Can't Relate to the Angst No More

I cannot hear the song Missing you by John Waite on the radio without instantly being transported back to eighth grade. All that song does is remind me of school dances held during the afternoons at our junior high, and my fruitless quest to be asked to slow dance to this particular song. Oh, the angst.

Sadly, that's about the extent of my junior high boy angst. I wasn't one of those golden girls who clutched notes filled with intrigue and the inevitable "Will you go with me? Circle yes, no or maybe." I was the girl with the unfortunate Pat Benatar haircut, a dire need for braces, and oversized eighties glasses with a sparkly heart affixed to the lower corner of my lens. Any notes I clutched typically held plans of buying gummie strawberries at the local store, a few issues of Tiger Beat and then riding the ten speed bike home to peruse the glossy pages and tear out mini posters of Duran Duran and Ricky Schroeder.

I remember one eighth grade couple in particular, Jenny and Ryan. They were the king and queen of my junior high and had been going together for, well, forever. At least four months. Ryan was in my art class, and I sat at the large square table with the other cool kids (I was never really a cool kid but always their friend. I think they had a rule to always include one nerdy girl). All these shiny haired, lip-glossed, sparkly kids would analyze the latest developments in the Jenny/Ryan saga. I would listen intently, chewing on my Chapsticked lip, wondering when I would be able to wear makeup and would it ever look as good as it did on these kids?

One scene in particular has stayed with me all these years. I thought it was the most romantic interlude between a boy and a girl, bar none. It was my The Way We Were or Love Story. Ryan had asked Jenny to go with him after weeks, weeks I tell you, of deliberation and group discussion with the coolness roundtable in art class. Jenny of course knew all about this and played it cool, never flinching in her Esprit sweater or LJ Simone loafers, her mesh Madonna hand glove never absorbing a bead of sweat (I was certain of this, since my hands were constantly slick, and practically drenched my Trapper Keeper when I passed a boy who made my heart beat Like a Virgin).

Jenny had the note with Ryan's declaration of pubescent love and had the wherewithal to not read it until she boarded her bus after school. This alone cemented her as queen in my book. How, how was she able to not tear open the lined paper note the instant his handsome hands gave it to her? How was she able to coyly slide it in her Peechee and not break stride on her way to class? These were gifts I feared would never be bestowed upon me. As Jenny's bus pulled away from the school, she leaned out the window and called to Ryan, her hair blowing in the breeze. Yes, yes I'll go with you! she shouted from her departing bus, the Sea Breeze scented crowd on the curb bursting into cheers as Ryan grinned and walked away.
Sigh. It was beautiful.

Now, many years later, my own daughter is one of the golden girls. There is drama, intrigue, the class king to her queen. There are tears over notes passed that were forged by frenemies (Mom! She asked him how much he liked me on a scale of one to ten and she FORGED his writing to make it look like a...*sob*...FOUR. I hate her!) and I am left standing in the kitchen, mildly annoyed over the drama, wondering when she'll grow out of it, slightly in awe, and totally useless.

Broken Shell of a Woman

I have this great memory. I was in my early twenties and working at a law firm, finishing college, and one of my work buddies was Valerie, an "older" woman who was married with a toddler. She was ancient; if memory serves, she was 26 or 27 at the time (gack, struggling for breath here). She was a real grown up: house, husband, baby, four door sedan and a full-time job. I really looked up to her, and thought her lunchtime anecdotes about daycare, home budgets, and Pampered Chef parties were fascinating.

One day, Valerie was sick and at work anyway. I asked her why she didn't just go home and rest. She told me it was easier to be at work sick than at home sick, because she would have to pick her two year-old up from daycare, and that just wasn't worth it.

"Well why don't you just ask your daughter to play nicely while mommy rests? Explain to her why you're not feeling well. Give her things to do and go lay down." I waited, smug in my knowledge that I had outsmarted the mommy. Sometimes, people just can't see the forest for the trees, you know?

I don't know why she didn't just bean me with a legal file, or worse, stop talking to me. She must have been extraordinarily ill. But that's not the point of my story. I remember thinking to myself, and later telling my fiance, that when we had kids, things would be different. Yes, not only were the first seeds of mommy judgment planted that day, they germinated alongside the hearty flora and fauna of Futurous Maternalous Planneous. It's a bitch of a plant.

We would raise cerebral children. Our kids would be precociously verbal, either because of genetics or our diligence, or both. Our children wouldn't watch television, unless it was a video to supplement their sign-language, or Russian, or European history facts.

We would not bribe our children, or yell; reasoning and calm would prevail. The family dinner table would be laden with several healthy, lovingly prepared options that our future Rhodes Scholars would devour without complaint. We would giggle over one of the children's observations that the jicama salad resembled the profile of Mao Tse Tung. Bob and I would hold hands while we listened to our children stumble over their first pronunciation of denouement. After dessert of fresh berries, picked from the garden planted earlier in the year with the children, we would read aloud from the Classics.

I would excuse myself after dinner to read in my favorite chair, as the housekeeper finished the dinner dishes (our trilingual PhD candidate housekeeper who taught our children Mendel's genetics through the pea plants in the aforementioned garden) and the sounds of the viola, piano and cello would waft through the house. I would note the time each night, after losing myself uninterrupted in yet another novel, and quietly announce that the children needed to be in bed. Somehow, they would hear me, and they would all put their instruments away, brush their teeth, say prayers thanking God for their amazing lives, and wait to be kissed goodnight.

Yes, I was certain in my abilities that not only would I do it all right, but that when my friend did it wrong, it was simply a matter of course correction. Judgment? Meet blind optimism and her date stupidity.

Tonight was a stream of consciousness bickerfest between the older three that ended with me telling the girls that everytime they argued, shouted, or used harsh words, their baby brother's brain stopped growing (I was serious). So when my daughter whined asked for help with her homework when she should have been in bed, I looked at Bob with wild-eyed desperation and hissed, "I will do anything you want later tonight if you will just take care of homework."

He did. After helping her for a protracted amount of time, wherein I heard the muffled cries of distress over fractions, he emerged from her bedroom. He silently went into the kitchen and took a fork out of the drawer. He walked over to me and handed me the utensil.

"Please. Just stab me in the eye."

I think we have some weeds in the garden.