March 12,
2007
Attention Mommy! Does Not Compute!
My son’s not even a year old yet, but he already has one
look down pat – the look of confusion. Like the first time I put him in
his crib without a mobile. He just looked up at me as if to say, “Who
are you, and what have you done with Raffie and Ian?” (The giraffe and
lion from the mobile, respectively.)
I’ve recently come to the realization that I won’t be
able to explain a lot of things in life to him, especially when things
contradict one another. Like his teacher telling him that not recycling
is bad, then seeing our pizza boxes from Friday night in the garbage
can.
Sure, I could change the way we do everything, so that he
never has to deal with contradiction. But my parents never did that for
me, and frankly, neither have my friends or bosses, and certainly not
the advertisers.
I figure he’ll need to get used to it. Like when I was
10, and we started learning to equate smoking cigarettes with extreme
evil. It must have been right around the time of Joe Camel’s demise,
because all of a sudden, we were being told by all authority that butts
equal buttheads. But then I’d go home to my mom, who was really cool and
who I loved, and watch her light up.
I learned to disconnect the person from the habit. But
you know what? I had to think about it. For a short time, I remember
being confused. Why is this person who loves me trying to hurt herself,
or me? Rather than think too long about it, I stole all her cigarettes
and buried them in the vacant lot across the street instead. I am, after
all, a woman of action rather than over-contemplation.
My son’s going to run into some of these same questions,
probably a lot sooner than I ever did. Especially because he’ll be on
the Internet in about six months.
Like just today, I was surfing CNN.com and found myself
reading a story about a teenager who was arrested after her mother’s
dead body was found in her garage. The ad just to the left? For a baby
registry, of course! Because nothing says “shop for cute rubber duckies”
like a rotting corpse, made that way by her own heir.
Later during that same surf-fest, I came across a legit
article on the only equation that works for weight loss: eating less
paired with getting off one’s buttocks. And no kidding, just below the
article was an ad for a supplement claiming to have helped Helen lose 55
pounds in seven weeks.
That’s nothing compared to the dating service ad with the
provocative “Someone could be searching for you right now!” headline.
Sure, someone could. But pictured next to the headline was a Reese
Witherspoon replica. Of course, Reese is newly single and a hottie. And
of course, she’s online right now looking for a bald, 40-something guy
who’s home on a Saturday night reading Sports Illustrated.com.
The contradictions in life don’t stop there. One of my
recent favorites happened to me a few weeks ago at work. I was asked to
be part of a Skunkworks group, and I was pretty excited. Skunkworks
groups are small, innovative, stealth and, in many ways, free from other
corporate restraints. Note the first word in that definition – small. A
few days later, I learned that only about 100 other people are
Skunkworking, too.
And… the… bubble…is … deflating. Thank you,
contradiction, for opening my eyes to reality.
Again, I thought about myself at 10 years old. And I
thought about my growing-too-fast,
gonna-be-10-in-the-blink-of-an-eye-son. I wonder what contradictions and
conflicts in meaning he’ll face, and I pray I’ll be able to help. My mom
sure did! I remember that after I buried her cigarettes, I pondered in
my bedroom why Lucille would leave Kenny Rogers with 400 children. (The
line in the song is actually “four hungry children.” Boy, was I relieved
when my mom explained that to me. I still didn’t like Lucille, but I
could do math pretty well, and I knew 400 was a lot more than four.)
So, I dedicate this column to my son. Honey, mommy will
always be here to help you interpret the lies, the only-partial lies,
and of course, the lyrics.
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