I swear the internet exists just to remind me what a shitty parent I am. The opinions about what makes a good mom/parent abound. If you don’t have those little fuckers quoting Shakespeare by the time they are 3, your kid is going to be Shift Lead on the fry line apparently. Now a really good mom would let the shit roll right off her back. She’d say, “Fuck you, I love my children, what’s it to you how I raise them?” And sometimes I do. But since I am a flawed human, sometimes I let the passionate opinions get to me. Damn being human has its sucky moments. I wonder if Spock could turn that shit on and off when he needed. I shoulda been a Vulcan.
Oh man though, the mommy competition is brutal. Some women are really unkind to their gender. They don’t give you any leeway for a bad day. If you don’t have a fucking twinkle in your eye and a grin on your face while little Bartholomew and his bulbous head make their way into the world via your coochie corridor, “Well, maybe you just shouldn’t have had kids.”
Looking for a rogue turd that has disappeared under furniture while potty training? “Smile, you are blessed to be a mom!”
Turning your nipples into crunch berries because you’ve been breastfeeding half your adult life? “Well that’s what they are there for. Good for you mom. Yay! Clap clap clap.” (Pistol, please.)
Wanting so badly to poop alone so that you can read People magazine in peace? “Well, if you didn’t want kids and everything that comes with them, then maybe you should give them up to a family who would love them and everything about them, even the exhausting things and all the time. Every second of every moment in time FOREVER.”
See, what these pretend people with the pretend quotes don’t understand is, I do love every exhausting thing about them. But a day or two later. When I can tell it as a story. Not at that exhausting moment tantrum #3 is occurring. During the moments they are taking me there, you know to that, “mommy’s head is seriously about to pop right off her neck” place, I want to put a “flux capacitor” into my car and drive 88 miles an hour back into the year 1999. Oh yeah. Sleeping in on the weekends like humans are supposed to. Sprawling out onto my bed (instead of teetering on the edge while I’m curled like an armadillo into a teeny tiny ball). Going out to dinner. Watching rated R movies at 6:00 pm. NEVER buying chicken nuggets for any reason whatsoever! Making love loudly and in any room at any time. And so on. That dreamlike moment doesn’t last long. I come back to reality and perform my mommy duties to the best of my abilities with a smile. Sometimes it’s a forced one, but dammit, it’s there. It counts!
Okay, so what brought this shit up? This mommy uncertainty? Well, it’s been clearly established on this blog that my favorite famous male human is Russell Crowe. However, his little tirade about circumcision on Twitter recently (last night to be exact) brought to surface old guilt I had tucked nicely away into a teeny tiny corner of a synapse inside my cerebral cortex about circumcising my own boys. Why should I care what this person who I don’t know and will most likely never meet face to face thinks about a parenting decision I made once upon a time? It goes back to that flawed human thing I was talking about in the first paragraph. A part of me does care. Especially about the opinion of someone I respect and admire. I don’t want someone I like to think I’m a shitty parent. And I hate the fact that I care. It pisses me off actually. What’s it to this privileged man who doesn’t have to deal with half the shit I do on a daily basis? (now he could say the same about me. I could go on a Twitter diatribe and unless I’m threatening Barack Obama, or flashing my Weiner, it isn’t going to make the news.) So that’s neither here nor there. I actually agree with his stance, but his delivery was as stinky as an intact penis. (That was a joke. Ha. Ha. Ha. I love my intact friends. They are right with nature.) Oh and I promise that will be the only time I ever criticize Russell’s delivery. Speaking of which, he better DELIVER in his next film!
HOWEVER, you don’t change hearts and minds by insulting everyone who thinks in a different way about a certain subject. You lose people when you do that. When one’s defenses immediately sprout up, it’s hard to get them back down, and dialogue is dead and soon both sides have created an arsenal of weapons to shoot at their enemy because he insulted your stupid penis. I think that pretty much sums up how wars start. Men and their FUCKING penises. UGHH!
How bout you start a dialogue and leave the insults out. It’s a valid topic. I changed my mind about circumcision around 3 years ago. And not one nasty thing that an “intactivist” said to me moved me. NOT ONE. It might dredge up that little bastard guilt, but it won’t call me to action. A picture of my second born immediately after birth in his “full” natural state really moved me. I could not think of a really good justified reason for cutting his foreskin off. That’s all. I should’ve left him alone. It’s not that I have regret so much as guilt. If that makes sense. Because my boys are fantastic, Kiwi cut and all. I adore them. They are unique and they are not damaged by a decision that me and my husband agreed on years ago. I would make a different decision today if I were to have another son. (Never gonna happen. Baby making has been put away on a nice little shelf next to the frozen peas.) But when someone I admire goes on a diatribe about us barbaric parents, I can’t help but feel a little shitty. Boo on me. He’s lucky he’s a good actor, because I’d hate to put him in the “inactive” file next to Mel Gibson. No, in defense of my (#1 freebie), he is passionate, and that is a great thing. But shut the fuck up too!
So enough of that. I'll have to make up for cutting short their penis capacity by being a kick ass mom in other ways. What else have I done wrong according to total strangers on the internet? We’ll have to save it for another time. My family just arrived home and I want to be a good wife and mother. So off I go. Cheers.
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