October 30, 2005
Porter Considers George Michael
I’m driving with the boys in the van, heading to Finn’s drum lessons. Still nostalgic from my 20th high school reunion, I dial up George Michael on my iPod. Organ music fills the van, as the introduction to “Faith” begins to play.
Porter: “I know what instrument this is. It’s an organ. It is. This is the kind of music they play in scary movies and at church.”
George Michael begins singing the first lines of the song. Finn has his drumsticks out and begins tapping them on the seat in time to the beat. I peer in the mirror and see Porter listening intently as George sings, “Well I guess it would be nice if I could touch your body. I know not everybody has got a body like you…”
Porter: “We don’t sing words like this in church.”
The song continues and builds to the chorus. Finn is still drumming, and I’m singing along with George, “Because I got to have faith, I’ve got to have faith. I’ve got to have faith faith faith…”
Porter: “We talk about faith at church, though.”
Porter listens to the whole song, with a confused look on his face. The song ends.
Porter: “I think this is probably not the kind of song you sing in church.”
Posted by Anne Glamore @
9:38 am •
Music: Give Me A Beat! •
October 20, 2005
Don’t You (Forget About Me)
The class of 1985 held its 20th high school reunion this past weekend. In the weeks leading up to the event, I experienced a fair amount of angst over how best to present myself to people I hadn’t seen in twenty years. What did I have to show for all that time? I didn’t have a Grammy, a corner office, or a fancy car. I still didn’t have boobs, real or fake. I have some new scars, three boys and a husband, and a paid off minivan. How would I measure up?
I read an article recently in which a man who interviews a lot of job applicants says he always asks interviewees to describe themselves in high school. He thinks that the way people say that they used to be in high school is actually the way they see themselves now. I had a hard time believing that when I first read it.
In high school, I dressed like Madonna in the “Borderline” days, complete with fishnet hose, stilettos and fingerless lace gloves. I was boy-crazy. I was on the dance team– we wore sparkly leotards and gold boots and performed at the football games. I had lots of friends, but I didn’t belong to any particular clique. My drinks of choice were Riunite or Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers. I was smart and took several Advanced Placement classes. My favorite subject was English. I was a leader, and I was going places. I’ve changed a lot since then.
Friday night we gathered together for the first time in twenty years. Almost everyone was there:
The tall, beautiful brunette who’s still tall and beautiful, and also has five boys. I don’t know how she’s managed to do both.
The guy who says he’s discovered the perfect martini.
The girl who works for the State Department AND sings and plays guitar in a band.
The girl who’s living in L.A. and takes pole dancing lessons as a hobby.
The idea of pole dancing as a hobby garnered lots of interest from the attendees. Because I am a faithful US Weekly reader, I was well aware that pole dancing is not just for strippers anymore. It’s a bona fide form of exercise, at least on the West Coast, although a lot of the Southerners had to be convinced of that.
Everyone ogled the pole dancing girl and agreed that pole dancing does provide physical benefits. I heard one man ask his wife if she’d consider canceling her gym membership if he had a pole installed in their bedroom.
(That night I did a little pole dancing research and discovered that there are companies that teach pole dancing, and businesses that supply the accouterments. Apparently anyone can do it, although the sport can be risky, especially if you have breast implants.)
Saturday there was a gathering for graduates and their families at the high school to “see how much it had changed.” I wasn’t fooled by the invitation. I knew no one wanted to see the new baseball fields. The point of the lunch was to show up with your spouse and children to prove that in family life, at least, you had been successful.
I didn’t let the fact that both Drew and Finn had fever stop me from participating in the show. I put all three boys in clean shirts and made them brush their teeth in the middle of the day, which caused a great amount of consternation in the Glamore house.
I impressed upon them the importance of looking my fellow classmates in the eye, saying yes ma’am and no ma’am, and shaking hands. No boogers were to be removed from noses and all farts were to remain in bottoms and released only inside a bathroom. Once I was satisfied that my boys were going to act like proper denizens of the Tiny Kingdom, we departed.
