Wednesday, May 20, 2009

You're Fluffy Now

I was on the phone with my sister the other day when I found that my dog had torn apart my LoveSac. It was in shreds. I came downstairs to find a very guilty looking weimaraner (weimaraners are the most guilty looking of all the dog breeds, all large eyes and long faces) and one three year old girl blissfully throwing upholstery foam into the air and watching it flutter down like snow. I was overwhelmed by two feelings and tugged at by a third all at once-

A. complete irrational fury

B. a soul crushing sense of futility

C. a vague idea that someday this might be funny, which only fueled feelings A and B.



It wasn't long before Maggie got the idea that she needed to distance herself from this synthetic blizzard fast so she started crying about all of the fluff that wouldn't come out of her hair or off her dress.

"MOOOOM! I'm still FLUFFY!

"Well, You're just going to have to live with it, you're fluffy now!"

"BUT I DON'T WANT TO BE FLUFFY!"

"Well, you should have thought of that before!"

...then in my ear I hear a chuckle..

my sister was still on the phone.

"You're fluffy now.... Awesome...You're going to hell"

Alright, I may have momentarily convinced my three year old that she would be covered in upholstery fluff when she graduated from college, maybe in her elderly years she would be at the grocery store wriggling a pointy finger at small, naughty children and saying in a shrill, warbly hag voice "I was once a naughty little child just like you AND I'M FLUFFY NOW!!" Then perhaps she would hobble to her Cautionary Tale Retirement Center. Yup, pretty sure I'm going to hell.


It did make me think of all of the untrue things we tell our children so that they might "learn their lesson". My husband tells me a story about his brother repeatedly punching him in the arm until his mom finally told his brother that bruises cause cancer, I cannot even list all of the horribly wrong things I've had friends tell me that their parents told them to keep them from being sexually active (for the love of Pete, the truth is scary enough folks) Then there is a whole sub category of ridiculously exaggerated consequences which might be possibilities, sure, but likelihoods? Probably not. There are quite a few little chestnuts that my own parents told me that took until my adulthood to realize hheeey, wait a minute, that's not right. Why do we do it? Do we forget that the primary lesson that our children will learn is that their parents are full of crap?

Maybe it's just shoddy parenting, we don't want to take the time to really explain away or discipline a problem properly. It reminds me of a show I saw once saw, in it Shelley Long played a mother who would explain the dangers of things like electrocution and carbon monoxide poisoning to her three year old, taking the time to acquaint her with consequences she could not have possibly understood, but still, maybe that's a better strategy than saying monsters who want to suck off your fingernails live in electrical sockets (hmmm, that does sound pretty compelling, I cannot guarantee that won't be given a try.) No wonder most of us are paralyzed with fear, we've been told that one false move will destine us for a life with all of our teeth rotted out of our heads, our eyes shot out, and livin in a van down by the river.

Still, she probably won't play in fluff for a little while.

2 comments:

Geo said...

I had a grandmother who worked this kind of black magic on me constantly, only she used real life examples to conjure death and destruction. My favorite: Bubble gum can kill you! Spit it out! I could never chew gum or blow a bubble in peace around my gram because she knew of a child who choked to death whilst enjoying the stuff. And yet I still live, dangerously.

Rebecca Wood said...

The worst I've ever heard came from Elden's Grandmother: You do that and I'll cut your wingding off! Must be when he developed that precocious twinkle in his eyes. No doubt it was from hiding under the bed and trying to see her coming.