Talking the Talk
*PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT*
Flashback Friday! will be a little late, today. But in the interim, I had two recent conversations I wanted to share.
We were having the office "October Birthday's" party yesterday afternoon. (The company's way to celebrate employee birthday's without having to do it individually. Although, in this particular case, there is only one birthday for October, so 25 year old draftsperson, Amelia, got all the love.)
As we do at these events, we start talking about getting older. Someone, I don't recall who, after we'd been discussing this for a bit, said, "You know, everyone didn't have a television set when I was a kid." And that kicked off this exchange...
AMELIA: Wow.
SOMEONE ELSE: That's right, and when we did finally get our first television set it was in black and white.
THIRD PARTY: And it probably only had three channels.
AMELIA: WOW! Ooooh, and I heard that all the channels used to shut completely off, or something, at like TEN O'CLOCK!!!
Her voice did not remotely mask her awe at this. I badly wanted to remove my shoe and throw it across the table at her. I was, however, able to restrain myself.
Until she noted that Reagan had been president when she was born.
I hate her. But it could explain things...
------------------
Last night I called my ex's house. We have some relatively minor drama going on with our oldest daughter related to school and we were trying to work some things out. My middle daughter answered the phone and we had the following exchange...
KID 2: Hello?
ME: Hi, Sweetie! How are you?
KID 2: Hi, Mom! Good, I guess.
ME: Anything exciting at school today?
KID 2: Nah.
ME: Not even with [insert object of Kid 2 crush name here]?
KID 2: MOM!!! He hasn't even had a chance to teach me Magic (the gathering) yet. [NOTE: Kid 2 KNOWS she could get virtually anyone at our house to teach her this game, but she feels it's an opportunity to spend some time with a certain young man doing something that he likes to do and allowing him the opportunity to show off a little. NO IDEA where she gets this stuff...]
ME: Well, we don't have much going on this weekend, if you want to invite him over.
KID 2: OKAY! I'll work on it tomorrow.
ME: Good. Let me know. I need to talk to your Dad. How are things around there today?
KID 2: (whispering) Well....Kid 3 (bitten by a dog less than a week ago) was outside playing with [their pet cat].
ME: In the rain?
KID 2: It's not raining, Mom. (In a classic teenaged condescending tone. But, it had been raining most all day in my world.)
ME: Okay, well what happened?
KID 2: Well, she was playing with the cat and he kind of jumped up at her playfully.
ME: Oh no, did he scratch her?
KID 2: No. But she started screaming and was really upset about it. Dad had to calm her down.
ME: The cat didn't hurt her?
KID 2: No. But you know what that's about.
ME: ::sadly:: Yeah.
KID 2: And I shot dad this kinda harsh look, like "you KNOW that's about the dog bite", and he said, "Don't say anything!", back to me, and shot me this really stern look.
ME: I guess it's already starting. Geez.
See, I've already been accused of lying in wait to make KID 3's injuries/trauma worse than they really are just as soon as I can get her back in my evil clutches. [insert maniacal laugh here, I suppose]
That's right, making my kids feel bad to make myself feel needed (or worse, to find new and inventive ways to create painful drama for myself and my kids...which is never at a shortage, despite my near constant attempts to make it that way...with my ex-husband), that's me all right. That's why they love and respect me as much as they do. I'm not sure how I did it, but I guess I must've gotten a jump start on my nefarious plans before they even got home.
Or, you know, maybe...just maybe...the child...the one I'VE known for nearly seven years and know FAR better than those who would make such baseless claims...could possibly be more traumatized than someone completely unqualified to make such a contemptible accusation might be able to assess. That'd be MY guess anyway.
And while I've got a dog bite story of my own that I'm tempted to post for this week's Flashback Friday!, I don't think I can make myself do it. But there will be SOMEthing up here later (unless Blogger has another scheduled outage or something). No idea what, though, so stay tuned.
Flashback Friday! will be a little late, today. But in the interim, I had two recent conversations I wanted to share.
We were having the office "October Birthday's" party yesterday afternoon. (The company's way to celebrate employee birthday's without having to do it individually. Although, in this particular case, there is only one birthday for October, so 25 year old draftsperson, Amelia, got all the love.)
