Always Blurb Before You Read - A Cautionary Tale

We're in Day 2 of the 2008 Donors Choose Bloggers competition - and one of the projects on my donation page has already been fully funded! Proof positive that the people who read this blog are the smartest and most attractive people on the planet.

And your ass looks GREAT in those pants, by the way.

Since education is the theme of the day, I thought I'd review a book that Spawn and I read together recently. It's called "Tell Me Again About The Night I Was Born."

And despite the fact that it reeks of celebrity vanity (it's written by Jamie Lee Curtis) it's actually a charming and lovely book to read aloud with your kids.

If, that is, said kids are adopted.

If they're not, and you're like me and don't bother to read the blurb to find out what the book is about, trust me, the grilling that ensues will make you long for the relative pleasure of a full body cavity search conducted by your friendly neighborhood TSA screener.

Scene: The three of us in my room at bedtime, snuggled in my bed, The Boy (5) and The Girl (7) on either side of me. I get to Page 3: "Tell me again how the phone rang in the middle of the night and they told you I was born."

Me: (gears slowly starting to grind in my head) That's not where I was expecting this story to go. Hey, Spawn, how about we read Goodnight Moon again?

The Girl: No, I like this book. Let's keep reading.

Page 8-ish. "Tell me again how you got on an airplane with my baby bag and and flew to get me and there was no movie, only peanuts."

The Boy: My friend Andrew says that peanuts could make him and lots of other people die until they're dead. Why does the airplane want to kill those people?

TG: I thought babies lived in their mommy's tummy before they were born. You said WE lived in your tummy. Were you lying?

Me: (sweating slightly) You and your brother DID live in my tummy. But some children go to live with a different family after their mommy has them. It's called "adoption."

TB: Why would anybody would give their kid away? Was she bad?

TG: How much does it cost to buy a real baby? Can I save my allowance and get one of those instead of a guinea pig?

Me: Um. You can't buy babies. But sometimes mommies or daddies aren't able to care of their children, and they want to give them to a nice family who will.

TG: Then why would they make a baby in the first place?

Me:

Me: (second try) Sometimes people make mistakes.

TG: Were WE mistakes? Is that why you told [neighbor] Mrs. X the other night that you were "fishing" because [The Boy] was born only two years after me?

Me: What? No - OF COURSE you weren't mistakes. And I said "efficient," not "fishing." What I meant was, we wanted to have you born three years apart but we were more efficient than I thought, because your brother was conceived right away.

TB: What does CON-SEEVED mean?

TG: You don't want Mommy to tell you about that.

Me: (loudly) Who wants a pony?

The Boy: Are you going to sell me to another family so that you have enough money to buy one?


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How Books Are Destroying My Family, Part 1

Recently, I posted about how much I dread eating meals with Spawn.

One reason is that The Boy treats the "food" part of the meal as optional. He's always been picky, but things have gotten MUCH worse lately, to the point where he now eats roughly one forkful every other day. I am at a loss to explain how he has the energy to sustain his high level of physical activity, unless his body has figured out a way to extract calories from Crest Sparkle Fun toothpaste.

I’m afraid that if this goes on much longer he’ll go on a reverse growth spurt and start shrinking. He’s five years old, yet barely fills out a pair of 2T underpants. When I take him out in public, I can see thought bubbles floating over people's heads: She must be one of those crazy mothers that I've read about in the New York Post, starving that poor kid in a moldy basement somewhere.

So I've gone into damage control mode, trying to get him to eat at least ONE type of protein, and to figure out what touched off this charming little phase, because SOMEONE MUST PAY.

And then he brought home "Little House On the Prairie" and told me how they've been reading it at camp and how much he likes it, which surprised me because he usually isn't interested in books unless they have "Optimus Prime" in the title. But after reading a few pages, I understood the appeal. They might have been pluckily gentle pioneers on TV, but in the BOOKS, they're a bunch of axe-wielding survivalist nut jobs.

Excerpt from "Little House In The Big Woods:"
"It doesn’t hurt him, Laura,” Pa said. “We do it so quickly.” In a minute the hog stopped squealing. After that, Butchering Time was great fun. There was the heart, and the liver, and the tongue, and the head to be made into headcheese.

And THAT, my friends, is why The Boy no longer eats any sort of animal based protein. (As a sidenote, what in holy hell is HEADCHEESE? I thought it was the byproduct of a venereal disease, not something that anybody actually considered EATING.)

…Pa blew up the pig's bladder, which made a little white balloon, and he tied the end tight with a string and gave it to Mary and Laura to play with.

I blame THIS for the recent breakdown he had when we walked into his best friend's birthday party and spotted the decorations. And also for why he doesn't want to play soccer anymore.

“A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti."

This is actually a quote from Hannibal Lecter, but it explains why I don't like Italian wines.

Now I am trying to find other activities for us to do together besides reading. But even the hot and heavy romance he used to have with the Wii has paled in comparison to his fascination with the ongoing saga of hog-slaughtering sadists.

And there are NINE frigging books in this series. Anybody know a good vegan recipe?

P.S. In response to comments, a running list of foods that The Boy refuses to eat can be found by clicking here.

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