Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank (5 page)

The most important advice the experts have is to get kids to start reading more. I believe it’s already working. Just last
week, I saw at least a half dozen sunscreened nine-year-olds sitting around a pool reading the latest Harry Potter book.

While their parents pleaded with them to come swim, they waved them away without even looking up except to ask them please not to splash page 4,016 again.

So as you can see, there’s lots of hope for a new generation of great writers.

The hope dwindles as the little puddin’s get older, though. In a recent survey, more U.S. teens could name the Three Stooges than the three branches of the federal government, which, as those of us old enough to recall high school civics classes know to be the the legislative, the executive, and the Moe.

It’s very trendy to whine about how little our young adults know about government. How many times have we seen teens draw a blank when asked to name this great nation’s vice president or, for that matter, the prime minister of Kansas?

Teens today are not dumb. Quite the contrary. They have even invented their own language, an abbreviated sort of speech that allows them to chat back and forth on their cell phones using symbols and letters that cannot be deciphered by anyone old enough to remember mood rings.

Thus,
I’m looking forward to seeing you again soon
(which, now that I write it, has all the appeal of sitting in the parlor and listening to 78s on the family Victrola) becomes simply
ltr.

I’m not so sure this is a gd thg. Still, you must applaud today’s young people for their technological savvy. Most can download an entire library of music in less time than it takes me to pit my prunes.

I believe we will see a nation in which Speaker of the House Jack Osbourne will say, “All we want is some frickin’ respect. Buttholes.”

But, dear Jack, respect must be earned. Those who refuse to remember the mistakes of the past are doomed to end up on shows like
I’m a Celebrity
—
Get Me Outta Here!

What I’m saying is that it’s possible to be cool and to know a little bit about history. If you ask a teen today to locate Vietnam on a map, there is not a doubt in my mind that he will say, “I dunno, dawg, but I’m pretty sure it’s one of the blue ones.”

Young people today have an abysmal knowledge of geography. They can’t recall the names of the continents (and, hey, nobody’s perfect—I almost always forget Chile).

So what’s the solution to a nation filled with young people who honestly believe that Springfield is home to Bart Simpson, not Abraham Lincoln?

The return of civics classes (which, by law, must be taught by the same guy who teaches driver’s ed
and
dates the homely but kind school librarian)?

Mayhaps. Otherwise, and I hate to say this, we may be looking at a future that includes two words that should never, ever be put together: President Britney.

While it’s easy to act as if we grown-ups have all the answers, we don’t. Witness what happened when I tried to help my second-grader with a science project.

Scrambling into the backseat of the car at the end of school, she paused long enough to look me in the eye. Was that disgust I saw in the eyes of my precious?

“You’re fired!” she growled with a dismissive flick of her hand. All that was missing was the famous Trump hair turban.

Okay, so I “helped” her with a couple of school projects and they didn’t go so well. It was late, the project was overdue, and who really cares if a sea turtle is a mammal or a rodent or whatever, anyway?

Here’s a flash: They’re not mammals. Not even close. But they come under the heading of “sea creatures,” so that was good enough for me. While other, smarter mommies had assisted in constructing dioramas of rain forests, working volcanoes, and battery-operated solar systems, we chose a mammals-from-the-sea theme housed in a shell-lined shoebox. Which would’ve been killer if we had left out the turtle. This, coupled with my “help” on two math homework problems that turned out to be wrong, resulted in my firing.

Of course, I know that turtles aren’t mammals. They are ambivalents, which can live on air or underwater and write with their right or left flippers. They also almost never vote.

Although the science project ended poorly, it wasn’t a waste of time, because we also got to learn about the dwarf
sea horse. These tiny creatures have a colt’s head, a monkey’s tail, and a chameleon’s independently roving eyes. (“You talking to me?
You talking to me?
Oh, I give up.”)

While all that is fascinating, the coolest thing we learned is that the dwarf sea horse doesn’t have a stomach. That’s right! It has what is called “a continuous gut.” This anomaly is only found in the Florida Keys and, occasionally, the nation’s finer Golden Corral restaurants.

