Are your kids weird?
I don't know about you guys, but my kids seem different than their friends. It's just not normal to spend no time in front of the TV or video games, to not have the IM address of every one of their classmates,or to hang out in the mall. My kids do none of these. In fact, just between you and me. I'm beginning to worry. I have 5 kids ages 19, 17, 13, 10, and 8. They play outside with each other several hours a day. That's right. In broad daylight! Breathing fresh air into their lungs. I shudder to think what the long term effects of this eccentric behavior might be. Just a couple of hours ago, I saw my 10 year old son and 8 year old daughter chasing each other around in the cul-de-sac. He was wearing a long red devil's cape with a hood and my calf high spike heeled boots I wear when I have delusions of looking sexy at age 48. She was wearing my father's old matador cape (yes, he is from Spain and yes, he promised me he was a toreador. He used to point to some ugly scar on his neck and swear it was the last vestiges of a brutal goring he survived. My mom said it was an old boil, but I like his version better.) Anyway. I digress. My rights as an old person. Along with her black cape, she wore my "what was I thinking when I bought these)red spiked boots with square toes and a black seam along the midline. Every time I wore them out, old pot-bellied men with floppy jowls and nose hairs would try to tuck a 20 in my cleavage. (And I do use the term "cleavage" loosely.) Fortunately, she had no such trouble. But as I gazed out into the street from my front window, watching my transvestite devil and my spanish harlot galavanting around, I wondered why I had never seen other kids doing things like that. A few months ago four of my kids were playing "Doggie Dentist" with our three dogs: a Weimaraner, a chihuahua, and a min-pin--all sporting nervous twitches after years of torture. They had my old scum-covered Water Pik, old toothbrushes I use to clean the grout, my worn out doctor coats, and rubber gloves. When they informed me that, after a bit more practice, they intended to open their practice to humans, I headed from the nearest room with deadbolts and knob locks. I'll have to say I was a bit unnerved to see my own electric toothbrush in a different spot on the bathroom counter later on that evening. Anyway. I just want to vent my anxieties. After all, with five kids, why can't just ONE of them be normal, sedentary, pudgy, pasty skinned kids with unsurpassed knowledge of and blind transfixation by all things pop culture? Where, oh where have I gone wrong? Oh, well. maybe next lifetime.