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Parenting Stories For Other Parents Who Are Parenting
Posted by Keith Spillett in Parenting Tips For Those With Children on September 17, 2011
A Recent Picture of Me Along With My Wife And Two Children
Being a parent of young children can be a frightening experience. You love them with all of your heart, but you eventually have to send them out into a challenging, scary world in which you are not always around. As a service to my readers, I’ve been collecting stories mailed in by parents who have had to deal with difficult parenting situations as their children first start school. Here are some powerful tales of parents who have looked difficult situations in the eye and said “Go away, Difficult Situation. I don’t like you. You are a jerk. I hate you, Difficult Situation, and I hope a plague descends on you and your family.” Hope these stories touch you as deeply as they have me….
My son’s first run in with a bully
The other day Bernie came home with a sad, scared look on his face. When I asked him why, he told me that another boy at the school named Jimmy was making fun of him. I felt so angry at Jimmy! How dare he do that to my boy! However, I am a parent now and sometimes it is important to be a rational adult. After all, I am a role model to Bernie and I want him to understand that simply responding emotionally to every challenge isn’t the right approach.
The next day as I was dropping him off, I had Bernie point the bully out to me. I made a note of what he looked like then drove home quickly. I got dressed up in a vampire costume that I had picked up at the local thrift store. Very frightening outfit! I covered my face in white paint and smeared fake blood on to my fake fangs. Then, I went to the school and hid behind a tree. When the Pre-K class came out for recess I leaped out from behind the tree and started running right after Jimmy. He began running away with tears streaming down his face. I chased him around for a while until I finally cornered him. As I looked into his terrified face, I said “Nobody messes with Bernie! No one!!!!” I think he got the message. My son has had several kids give him their cookies during snack time and has gotten to get on the swings first everyday since.
-Anna in Cell Block A
My daughter came home from school wanting a bizarre tattoo
Sure, young children pick up a lot of strange ideas from their friends. Peer pressure is a major issue that affects all kids, even the youngest among them. That being said, I was stunned when our 5 year-old daughter Bunny came home last Friday begging to get an inverted cross tattooed into her forehead. Personally, I’m very open-minded, but this simply was too much for me to handle. I immediately regretted letting my wife talk me into letting her join the afterschool satanic cult that was being offered at the school from 3 to 4 on Wednesdays. Clearly, young children should not be exposed to this sort of thing, whether it be at school or in some bizarre 16th Century French dungeon.
I knew that this was a trouble sign and I responded immediately. I went up stairs to her room and cast her copy of The Necronomicon into the fire. I took all of her Anton Lavey posters off the wall and made her put the heads back on her dolls. Then, I told her she was going to have to listen to records forwards from now on. Sometimes, being a good parent means having to put your foot down.
-Not Satanic in New Hampshire
Living With Flippers One Day at a Time
At age 2, my son Barbara began to grow flippers in place of his hands. Flipperitis is a rare but common disease among young children who have eaten large amounts of tin foil from an early age. When Barbara was ready to start school, we were concerned the other students would make fun of him. In order to make sure that he was not teased, we spent several thousands of dollars to train him in several of the martial arts and get him certified in the use of firearms and small explosives. These weren’t easily skills to learn for a young man with flippers, but through dedication and the use of massive amounts of body altering steroids, Barbara became a threat to the lives of nearly anyone who came within 100 feet of him.
From Day One, Barbara was the most popular boy in his class. He is currently captain of the high school swim team and he is only six years old. Even when he sprouted horns over the Christmas break this year, we barely broke a sweat. Kids would have to be crazy to mess with him.
-Won’t Be Messed With In Winnepeg
What If Danzig Dated My Daughter?
Posted by Keith Spillett in Articles I Probably Shouldn't Have Bothered Writing, Parenting Tips For Those With Children, Totally Useless Information on April 6, 2011
One of the things you come to accept as a parent is that your life is going to be filled with a series of irrational fears. After a while you get used to it, but there are a few that never seem to go away. Sometimes they appear in the form of a nightmare that wakes you up every night in a cold sweat with your heart thumping at 185 beats per minute. For me, that nightmare is Glenn Danzig pinning a corsage to my teenage daughter’s dress as they leave for her high school prom.
It is certainly a preposterous thing to be afraid of, but most fear has an element of the absurd to it. About three days before the prom my daughter starts telling me about this great guy named “Glenn” who she met at the mall. Fast forward to the night of the prom, the doorbell rings and I walk over to it. She is upstairs getting ready. I open the door. There he is…Danzig. Of course, my daughter is two years old right now and Danzig is 56, so there is a bit of an age difference. By the time my daughter is ready for the prom Danzig will be 72. In the nightmare, he doesn’t appear that old. He looks like the snarling Lucifuge-era Danzig that could beat up four Marine battalions and the Dallas Cowboys without breaking a sweat. He is wearing one of those horrible rental tuxedos with the godawful ruffled shirt and yet he still looks menacing. He is polite at first. I ask him to come in and have a cold soda. He sits on my couch and stares blankly at nothing in particular. I am freaking out. I keep hearing that part of the song Mother where he says “I’m gonna take your daughter out tonight….Gonna show her my world…. Not about to see your light….If you want to find hell with me…I can show you what it’s like” Ehhhhh!
“So, Glenn, how did you meet my daughter?”
(Here’s the part that is kind of strange. During this section of the dream, he sings everything he says in a sinister, baritone voice)
“We were in…Hotttttt Topicccc…..and we started….talkkkkkkking…..She said she likes Gothic Roccckkkkk…..”