The dwarf sea horse searches constantly for food, all day and into the night. Although I don’t have the head of a colt, I must have some dwarf sea horse in me.

Another cool thing we learned about these weird little creatures is that the male gives birth. That’s right! The female, who is desperately out there trying to find a late-night drive-through, deposits the eggs in the male’s pouch, and he takes care of them, presumably giving up caffeine and highlights just to be on the safe side.

Studies have shown that although the males carry the babies, they actually invest about half as much metabolic energy as females do in producing offspring. Everybody say duh-huh.

So, in conclusion, turtles are not mammals, Donald Trump is a mammal but not warm-blooded, and I am, at least in the eyes of one elementary school student, toast.

Hons, I am finally a hero in my daughter’s eyes. Not because I snatched her from the jaws of a rabid dingo or plucked her from a deadly riptide. No, no. I’m a real hero because I have secured tickets to the Hilary Duff concert.

To those of you who don’t know Hilary Duff from Howard Duff, this is a Very Big Deal. It’s like if you were a parent back in ‘64 and came home one day waving tickets to
The Ed Sullivan Show
and asking, “Hey! Who’d like to see four mop-topped cuties from Liverpool perform tonight?”

Hilary is a squeaky-clean teen queen with a passable voice who plays to sold-out audiences of “tweens.” My daughter and her best friend adore Hilary. They sleep in Lizzie McGuire nightgowns (Hilary’s TV show character—try to
hang here, will you?), they wear Lizzie tennis shoes, they carry Lizzie purses.

As role models go, Hilary’s okay. There was that reported flap between her and the tiresomely tough Avril Lavigne (Hil said Avril didn’t appreciate her fans enough—sigh) and a spat with Lindsay Lohan at the
Freaky Friday
premiere (Hil stole her boyfriend, hunkette Aaron Carter), but generally, she’s no diva. I know it’s true ‘cause I read it in
Bop
magazine.

At forty-seven, I knew I’d probably be the oldest mom in the Bi-Lo Center in Greenville, South Carolina, and even as the tears of joy spilled like tiny diamonds down my precious daughter’s cheeks, she managed to choke out, “Uh, can you maybe sit behind us or maybe somewhere in the back?”

Ouch.

Just for that, my friend and I intend to do as our foresmothers did before us and embarrass the dookie out of our little girls. I’m going to jump up and down and make those hand signals that the kids all make, the ones that I’m not sure whether they’re gang signs or mean
I love you
in Hawaiian. I’m going to sing along to all of Hilary’s songs, wear a belly shirt that says
MRS. TIMBERLAKE
, and get something unprintable pierced.

Although I’m whining a bit about the long drive, the high ticket prices, the inevitable purchase from the Duff Stuff kiosk, and so forth, I’m actually pretty excited.

Your first concert is something you never forget, and I’ll be right there, in Section 6, Row D, to see my baby’s reaction. I got a little misty recounting to her my first time: a two-hour trip to see Humble Pie and King Crimson with my sorta-boyfriend’s kindly daddy driving six of us and waiting in the parking lot for three hours.

“He was a hero just like you, Mom,” she said.

Word.

Fast-forward a few weeks, and there I am, crouching behind the wheel well of Hilary Duff’s tour bus. It’s so big and gorgeous that it brings tears to my eyes.

From a distance, I must’ve looked like the world’s oldest tween queen stalker. Not like that crazy-eyed one who just got arrested for harassing Catherine Zeta-Jones because Michael Douglas is her soul mate, but a kinder, gentler stalker who just wants a cool picture for her kid.

As I stood with my friend and our daughters on a sweltering sidewalk in Greenville, six hours from home, I wondered aloud if we should hang out in the lobby at the Hyatt in case “the Hils” was staying there. We’d heard that earlier in the day in the breakfast buffet, and I’d immediately lost my appetite and started squealing and flapping.

Duff stalkers were everywhere that day. It’s just that most of them were size 0 and looked eerily like Duff herself. I, on the other hand, was wearing my official Mommy big-shorts, the khaki ones that make my ass look eight ax-handles across, and carrying two cameras and a camcorder,
just in case. I was also seized with an irrational urge to tell every kid walking by to “stand up straight, and get your damn bangs out of your eyes.” The world’s oldest and most uncool Duff stalker.