Seeing my fellow classmates with spouses and offspring was surreal. All the kids ran around, threw footballs and jumped in an inflatable moonwalk while the adults caught up on what everyone had been doing the last two decades.
Some developments were not surprising. The boy who was always called upon to fix the film projector when it broke is now a successful software engineer. Others had taken surprising career paths, like the quiet girl who runs a lobbying firm. Some had exotic jobs– one of my oldest friends lives in Paris and arranges walking tours of the city.
My boys behaved like gentlemen. Bill was his usual sexy self. I, on the other hand, apparently listened to “Private Dancer” too many times while getting dressed. My denim miniskirt was entirely too short, and I was showing a lot more skin than any other graduate there. It was my good fortune that the organizers did not hand out an award for “Most Whorish Housewife.”
Saturday night the adults assembled one last time for a band party. The 80’s cover band ground out “My Sharona,” “I Will Follow,” and “Jessie’s Girl.” We danced and drank and talked some more. The discussion turned to what we were glad to leave behind from high school, including:
–Boy George
–Bad taste in men
–Certain people
–Datelessness
–Hormonally spawned feelings of inadequacy
–Fake IDs
–Physics
Overall everyone seemed very happy, and most spoke of their friends and families, not their cars or houses. I’m sure some people have corner offices, but they weren’t discussing them. They debated Pampers vs. Huggies, the cost of ballet recital costumes, and sleep schedules.
After I got home, I thought about myself, then and now. Maybe the job interviewer is right– in some ways I’ve changed, but in some ways I’m just the same.
The Riunite and wine coolers have given way to gin and tonics and wine, but I relive my dancing years everyday in Jazzercise. I confess that lots of times I find myself in the gym, pretending I’m wearing gold glitter boots instead of sensible aerobic shoes. I dance and smile at the wall as though I was in front of a stadium full of screaming fans.
I continue to make bad fashion choices. I’m still an English geek and I may have lost a few brain cells along the way, but I persist in thinking that I’m intelligent.
And of course, I’m still boy-crazy. But now it’s better than ever. The boys whose love I crave are not only attainable, but undeniably mine: true love always.
October 13, 2005
Tub Talk
Even though Drew and Porter are seven, they still play in the bathtub together almost every night. Standing outside the door and eavesdropping can be entertaining.
Porter: “You can’t shoot me ’cause I am GOD!”
Drew: “I can shoot you anyway.”
(pause)
Drew: “Actually, I can’t, ’cause God is a spirit.”
Porter: “Yeah, he is a spirit, and you can’t shoot him, not even his feet.”
Drew: “He doesn’t have feet.”
Porter: “Yes, he does. God has two feet.”
Drew: “He is a spirit and he does not have feet or a nose.”
Porter: “He does too have feet, and he wears tennis shoes.”
Drew: “No he doesn’t. He wears sandals.”
Porter: “Well, you still can’t shoot him in the foot.”
Drew: “Okay, then you be Saddam Hussein and I will shoot you.”
Porter: “Okay.”
Drew: “Pow! Pow!”
Porter: “AAGGHH! I am Saddam Hussein and the soldier shot me in the foot! Where are my bad guys? I need help!”
Drew: “They are not coming to help you because I am GOD!”
Porter: “No you aren’t.”
Drew: “For pretend I am.”
Porter: “Okay.”
(pause)
Porter: “Hey, let’s do the trick where I be a bridge and you swim under me.”
Drew: “Yeah, and then we’ll play dirty baby.”
October 10, 2005
Stinkers
At open house, each of the first grade teachers had a sheet for parents to sign up to come help the kids with their reading each week. Unfortunately, I went to Finn’s class first, and by the time I got to Drew and Porter’s classes, the lists were all filled.
I was secretly relieved. I already listen to the twins read books every night for homework, and I wasn’t dying to take time out of the school day to listen to other people’s children stumble through Sheep In A Jeep. Still, when the reading helper schedule came out, I felt bad. Plenty of other mothers were making the sacrifice. I resolved to get on the list for next semester.
