Monday, December 17, 2012

Playdates ARE Funny

Around almost every corner I turn on the Interwebs I find myself face-to-screen, drooly-cheeked and squinty-eyed, reading Mommy blog after Mommy blog. Don't tell me you haven't noticed.

 

I'll trade you all the Zoloft in the world to assure me it's not a sign or something.

 

I don't know how this has happened. But most of the blogs I read on my fancy google follow-y thing cycle themselves through each other in varying stages of hilarity, as I am churned through the workings of the Next Generation of mothers. The funny ones. The ones that drink and don't lie about it; the ones that laugh at their kids' mistakes (maybe if not in their faces); the ones that say "fuck" and "shit" and "tits."

 

Somehow, as I rounded the corners of web space a few months ago and stumbled upon these hilarious people, I found my kinship. I found people that made me laugh out loud though I have no idea what they're talking about when they wax hysterical on their children's lisps; make fun of grammatical mistakes in a two-year-old; and somehow make staying at home all day with tiny almost-humans simultaneously horrifying and The Best Thing Ever.

 

I would be lying if I didn't say that these are the women that give me the courage to write.

 

But I don't think they notice me. Sigh. It's like I'm in high school all over again and I'm pretending not to stare at the most popular girl's jean skirt. Like, how does she pull that off, exactly? What does a "thong" do?

 

I never did have much fashion sense back then, not to mention courage with my words. Though I did have a teacher comment on a poem I wrote in sixth grade with "depressing dark." Thanks, Mr. Forgotyourname. It's not like I was slitting my wrists or anything. But my timid wordsmithing and sparkly eyeshadow aside, there is more to my love affair with mommy bloggers than what it's pulled from within these depths of coffee and self-doubt. And more than the obvious hilarity.

 

I love the Mommies of the blogosphere because they don't give a shit.

 

Ok, well, hold on a minute. That's not exactly it. Or that's not all. Allow me to dissect the frog in my brain for you. Mommy bloggers had me at "diapers" because:

 

1) They actually don't give a shit about what you think of their parenting. A model that can and should be adopted by the rest of us in every other facet of our lives. Ridiculousness be damned.

2) They are funny. This is obvious.

3) They talk about the most serious of the serious AND they are funny about it. Try that when you're concocting your next "we went to the park today" post.

 

See number 3 for the clincher in my own humble, un-mommy, stalker-geek opinion.

 

It is a strongly held belief of mine that while life is full of every kind of serious; a modicum of tangled darkness and shit storms of all colors; none of this is worth a damn if taken too seriously. I believe that there is nothing worth experiencing if not learned from, and if you can't do it without taking the light along with the dark then you probably aren't getting all that you can out of it.

 

Because there will always be shitty diapers, not enough sleep and hallucinogenic side effects of both. But there is also the laughter that accompanies a speech impediment and the hilarity in uncoordinated toddlers.

 

The lesson that the rest of us can take from this is that when life seems overwhelming enough even for the toughest of us, if we can't just learn to take it in stride and say "well, that happened today," then there isn't much hope of getting to the other side of it. When we can learn to feel the bad and feel the good in everything, then we've really made it.

 

I haven't always been very good at taking things lightly. I tend to freak out at how much money I have in my bank account or whether or not my tights are the right shade for my outfit. The deeper ponds are even harder to wade across. But I try and learn from the wisest among me -- even if they don't see their wisdom, either.

 

So thank you, mothers out there. Someday I hope to describe playdates with as much titillating gusto. Even though I'm still banking for a very, very long time from now.

 

 

 

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