House of Eratosthenes

Caught a couple of fresh-grilled hamburgers at the company pool party yesterday, somewhere around three in the afternoon. They were a little on the rare side, and I rode my bike home some seven miles, getting a flat on the way…lots of dehydration, more sunburn than was planned, some indigestion from the raw meat, which means Friday evening was spent in a nap. And all this culminates in the conclusion that as of this morning I was starving. So I rode my bike to a local sandwich shop. It’s a “Hof Brau” imitation thing where they carve up the meat right in front of you. Right next door to where they had a mail stop for my Netflix drop-off, so that was pretty cool.

So in line in front of me, is a momma and her whelps. She’s about a decade younger than me…I have no idea where the dad is…there are a couple of male ten-year-old tow-heads in Judo outfits, and a pair of teenage trollops decked out in the “cootchie cutter” super-tight jean shorts I wish the ladies would be wearing in their mid-to-late twenties or so. So we’ve got two ten-year-olds and two sixteen-year-olds. And I was struck by the “mother ship” configuration going on here…Mom was just barking out order after order after order, command after command after command. Really something to watch. You go here, you go there. The tow-headed kids are having salads — wonder how that came about. So the guy behind the counter is asking the little guy what kind of cheese he wants on top and the Mom is interrupting her own commandment-dishing-out exercise long enough to yell over “He probably wants blue cheese”…and then an issue is somehow made of the idea that salad consumed by a person wearing a Gi, is likely to become salad worn on the sleeve of the Gi. So she instructs the little cretins to roll up their sleeves. Oh no she doesn’t; she has one hold his arms out, and she rolls up the sleeves for him while she continues to belt out Great Santini commands in all directions.

What struck me was the reaction of the four kids. The two jean-short-sluts, of course, immersed themselves deeply in “Best Friends Forever” hobnobbing, jibber-jabbering to each other a mile a minute while all the people and furnishings and air space around them disappeared. The two tow-heads did what boys will do, taking a more individualized approach, daydreaming about Pokemon or Fred Flintstone or something. Mom continued to belt out orders as if she was the center of attention…and nuclear powered.

Mercifully, I was allowed to line-jump. I got my grub. They got theirs. I got a pub table, teen trollops got another pub table and Momma and Judo artists got a booth across from the trollops. When Momma had to excuse herself to go resolve biological issues, things got real interesting. Wonder sluts began assaulting the martial artists…something to do with wiping salad dressing on the Judo outfits or something. Martial artists are not just sitting there & taking it, they’re dishing it back out. It was pure chaos. And, on some level, rather healthy and therefore appealing; a wholesome chaos. Mom’s gone, let’s act like people again.

Momma emerged and there was a predictable smackdown as she busied herself with restoring order. Each of the four combatants was entirely innocent — you could just see the golden halos over their heads. Momma barked out some more orders, replied with a wordless upraised hand to this-or-that protest, and made some superficial motion toward actually consuming food.

Anyway. It’s just interesting, to me, that nobody has any interest or ability to socially interact as normal people until the momma bear is gone. And that only has to happen for about five seconds or so.

Let’s just cut to the chase here: Kids do not take care of what they see someone else is already managing…or trying to manage. They will not join in any team effort with Mom, to “help” get their own food ordered. Frankly, I wouldn’t either. If Mom takes over the whole show, they quietly fantasize about the ground swallowing them up…and yeah…that’s what I would be doing, too, if I were them.

Learning disabilities? Social immaturity? Let me just state the obvious — that which everybody knows to be true, but everyone’s too smart to say out loud except me. Kids do what they can see needs to be done. They are not going to participate socially until such time as an avenging angel descends on us, spreads pixie dust around all the Moms, and silences them. Is that not sexist enough yet? Shut UP, moms. Let the kid order his own salad.

Or else…I don’t want to hear a single word about ADHD. So long as I see the adults show the behavior I saw today, I will expect to see the kids showing the behavior I saw out of them. The operative formula here is something like: Social competence in the kids, plus words-per-minute out of the Mom, equals C, a constant. So zip it. Let’s see what your kids really have going on.