Bill went fishing with my dad all weekend, so it was just me and the boys. Saturday morning I woke up to a silent house. The boys’ beds were empty. As I made coffee, I saw some movement in the magnolia tree in the front yard. A moment later a guerrilla dropped from the branches and raced into the nearby azaleas. Then all three boys ran toward the side yard, clutching their firearms.
They truly looked terrifying. There was a hint of fall in the air, and they’d raided the coat closet and found ski masks. As I watched, I noticed that Drew had a gun attached to his belt and a canteen strapped to his back. Although his face was already obscured, he’d tied a red bandanna around his face, cowboy style. Porter had a pair of plastic binoculars dangling from his neck and carried a big stick and a butterfly net. Finn had his long rifle from Disney World and wore a batting glove on each hand.
I went back to my coffee and luxuriated in the peace and quiet, punctuated from time to time with cries of “The Taliban is coming!” and “I caught Osama! You guard him while I go get some nuts to feed him!”
Finn had a football game later that morning. Drew and Porter begged to wear their terrorist clothes to the field, but I decided that might not be safe in today’s climate, so I made them change into regular clothes and leave their guns behind. Unfortunately, I failed to frisk them for weapons.
Finn made a couple of good tackles, and his team won. Drew and Porter spent the entire game playing under a tree with a couple of friends. I figured they were building a caterpillar habitat since that’s been the hot activity all week during recess at school.
After the game, I strolled over to the tree to tell them it was time to go.
“Hey guys, I want to see the habitat,” I said, as I came near. They had smoothed out a circle of dirt and surrounded it with rocks.
“We’re not making a habitat,” Drew said absently, pulling a handful of something out of his pocket and tossing it into the circle. “We’re making a fire.”
“Yeah, and we’re gonna chop some wood to put on the fire,” Porter said cheerfully. He was holding a pocketknife, using it to whittle small chips off a stick.
I peered into the circle and saw that the white scraps Drew had deposited were cigarette butts. While I had thought my boys were helping Mother Nature by fashioning a home for caterpillars, in reality they’d been playing with knives and nicotine during the entire game. No wonder they hadn’t bothered me.
I confiscated the knife, checked everyone’s pockets and hustled them into the van. On the way home, I stopped to rent movies, which formed the backbone of my plans for the remainder of the weekend. My boys don’t get to watch TV during the week, and their consumption is strictly limited on the weekends. The promise of multiple movies was powerful.
Once home, we settled into an easy routine: an hour of chores, watch a movie. Repeat as needed until house is clean or everyone falls asleep.
It was a resounding success. The boys cleaned their rooms and bathrooms, including the dried up toothpaste that inevitably settles on the counters and sinks. We got the whole house vacuumed and all the laundry done. We cleaned the garage and swept the deck. We cleaned out the van and went to the grocery store.
It wasn’t until we were all snuggling in my bed late Saturday night that I realized we had skipped baths. Everyone was smelling a little ripe. I wrote “bathe boys” on a sticky note and put it on my mirror, then I put everyone to bed.
Sunday the twins had a baseball game. Both boys got a hit, and Porter had a nice throw from the outfield to second base. Of course, he’d been put in the outfield because he couldn’t stop playing in the dirt when he was in the infield, but still: when the pressure was on, he performed.
It was late afternoon when we got home. I helped the twins with their homework, then ran a tub full of water. I commanded them to bathe thoroughly, and I returned to the kitchen to heat up a nutritious meal of chicken fingers and french fries, with a choice of yogurt or applesauce on the side.
As the food cooked, I returned to the bathroom to wash the twins’ hair. To my surprise, they were already out of the tub, with towels hung up and pajamas on. I certainly wasn’t going to undo all that they had achieved by making them get back in the tub, so I went ahead with dinner and still more homework.
