Another reason why it’s called the “Forever Stamp”

Alternate title to today’s post: Yet another eason why it’s never worth it to leave a three-year-old unsupervised for even a nano-second.

That’s right. Apparently, eyes were averted, attention was focused elsewhere (use of passive voice directed towards supervising adult(s) present in the house at the time of the incident), and, quick like a bunny, the three-year-old discerned that the page of Liberty Bells were actually STICKERS! and, despite there being a whole deskful of paper right there at his chubby little fingertips, he thought it would be FUN to affix them to, oh, I dunno, THE ANTIQUE SLANT-TOP DESK. And they are NOT coming off. They’ll be on there forever.

The Forever Stamp. Now! With permanent adhesive!

I suppose I should be grateful that he stuck them to the inside of the slant-top, which can be folded up to hide the Liberty Bells. Of course, I never fold it because there are always stacks of stuff on it. And worst of all?

Now I have to remember to buy more stamps.

Does this email make me look fat?

It started innocently enough. My good friend, the ever-anonymous Washwords, sent me an IM through Gmail chat. I missed it because I had logged out for a nanosecond half an hour, but it showed up in my Gmail, because Google is cool that way, and here is what it said:

hey… i can’t remember. were we supposed to have lunch today? i can’t. argh. how about NEXT week (m or w)?

I replied to her via Gmail.

Me either, that’s OK though… Next week should be good - is Mon OK? Where do you wanna meet? Let me know.

An uncharacteristically brief communication for both of us. And really, what more needed to be said.

But then I glanced over to the right, to Gmail’s sponsored links. Gmail provides their users with these helpful links, which are generated based on message content (they call it “context-sensitive”), with the hope that you will click on through to the other side. Sometimes, they actually seem relevant, and you think to yourself, those crazy kids over at Google are sure some kind of geniuses, but other times? Raise your hands, Gmail users, if you’ve experienced shock and dismay at what you see over there.

Context is, as they say, everything. From our unusually quick exchange about a possible lunch date next week, the almighty algorithms apparently gleaned quite enough about me, making some mighty big assumptions that generated these four text ads:

5 Tips to Lose Belly Fat

Stop making these 5 mistakes & you will finally lose your belly fat!

Trouble Losing Belly Fat?

6 Shocking Facts You Need to Know About Losing Belly Fat…

1 Trick to Lose Belly Fat

I struggled for years with a fat belly, until I found this 1 secret.

Start a Lunch Truck Bus.

Plan, Start and Operate a Lunch Truck Business

Waidaminnit. Seventy-five percent of the ads about my BELLY FAT? How do they know I have belly fat, and how dare they assume I want to get rid of it? True, I have never loved my belly fat, but that’s none of their bidness. Are they serious? They need to recalibrate their algorithm.

“Start a Lunch Truck Bus” – perhaps this was a helpful suggestion for where my friend and I should rendezvous for lunch? Because I was kind of thinking of Baja Fresh, or maybe Moby Dick’s. You know, something with, oh, I dunno, SEATS. But on the other hand? A lunch truck hot dog with a little bag of chips and a can of soda? Mmmm, that sounds tasty. Belly Fat, be damned.

That was all amusing enough, but here’s where Google went out on the proverbial limb and took a huge leap, for this is what appeared below the four text ads:

More about…

Supposed to Make You Happy »

Where Im Supposed to Be »

Not Supposed to Break Down »

Speed Racer Lunch Box »

I suppose “supposed” is a Money Word. Supposed to Make You Happy? Well, yes, lunch always makes me happy. Where Im [sic] Supposed to Be? At noon, I’m supposed to be at lunch, preferably with friends. Not Supposed to Break Down? DUH. Speed Racer Lunch Box?

[Wait. Did she say Speed Racer Lunch Box?]