As we do at these events, we start talking about getting older. Someone, I don't recall who, after we'd been discussing this for a bit, said, "You know, everyone didn't have a television set when I was a kid." And that kicked off this exchange...
AMELIA: Wow.
SOMEONE ELSE: That's right, and when we did finally get our first television set it was in black and white.
THIRD PARTY: And it probably only had three channels.
AMELIA: WOW! Ooooh, and I heard that all the channels used to shut completely off, or something, at like TEN O'CLOCK!!!
Her voice did not remotely mask her awe at this. I badly wanted to remove my shoe and throw it across the table at her. I was, however, able to restrain myself.
Until she noted that Reagan had been president when she was born.
I hate her. But it could explain things...
------------------
Last night I called my ex's house. We have some relatively minor drama going on with our oldest daughter related to school and we were trying to work some things out. My middle daughter answered the phone and we had the following exchange...
KID 2: Hello?
ME: Hi, Sweetie! How are you?
KID 2: Hi, Mom! Good, I guess.
ME: Anything exciting at school today?
KID 2: Nah.
ME: Not even with [insert object of Kid 2 crush name here]?
KID 2: MOM!!! He hasn't even had a chance to teach me Magic (the gathering) yet. [NOTE: Kid 2 KNOWS she could get virtually anyone at our house to teach her this game, but she feels it's an opportunity to spend some time with a certain young man doing something that he likes to do and allowing him the opportunity to show off a little. NO IDEA where she gets this stuff...]
ME: Well, we don't have much going on this weekend, if you want to invite him over.
KID 2: OKAY! I'll work on it tomorrow.
ME: Good. Let me know. I need to talk to your Dad. How are things around there today?
KID 2: (whispering) Well....Kid 3 (bitten by a dog less than a week ago) was outside playing with [their pet cat].
ME: In the rain?
KID 2: It's not raining, Mom. (In a classic teenaged condescending tone. But, it had been raining most all day in my world.)
ME: Okay, well what happened?
KID 2: Well, she was playing with the cat and he kind of jumped up at her playfully.
ME: Oh no, did he scratch her?
KID 2: No. But she started screaming and was really upset about it. Dad had to calm her down.
ME: The cat didn't hurt her?
KID 2: No. But you know what that's about.
ME: ::sadly:: Yeah.
KID 2: And I shot dad this kinda harsh look, like "you KNOW that's about the dog bite", and he said, "Don't say anything!", back to me, and shot me this really stern look.
ME: I guess it's already starting. Geez.
See, I've already been accused of lying in wait to make KID 3's injuries/trauma worse than they really are just as soon as I can get her back in my evil clutches. [insert maniacal laugh here, I suppose]
That's right, making my kids feel bad to make myself feel needed (or worse, to find new and inventive ways to create painful drama for myself and my kids...which is never at a shortage, despite my near constant attempts to make it that way...with my ex-husband), that's me all right. That's why they love and respect me as much as they do. I'm not sure how I did it, but I guess I must've gotten a jump start on my nefarious plans before they even got home.
Or, you know, maybe...just maybe...the child...the one I'VE known for nearly seven years and know FAR better than those who would make such baseless claims...could possibly be more traumatized than someone completely unqualified to make such a contemptible accusation might be able to assess. That'd be MY guess anyway.
And while I've got a dog bite story of my own that I'm tempted to post for this week's Flashback Friday!, I don't think I can make myself do it. But there will be SOMEthing up here later (unless Blogger has another scheduled outage or something). No idea what, though, so stay tuned.
posted by SuperWife | 9:54 AM
1 Comments:
I will say that Super Adorable Kid has seemed more nervous, and more generally phobic, this weekend, than she's seemed to be before. She's just more skittish than normal.
On the other hand, when she becomes aware of it, she's very very capable of visibly summoning her courage and attempting to confront whatever it is that's making her afraid, which makes me enormously proud of her.
Still, yes, however much certain people may want to hysterically insist that being attacked and bitten by a strange dog in a strange place is, for a six year old like her, an incident that results in nothing but a boo boo needing a band aid, we are more than aware of the truth. (When I reflect on the probable response of one of these people should her six year old get bitten by a dog, well, the hypocrisy here is palpable and vibrant.)
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