Sunday, March 27, 2011

Bathroom Monologue: How the World Really Is

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You maintain at least two extracurriculars a year until you break your leg at Track And Field. You start having heartbreaks as soon as you hit puberty, and you’ve got an afterschool job to start saving for cars by fifteen.

Early Acceptances and Deans’ Lists are goals. Settling and limits are lessons. The pregnancy scare, the Recession from nowhere, and not having a family house to return to are simply facts.

The man who sticks in your life is complicated, yet somehow your relationship is simple. Your pregnancy is smooth (so the doctor says).

Getting up every night to feed the baby is mandatory. So is getting into the Diner by seven. You budget Christmas presents on tips. You draft resumes and calculate mortgage rates on the backs of napkins. You watch social barriers crumble while your tires sink.

You re-learn trigonometry and European history to help him with his homework. These winters are harsher, these summers are hotter, and he won’t wear the same clothes for more than three months in a row. You postpone your OB/GYN to afford his iPhone. You risk you getting axed four times to drive him to the colleges he wants to see.

You do all this so that some Spring Break you can cook his macaroni and cheese while he tells you how the world really is.

11 comments:

  1. This story gave me the chills, in a GOOD way :)

    Thank you!

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  2. It is sort of funny that the time when you know everything, is when you have yet to learn shit.

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  3. Wow Sylvia, thank you. For something I wasn't certain would work to give you the chills, I'm very reassured about the whole project.

    Harry and Gany, quite right. I think Twain is credited as saying in his teens that his father knew nothing, and a few years later Twain was surprised how much the old man had learned.

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  4. Hahaha! I'd forgotten about that quote, he had so many good ones!

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  5. That was entirely too real. Nicely done. #depressedmommyface

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  6. The truth. Do you think the younger generation can handle it? :) Well done. Made me pause and think about life.

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  7. Some times I'm all nonsense and fantasy, other times... sorry to sadden, Danni. We only need to remember to be good to the moms we have.

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  8. A hot steaming slice of sad reality. Women are taken for granted all too often.

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  9. There you have it. Youngsters know it all, as we did when we had their age.

    (I do sound as if I were a wise old woman, don't I? lol)

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  10. Priceless! And the best explanation of why I'm not having kids that I've heard yet. From now on when people ask me, I'm referring them to this monologue!

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