swallowing swords, but for me, some quality time with a spiral notebook and a half decent pen is usually enough to return equilibrium. And if it’s not, I run off to yoga class, where we make like a tree and stand on one leg, or rest our thighs upon our biceps. That’s balance. These are the things that keep me from losing it.

So next time you’re tempted to run away and join the circus, remember that you can juggle fire in your own kitchen and rig up a tightrope in your backyard. Just make sure you wait until after you’ve finished all that other balancing  – you know, the checkbook, the food groups, and the quality time spent with each child.

And if you hear of any writers’ meetings in Tucumcari, New Mexico, don’t come looking for me.

Lela Davidson is a Northwest Arkansas writer seeking to balance life, love, and laundry with a husband, two children, a dog, and an ever-changing number of fish. Read more at www.afterthebubbly.com.

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