I puff out my chest and try to pull off the intimidating, “make sure and have my daughter home by midnight or else” dad act. This would work on most high schoolers, but it’s not going to put any sort of fear into Danzig. “Uhmmmmm. What are your plans for this evening, Glenn?”
“We’re going for a ride on my….Harrrrlllllleyyy. Then, we’re going to go out (drums start to pick up from out of nowhere) dannnnnciiiiinnnnngggg!!!!”
I try to change the subject to something less threatening. “So, any chance of a Misfits re-union?”
Danzig just laughs and stares off into the distance. The room is filled with three minutes of icy, uncomfortable silence.
The next fifteen minutes are a blur of horrible memories. My daughter dancing down the stairs and leaping into Danzig’s arms, taking pictures out on the front lawn with her, her friends and the dude who once sang the lyrics “I Want Your Skulls, I Need Your Skulls”, sneaking glances at my equally horrified wife. I wake up screaming.
How does a responsible parent deal with this? If we tell her she can’t see Danzig, that might drive her right into his arms. I could see it now….“Honey, you can never see that Danzig fellow again!”
“I hate you mom and dad!!!!! You are trying to ruin my life!!!!!!”
Next thing I know it I come home and there is a note on the refrigerator that says “Went to Vegas to marry Danzig. Back on Monday.”
We certainly cannot condone this sort of behavior. I’d much rather see her dating one of those brooding, introspective Echo and The Bunnymen poet-socialist types. However, so much is out of your control. You just try to do the best you can raising them and hope they make good decisions. Being a parent is hard enough without having to worry about your daughter dating Danzig.
Robitussin Turns Me Into a Vengeful Idiot and Other Unpleasant 3 AM Realities
Posted by Keith Spillett in Existential Rambings, Totally Useless Information on December 10, 2010
A Pretty Accurate Representation of My Mood on Sunday Night/Monday Morning (borrowed from popartmachine.com)
I ain’t feelin’ no sweet mystery of life nonsense this evening. I have a miserable cold. My throat hurts, I’m tired and I feel like I fought a 50-foot killer sea urchin all day. I have nothing to add to your life but complaints; I am going to blog anyway. Being sick is awful.
The other night I tried to get rid of this thing by sucking down some Robitussin. How on earth the FDA approved this substance is beyond me. The stuff never makes me feel better, but it does always fill me with angst and white-hot rage. I took the recommended dosage and went to bed. Immediately I fell into hours of hellish dreaming. I had one dream where everything was normal except everyone I saw had tremendous goiters protruding from their necks. Just an average Saturday, I went to the supermarket….goiters everywhere…..I went to the bank….GOITERS….I got home….GOITERS on everyone. Nobody noticed except me. It was basically what would have happened if Ken Kesey wrote a Twilight Zone episode. You have been transported to a strange land where everything is the same, except everyone has goiters.
I woke up from that one sweating. It was 2:58 in the morning and I was staring at the ceiling. Being a basketball coach, I am familiar with this drill. Usually I lay there muttering to myself about how I should have gone to a 1-3-1 zone in the second half of a game from 5 years ago. This evening was different. I kept thinking about orange juice. For some reason, the idea of oranges being squeezed and put in bottles was making me insanely angry. Why do they do it? Who came up with the idea? Usually, I can distance myself from this sort of thing and laugh a bit, but I was full on committed to the grave injustice that was orange juice. Then, I started thinking about raisins. Ridiculous little things! Absurd!
I bolted upright in bed. My wife is familiar with these sorts of moments and has learned to not engage me at 3 AM. Nothing I say makes any sense at that time, but with a head full of Robitussin I was bound to start yelling at her because she didn’t know the two Senators from the state of Nebraska. I started pacing around the room looking for something to read. I found the most boring thing I could lay my hands; a nightmarish volume I found in the quarter bin years back on how the commodities market works. The plan was to bore the demons out of my body. The next thing I know I am sitting out in my car waiting for the thing to heat up with the first Suffocation album, a wonderful piece of music known as “Effigy of the Forgotten”, blaring as loud as my blown out Saturn speakers could blast it. (A side note…I am convinced that there cannot be a more bizarre vision then watching a 35 year old father of two sitting alone in a beat up car at 3 AM on a Monday morning blaring death metal and singing along at the top of his lungs)
Suddenly, I’m in a Dunkin’ Donuts. The guy behind the counter has that “please don’t hassle me” look that any rational person would have working a nightshift would have when a wild-eyed lunatic walked in with malice in his eyes.
“Boston Creme donut,” I mumbled.
“We’re out.”
Wrong answer. “What do you mean!!!!? How are you out!!!! What are you talking about? This is a donut shop, man!”
“We don’t put those out until 4 AM.”
“Really?!?!!? really?!??!!? REALLY!!!!!!”
The poor guy was clearly feeling under the counter for the shotgun at that point.
“We have old fashions.”
“No!”
“Bear claws.”
“No!”
“Blueberry”
“NO! NO! NO!!!!”
“Sour cream”
“Ehhhhhh. Give me two.”
I slunked away a defeated man. I sat there for an hour reading the same three pages on soybean futures over and over not understanding a word. The book might as well have been upside down. Every five minutes or so I got up and looked at the section of the rack where Boston Cream donuts were usually kept and there was nothing. I didn’t even want one anymore, I just felt like there should be some sense of completion, some end to this absurd journey.
I went home. I lay there for a while longer staring at the ceiling fan. It got light. It goes on.
The Tyranny of Tradition 
