People I Want to Punch in the Throat (13 page)

Later that day, Gomer came home with a torn shirt and a
bruised arm. “Look what Agnes did!” he cried as soon as he walked in the door.

Fuck
, I thought as I laid down the February book club selection (I figured I’d start reading it just in case I made it through the background check before the meeting next week). I looked at Gomer’s tearstained face and caught a whiff of the Riding Mower candle that was burning on the counter. It smelled heavenly.
He’s had that shirt for a couple of years
, I thought,
so it probably didn’t take
that
much force to rip it
. The ice in my midday cocktail shifted (yes, I was having a midday cocktail; I like a cocktail when I read, so sue me). I picked up my glass and a mischievous housewife grinned at me from the napkin (“It’s wine-thirty somewhere!”).
Kids fall down. Shirts get ripped. It’s not
that
big a deal, right?
I thought.

“Mommy!” Gomer cried. “She kicked me in my pee-pee!”

Damn that Agnes—and her mother!

I blew out the Riding Mower–scented candle, shoved my new napkins in a drawer, and picked up the phone.

I’d like to say the situation was resolved quickly, but it wasn’t.

Over the course of the school year I received two more lovely gift baskets and a beautiful planter for my porch. I was fast-tracked into the book club, and Agnes’s mother picked my book for our December selection.

The following year I requested Agnes not be in the same classroom as Gomer, but I am loving book club with Agnes’s mother, because she really is wonderful.

I have a confession to make. No, this isn’t the part where I reveal that I’m a closet crafter who has a craft room in my basement where I hoard countless dollars’ worth of rubber stamps, paint, tulle, ribbon, and glue guns (yes, glue guns, plural, because every good crafter worth her glitter knows you need more than one size). Even though that’s all true, I’d rather talk about my even more embarrassing confession: I want a minivan.
Baaad
.

It’s not like I
need
a minivan. I have only two children and no pets that I need to haul around town. I just really
want
one. In black, preferably, because black is more badass, and why wouldn’t I want to drive a badass minivan?

I know, I know. Most people think that nothing says “defeat” quite like a minivan. I get it. It isn’t a sexy car. It looks a little soft and frumpy. The minivan is the yoga pants of vehicles. But you know what? I
love
my yoga pants. And my yoga pants would look
good
behind the wheel of a new mobile command center (or MCC, as we minivan lovers prefer to call it).

The people who turn up their noses at minivans typically opt for the SUV. To them the SUV still has enough room to haul
strollers, diaper bags, soccer cleats, ballet costumes, school bags, an extra kid for a playdate, and the family dog, all while still looking hip and young and cool. I know, because I used to be one of those people. For many years I prided myself on the fact that if I was caught in a freak blizzard I could throw my vehicle into four-wheel drive and safely guide my family to Target for milk and toilet paper. Or I could hook up a boat or a camper (or anything else that required hauling) to my gleaming trailer hitch and hit the open road for an impromptu getaway. I just ignored the fact that I never needed to use my all-wheel drive because I live in Kansas and not the Alps, I prefer four-star hotels to campers, and a trailer hitch is just an invitation for some asshole friend to ask you to help him move a sofa. (Wait—Hubs just told me I never had four-wheel drive. My SUVs weren’t
that
tough.)

If the minivan is the yoga pants of the vehicle world, then the SUV is the cargo pants, and while I like my cargo pants just fine, let’s face it: yoga pants are way more comfortable and make my ass look better. I think a minivan could do that for me, too.

My minivan coveting started a few years ago. As my kids (and I) got older, the SUV was becoming kind of a hassle. Pulling open doors is strenuous. Lifting that heavy tailgate is tough. Not having enough seats for my kids and their friends is embarrassing. I hated that I always had to say, “I can’t take anyone, because my car can only hold two booster seats.” If I had my sweet swagger wagon, I would have a whole row of extra seats available!

I watched with envy as the mothers around me would hit a button and their slidey doors (what else would you call them?) would open and close. I wanted that! I wanted to push a button and see my kids jump out of my van like daredevil parachuters at an air show. I would barely have to slow my roll in the pickup line at school—just pop the button and watch the kids eject
themselves. Plus those slidey doors would come in handy, because my children are the sort who throw open their doors and ram them into the cars parked next to us. The people who park next to me would appreciate it if I drove a minivan. It’s almost like I’d be helping mankind.

If I had a minivan, I wouldn’t stop with just the automatic doors. I couldn’t possibly stop there. My dream is to drive a badass minivan, not just an ordinary minivan, so I’d also need the DVD player with the wireless headphones (please God, with headphones, because I can’t listen to
Phineas and Ferb
while I’m driving—I’ll drive off a cliff), the plugs for everyone’s electronics (because no one plays I Spy on road trips anymore), Bluetooth (hands-free calling is safer—and another reason for the headphones, because “fuck you” comes up in my phone conversations more than you’d think), a sunroof (because Adolpha and I like to have the sun on our heads while we roll down the boulevard singing our hearts out), the power tailgate (no sense getting my hands dirty when that’s an option), and leather seats and the leather-wrapped steering wheel (just ’cause I like “leathah”). In some ways my minivan would be nicer than my home, but I don’t think that’s too much to ask when you consider how much time I have to spend in my vehicle. I’ve never added up the weekly hours spent shuttling people around, because that number would probably make me hurt someone, but let’s just say it’s a lot. However, the feeling I would get from sipping a hot beverage (from one of the insane number of cupholders) and sitting on my soft and toasty-warm heated seat while waiting for soccer practice to end would be priceless.