Sophie’s friend Emeline had won backstage passes to meet Hilary, so we were feeling pretty smug as we walked from our hotel to the arena, where we saw many thousands of other little girls dressed in short pleated skirts, jeans jackets, and hair adornments, most trailed by tired moms.

We were whisked to the side with the other “meet and greet” winners—an intimate gathering of about two hundred, as it turned out—and escorted to the rear of the convention center, where we passed roadies cooking hamburgers. Someone squealed at the sight of an enormous suds-filled washing machine: “I’ll bet Hilary’s clothes are
in there!”
Sophie said I was embarrassing her. Well. It
could’ve
been her clothes.

When Hilary appeared from behind a blue curtain, well, I ‘bout died. I have met the Queen of England and Dan Aykroyd in my day. Once, Melanie Griffith filmed a movie right across the street from my house, and I found Antonio Banderas standing on my very own sidewalk. And, yes, it’s true, he’s really short, but it didn’t matter because how many times are you going to walk out to your car and go, “Oh, hi, Antonio!” and have him smile back and wave. I tell you this so you don’t think I’m like some hick who’s never seen a celebrity up close and personal.

And here stood Hilary Duff, way tinier than she looks on TV.

We got pictures of Sophie and Emeline with Hilary before being shooed out by a very large bodyguard. The concert was fun. At sixteen, Hilary was all high-energy pop/rock without a hint of naisty. There was something unexpectedly touching about all those little girls sitting beside their mommies, singing all the words of all the songs together.

I wanted to hold on to the moment because I know that the future holds awful arguments about dates, driving privileges, and general distrust. But like every other mom at that concert who found herself holding up a glow-stick instead of a Bic lighter, I know that there’s a good chance that it will be healed just a little when we turn to each other and say, “Remember the time we met Hilary Duff?”

School field trips to celebrate the end of the school year are better than I remember. My daughter’s recent trip to the zoo sure topped my own memory of a two-hour bus ride to the maximum-security Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina, where we were given a less-than-PC tour. (“Now over here, you got yer crazy-eyed serial killers. . . . Over yonder, you got yer habitual fornificators.”)

I’m fairly confident that the reason crime is on the increase is that nobody takes those field trips anymore. That’s why you have your fornificating going on right and left.

The annual field trip to prison had the desired effect, which was to scare the livin’ crap out of every little Southern boy and girl so that they would never go astray. It worked, too. To my knowledge, not a single kid in my
fifth-grade class ever pursued a life of crime, and I can tell you it’s because none of us ever truly recovered from seeing those prisoners waving good-bye, tattooed arms stretching through the bars, giving us the finger.

I realize now that having hundreds of North Carolina school children file by and gawk at you is a violation of all kinds of prisoner privacy and personal rights and so on, but bottom line, we were so scared after that ritual, we just wanted to go home and hug our mamas and never so much as jaywalk.

It was an incredibly effective deterrent but not the sort of thing you can do today with entire busloads of children. A parent today could sue, claiming that their kid was posttraumatic-stressed by the whole thing.

It would be cheaper and just as effective to force school kids to watch every season of HBO’s
Oz
on DVD.

After a few hours of seeing what can happen if you get the wrong cellmate (the creepy white supremacist who makes you wear mascara and lipstick, for example), you’d be scared straight, all right.

Of course, the prison field trip wasn’t the only one we took. There was the annual trek to the local waste water treatment facility, or as we called it, “the dookie factory.”

Sure, it was a small school in a poor, rural county, a hundred miles from, well, anywhere. It wasn’t exactly like we could dash over to MoMA for the Diane Arbus retrospective, so we had to make do with what we had.
Still, it’s hard to imagine why anyone thought it was a good idea to give sewage plant tours to snickering adolescents. The highlight was observing the trap that catches the condoms.

A lot of colors and styles were evident, which made us all look at our boring little town in a whole new light. Apparently, there was a steamy side to life out there beyond the rows of corn, tomatoes, and soybeans.