2002-08-27

In Search of a Grownup. My favorite line in the entire article is the ultra-prissy Damon made out with one of his wife�s friends until Brenda told him that it was rude to do so because they had guests downstairs, a rule of etiquette with which I was not familiar. You know, I don’t believe that once you become a parent, every bit of you has to be absorbed into that role. Because if you define yourself for the rest of your life as PARENT, what happens when the kids have moved on and created a life of their own? What are you when you’re no longer PARENT? Is there anything left? If you feel the need to put a lock on the garage to keep your kids from walking in while you smoke marijuana, it may be nature’s way of telling you the time to drop the bong is when you put up the crib. Actually, I think that if you’re putting a lock on the garage to keep your kids from walking in while you smoke marijuana, that would be an example of keeping your kids out while you’re smoking marijuana, because you don’t want them to know what you’re doing, any more than you’d leave your bedroom door wide open with the lights blaring while you’re in there with your husband having sex. See, having sex is another thing that you don’t particularly want your kids to see you doing (no child should be subjected to seeing the sex face), so you lock the bedroom door. Having locked doors can be a good and necessary thing sometimes. Maybe Anna Quindlen would never dream of shutting a door between herself and her children, but I sure would, and the worst example you could give your child (when they get older, I mean – I’m not talking about you mothers of infants and toddlers, because you really do have to be attached at the hip an awful lot of the time, and I understand that) is to show them that there’s nothing else to who you are, that you live and die to be PARENT, and you have no other desire than to let your life revolve around them. I guess what really gets me is the implication that if you’re not living life Anna Quindlen’s way, it’s just flat-out wrong and you’re an awful, evil parent. I don’t have a problem with disagreeing how someone lives their life* – one of the downfalls of existing is that someone out there is going to think you’re a complete lunatic and the worst parent on Earth – but I do have a problem with the fact that Anna Quindlen saw that a facet of the van Dams’ life was one she disliked, and she jumped off that to insinuate that they were bad, lazy, evil, awful parents and really that’s the entire reason their 7 year-old daughter was murdered. Did she say that? Of course not. She lamely said Counsel never succeeded in making this relevant, as if she wished that they HAD made it relevant. She never once intimated that such a line of thought is idiocy. Which it is. Thus, the ladder fund. Want to contribute? *of course, just for the record, I DO have a problem with someone who disagrees with how I live my life emailing to tell me so, as if I should give a shit. In case there was any question.]]>