The reason I don’t currently have a minivan is because the Hubs has deemed it an impractical car for our family (and I think he thinks he’d look like a wuss driving it). I know he’s
right—he would look pretty wussy driving it—but who cares? It’s no different from sitting outside a dressing room and holding my purse or buying feminine hygiene products by himself at the grocery store. He’s already done both of these, so what is he holding out for? Of course a minivan-driving man looks like a wuss, but whenever I see a guy in a big-ass chromed-out SUV with low-profile tires, all I can think is “tiny penis” (and if he has a pair of TruckNutz swinging from his trailer hitch, “micro penis”). If I were the Hubs, I’d rather look like a wuss than a guy with a tiny penis.

It seems like every week another neighbor comes wheeling into the neighborhood in a flashy new minivan. Everywhere I look, moms are sporting new rides. Every time I see one, it takes all of my self-restraint not to chase it down and carjack it at the closest four-way stop. I drool a little when the proud new minivan owners show me how effortlessly they can program their GPS or fold the back seats flat. So it’s no surprise that the minivan conversation comes up over and over.

The last time, we were sitting in our crossover car. (The Hubs made us trade in the SUV because it was a gas guzzler and instead forced a boomermobile crossover car on me. Apparently a minivan is wussy, but driving a car your mother-in-law wants to drive as well isn’t emasculating; that’s just being fiscally responsible, which is always manly. All I know is my hair gets grayer every time I drive it.) We were on the school pickup line surrounded by happy minivan drivers, and the Hubs said disdainfully, “Really? You really want to drive one of those things?”

“Of course.”

“But why? Our car is so much better.”

“No it’s not! Old people drive this car.”

“No they don’t.”

“Yes they do. In fact, my mom wants to buy one now, because she likes it so much. My
mom
. Look around you—do you ever see anyone under the age of sixty driving this car?”

“Well, no, but that’s only because people are sheep. They all want to drive big SUVs and minivans.”

“Because they’re practical for our lives! A minivan makes sense for us.”

“Ugh. They’re so …”

“They’re so what?”

“I dunno. So …”

“Oh!” I said, finally realizing his real problem with minivans. “You think you’re
better
than a minivan, don’t you?”

“So what if I do?”

“Well, you’re not.”

“I might be,” he tried.

“You’re not.”

“True, but a minivan … ugh!”

“What’s so bad about it?”

“So many things. First of all, I hate to carpool, and by driving a small car I never have to carpool. Second of all, do you have any idea how much gas would cost? Driving a minivan is like driving a bus. Not this car! I like this car. It’s zippy!”

“This car isn’t zippy. It’s dippy.”

“Okay, how about this? Driving a minivan is like waving a sign that says, ‘I’ve given up.’ ”

“Wow. You’re
such
an asshole.”

“Pretty much,” he agreed. Then he turned and faced me. “But if you really want one, I’ll get you one.”

He may be an asshole, but he’s
my
asshole.

When I was growing up, my parents were always available to help me with my homework. My dad would explain a complicated math problem to me or quiz me on my spelling words. When I had a report due, my mom took me to the library and helped me navigate the card catalog and the blasted Dewey Decimal System. Even though I had lots of help, never once did they actually
do
my homework for me. My mom never shoved me out of the way and finished my First Thanksgiving diorama, and my dad never wrote my essay on
Hamlet
.

Now that I have kids, I’m noticing more and more parents doing their kids’ homework. I don’t know about the upper grades, but it’s out of control in the lower elementary grades. You only have to walk through the halls of your local elementary school to see the evidence. The bulletin boards are full of some beautiful work done by my peers instead of my children’s peers.

When Gomer was in kindergarten the kids were sent home with a paper gingerbread doll. The homework assignment was to use whatever they wanted (except uncooked pasta, because it
attracts vermin and the teachers hate mice more than lice) to decorate the little doll and make it “them.” The instructions were to take their time, be creative, and really make it unique to the child and his passions. I sat Gomer down and we talked about what he wanted to do with his doll. In those days he was very much into pirates, so he wanted to make his doll a pirate. I thought it was a great idea. I gave him crayons, markers, glue, ribbon, yarn, scissors, and other assorted craft remnants and put him to work at the kitchen table while I made dinner. I checked in on him to see how things were going. A couple of times he stopped to ask for help. Once he asked me to cut a piece of yarn that was being stubborn, and the other time was to take that yucky dried-up glue bit off the top of the bottle so he could work it.

After a half hour my kitchen table and the floor around it were trashed and Gomer had a scurvy pirate with a mess of yarn hair in his one good eye. It was wet with an excessive amount of glue, so it was curling and bubbling a bit. He called me over for a closer look. Earlier I’d been giving myself a pat on the back for being such a good, hands-off mom who let Gomer make his gingerbread doll the way
he
wanted to, but now that I looked at it, I worried that maybe I should have stepped in a bit.

“Is there any glue left, buddy?” I asked.

“A little bit. I wanted to make sure everything stuck,” he said.

I looked at my kitchen table. It appeared that my place mats might have gotten hit in the crossfire and were now glued to the table as well. I tried to ignore the mess and concentrate on his gingerbread doll. “Ooh, you made him some clothes, huh?”