And just that quickly, I was transported back to elementary school, when my classmate Becky¹ would carry her lunch every single day to school in a shiny metal Scooby Doo lunchbox. For like all fifteen years of elementary school. (It’s funny what you remember, isn’t it?) You had your packers and your buyers. I was usually a buyer, but I did not love the cafeteria food. Some of it was OK, like pizza Thursdays, but the reconstituted mashed potatoes? The gristle ham patties? Not so much. But Becky¹ had a baloney sandwich with a piece of fruit and some cookies, every single day, thanks to her cool lunchbox.

Maybe if they had been serving up some Baja Fresh in my cafeteria, or perhaps cuisine from a Lunch Truck, I would have been more enthusiastic. Of course, Baja Fresh, not a Lunch Truck, is most likely responsible for at least some of my belly fat. Still, Baja Fresh is Supposed to Make [Me] Happy, because it’s Where Im Supposed to Be.

¹ Not not her real name.

Mommy’s little secrets

As our kids get older, we are faced with a dilemma that can be summed up in this timeworn phrase:

“Do as I say, not as I do.”

Of course, it’s important to set an example for your kids by your actions. But, just when you are convinced that they haven’t been paying attention to anything you say, know this: they are, and they are taking copious mental notes. Because, if it’s OK for mommy to say a bad word, it must be OK for me to say it, too. Right? I wrote about an example of that, when the 3-year-old used a substitute swear word he’d heard me say and inserted it into a grammatically correct insult, flung at his oldest brother.  Well, that’s all funny and cute and HAHAHAHA! when they’re in preschool, but much less so when the stakes are higher.

That brings me to Liza Mundy’s story from the Washington Post Magazine on Sunday, May 4. The photo on the cover of the magazine was of a woman from the waist down, with a glass bong and a flask of bourbon in her apron pockets. It made me giggle, but in an uncomfortable way. Because, for as much fun as we all had in high school and college, and all the hilarious drinking stories we tell, we know now that our hijinx will somehow come home to roost when our own kids reach college.

We know what we did way back then, and we survived, right? Maybe just barely, but we got through it. We can look back now and say to ourselves, how stupid! What was I thinking?  Yet as parents, our instinct is to protect our kids from all harm, including the very special experience (rite of passage?) of having a friend hold back your hair while you puke in the dorm bathroom. (Meg, meet Vodka. Vodka, meet Meg.)

Mundy’s story debated the merits of full disclosure of your wild & crazy past to your kids. If you tell them about dancing on the bar at the neighborhood watering hole, or about the time you and the guys went for a drive in the country and banged mailboxes with the car door, or about the big party you threw when your parents were out of town, or the ill-conceived BB gun war, will they see it as a cautionary tale, or license to misbehave? My own mom shared with me stories of leaving her college campus to go drink in some remote location. (Of course, in her version of the story, there was always a designated driver, and that was before the term was in common use.)

The article didn’t seem to reach any conclusion other than that you have to do what you feel is best for your own situation. I’m not yet sure what that means for my own family, but I am increasingly aware of the magnifying glass my kids are using to observe our behavior. I do understand that getting yourself into - and out of - situations during your teens and early 20s is part of the growing process. You can’t mature in that way if you don’t experience those, um, opportunities. Because really, would I be who I am today if I had not snuck out to that party when I said I was going to the movies?

“Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

So, as if parenting young children weren’t hard enough, we now face this ethical dilemma, wherein we have to convince the younger generation that, thanks to the gift of hindsight, we would NEVER have had those older kids buy us beer so we could host that party, because THINK OF THE CONSEQUENCES we barely dodged!

More importantly, we need to have faith that all the values we’ve been working so hard to instill in our children have taken root, and will enable them to weigh the risks of their actions, and decide whether it’s a risk worth taking. My mom shared something else with me - a nugget that I have repeated many times. In saying it, she alluded to having engaged in more shenanigans than she let on:

“Do what you’re going to do; just be smart enough not to get caught.”

I think that was her way of letting go, of saying, I’ve done all I can to equip you with the tools to make good decisions. I know you’re going to do some of the crazy stuff that I did in college, but you have a good head on your shoulders and I know you’ll be discreet, you’ll know your limits, and you’ll be smart enough not to get into trouble.

I hope I can have the confidence to give the same advice to my kids. When they turn 30.