Before I tucked everyone into bed, we all got in my bed and snuggled a while. After a moment, I noticed a noxious smell permeating the air.
“Porter, let me see your feet,” I said. He can produce some gnarly foot odor. He pulled them out from under the covers and I sniffed them. They didn’t smell like roses, but they were not the source of the stench that assailed my nostrils.
I started sniffing cautiously around the room. As I got near Drew’s head, the smell grew stronger. I checked Porter’s, too. Ugh. I thought about the boys running around in ski masks that covered their heads. In baseball hats. In batting helmets. No wonder they reeked. I groaned.
I wasn’t concerned about the actual smell; I knew it was just dirt and sweat. I was worried about what would happen when an unsuspecting mother took Drew in her lap to help him read It’s A Frog’s Life and got a whiff of him. I’d be the talk of the first grade.
“What’s wrong, Mom?” Drew asked.
“You stink,” I said. “I don’t think you’ve washed your hair in days. You smell like a skunk.”
The twins thought that was hilarious.
“I stink like a skunk! I stink like a skunk!” Porter chanted, bouncing up and down on the bed.
“I LIKE to smell like a skunk,” Drew proclaimed. “Then no girls will get near me.”
“Yeah, girls with GERMS,” Porter agreed.
Finn looked at me. “What are you going to do?” he asked. “It’s kind of late.”
“I’ll show you what I’m going to do,” I said, and I marched to the bathroom and retrieved a can of Psssssst I’d bought more as an exercise in nostalgia than out of any belief that I’d actually use it.
Psssst was an integral part of my mom’s beauty routine when we were growing up. The can sprays a substance that looks like liquid chalk onto your hair, which you then brush out. Apparently it takes the dirt and oil with it. When my mom wasn’t around, my sisters and I used to spray it onto our hands then scrape the powder off with our fingernails.
I read the fine print. Pssst claims to be perfect for “in between shampoos” and “after sports.” Porter and Drew met both criteria.
“That looks like it’s for ladies,” Drew protested. “You can’t put that on my head.”
“You have two choices, mister,” I said. “You can hold still while I spray this on your head, or you can take another bath.”
“No bath! No bath!” Porter yelled. “Spray me first!”
I started spraying and brushing.
They howled as I ran into tangles. My goal wasn’t to attain actual cleanliness, just the scent of cleanliness, and the Psssst was not heavily scented. I sprayed and brushed several times before I noticed any improvement in the boys’ smell. After three or four applications I deemed them respectable enough for school. I had used almost the whole can.
And then I put everyone in the bed.
This morning, I was dragging. The boys were already up and dressed for school when I ambled into the kitchen to make coffee. Porter was making pancakes and Drew was picking at a bowl of Trix. Both of them were wearing ski masks.
“What are you doing?” I yelled. “”Take those off immediately!”
“But Mom,” Drew said, “I want to wear a hat to cover my hair. My hair smells like a girl.”
“Me, too,” said Porter.
“You can’t wear hats to school,” I said, peeling the ski masks off each twin. “It’s against the rules.”
Last night’s smell washed over me. The hats had clearly been the main culprit.
“And believe me, you don’t smell like girls,” I added. “Let me get the spray.”
I got the Psssst, but it was almost empty. I went in the kitchen and looked under the sink for Lysol, but couldn’t find any. Right on schedule, there was a honk in the driveway. Chatty Mom had arrived to take everyone to school.
“We get to go to school stinky!” Porter exclaimed, picking up his backpack.
“Not so fast!” I screamed. I ran into the laundry room and grabbed the Febreze and chased Drew and Porter into the driveway, carefully aiming shots of spray at the backs of their heads. I stopped when I got to the van. Chatty Mom looked at me and the bottle of Febreze.
“I am not even going to ask,” she said. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly good reason you’re spraying your children with fabric refresher.”
“There is,” I said.
“I trust you,” she said, as she started backing out of the driveway.
So far no one has called from school demanding that I bathe my filthy children. Dare I claim victory?