I imagine a hundred out of a hundred mothers will reply that this advice, for this reason or that one, somehow doesn’t apply to them. How I wish that were truly the case.

Update 9/11/11: You know, it occurs to me — over the last twenty years, what is the caricature of the parent that has been most stigmatized other than the deadbeat dad…it is the overly-involved dad, sitting in the front row at the soccer match, yelling at the whelp to do everything that’s needed to score the goal. Win! Beat! Get! Grrrr! From the beginning, I’ve been a little confused and disoriented as to which entity I found less sympathetic; the Great Santini dad who’s ruining what should be a pleasurable outing for everybody, or his critics. Who are these people who are signing their curtain-climbers up for soccer and then working so hard to make it into a non-competitive sport? And since when is it the worst thing a dad can do, to want his kid to do something well — how’s that even make the list? What happened to burnings & beatings and sending ten-year-olds out on liquor runs?

But this thing with the moms who won’t shut up, it’s exactly the same thing. It has the same effect. The only difference is, the pushy moms are interfering to stop their kids from living life, and the pushy dads are interfering to stop their kids from losing a game. If you accept the premise that both are doing damage, the dads at least stop doing the damage when the game is over and the van doors slide shut.

Here we are all puzzled about why learning disabilities are skyrocketing; I’ll bet if you round up lots of SLD kids, you’re not going to find too many with dads berating their game performance on the soccer field. But I’m pretty sure you’ll find they all have pushy moms. I’m really not sure how & why the moms are getting away with this behavior that does this kind of damage to our society. Is it just because they’re girls?

Mom was probably so busy bursting our orders for years, trying to keep her brood in line, that she probably has forgotten that there is a time when that all has to slow down and then stop.
- pdwalker | 09/10/2011 @ 21:04
Yeah, a lot of this makes good sense when the kid is 2 to 4 years old, and it’s simply a case of not stopping.

Send a hundred “learning disabled” kids to ten-week summer camp, no moms allowed, and you’ll have ninety kids working much more independently when school starts up again, feeling much better about themselves and requiring a lot less by way of special ed.
- mkfreeberg | 09/11/2011 @ 07:30
“…Who are these people who are signing their curtain-climbers up for soccer and then working so hard to make it into a non-competitive sport?”
Um…Micro-management control freaks that need a babysitting service..so they can get a well deserved wine break from their hectic schedule of micro-managing?

Tow-heads? If you mean blond headed, really anglo-white boys with relatively short hair- the reference was toe-heads in my prep school days. Resemblance to the big toe was the jab, NOT to be confused with camel-toe, (also from prep school-and beyond) which I believe you alluded to with “coochie-cutter”. Regional colloquialisms I suppose.
*sigh* Bill Saffire would be proud!
- CaptDMO | 09/11/2011 @ 08:39
My missus is like that.

I took the kids on a 5 week vacation, so they could have a break from her, and her a break from them.

Took them out of the big city to a nice green, quiet place. Showed them the front door and told them to be on the other side of it except for lunch, supper and bed time.

They had a blast!
- pdwalker | 09/11/2011 @ 08:42
Learning disabled. How about mixed messages?
Go play, BUT DON’T TRY YOUR BEST TO WIN.
For richer or poorer, but you can ALWAYS get divorced no-fault, and keep the kids, house, and generous allowance to pay for it. ALL with a protective order
from restraint in the lifestyle “you’ve become accustomed to”.
If your “peers” are treating you like- one of their peers- at school, it’s BULLYING, and it’s WRONG! Report it, they’ll be punished IMMEDIATELY, by THE AUTHORITIES, in your name.
- CaptDMO | 09/11/2011 @ 08:55
Hey Captain, I already called them “toe heads” about a year ago and I got corrected over that. Tow-head turned out to be the right phrase…at least, to the best of my recollection.

It would be mortifying if I found out I was wrong going the other way. Especially since I, too, was one, and was called one pretty much constantly.
- mkfreeberg | 09/11/2011 @ 10:11

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Zip It, MomsSaturday, September 10th, 2011

Zip It, Moms
Saturday, September 10th, 2011