A Halloween Tale: The Mommy and the Sneaky, Creepy, Evil Ego Monster

 Once upon a time, a Mommy had a little Baby Boy. For his very first Halloween, the Baby was too little to choose a costume for himself, because he had not cultivated any personal interests beyond eating, sleeping, and producing organic "gifts" for his parents. So the Mommy dressed the Baby Boy in a generic frog costume, said he was "Frogger", and made him crawl across a five-lane highway and a log-strewn river to get his candy that year. 

"Hurry up, Sunshine... Mommy hasn't got all night."

The next year, the Baby grew and developed a few interests of his own (namely walking), but making costume choices and clearly vocalizing them to the adults in his life was not one of them. So the Mommy put the Baby Boy in a generic tiger costume, said he was Tony the Tiger, gave him a box of Frosted Flakes, and skipped the trick-or-treating thing altogether, because really, why bother?

The year after that, the Baby Boy was no longer a baby; he was now a Little Boy of two-and-a-half, and he had discovered the world of Cars and Lightning McQueen. And the Mommy was delighted, for now she knew what the Little Boy liked, and that gave her direction for a Halloween costume!

She asked the Little Boy, "What would you like to be for Halloween, Honey?"

The Little Boy looked up from his toys uncomprehendingly. For a boy who was about to go on his first real excursion of scamming the neighbors out of their sugar-laden goodies, he was disappointingly clueless about the whole concept of Halloween, let alone the importance of choosing a costume. 

So the Mommy prompted, "Would you like to be Lightning McQueen?"

"M'Queen! Light'ing M'Queen!" the boy responded like a litany. (And it was in fact a litany for him, for the Little Boy was a devoted member of the Church of the Holy Pixar, and attended services via DVD telecast almost daily. He knew the Sacred Hymns of Randy Newman by heart, he was part of the Dramatic Racing Re-enactment Team for every performance of Cars, and always responded with "...and Beyond!" when the leader did the "To Infinity" prayer. It bordered on cultish, but it made him happy and gave the Mommy about 90 minutes of quiet.)

The crucifix of St. Buzz of Beyond
(C'mon, it looks like a crucifix and you know it!)

So the Mommy immediately resumed the work she had begun on the Little Boy's Lightning McQueen car costume a week earlier. She had already assembled two cardboard boxes together into the rough shape of a racecar, and had begun to sketch the outlines of Lightning's various features. 

But as the car was coming together, something else was coming together... inside the Mommy.
Something sneeeeaky.
Something creeeeepy.
It was so quiet and so sneaky and so creepy that the Mommy didn't even know it was there:

The Ego Monster!

The Ego Monster started out very small. In fact, when it started out, it wasn't a monster at all. See, when a Feeling Of Satisfaction In Your Work and a Feeling Of Excitement love each other very much, they come together and a Little Feeling of Pride is born. And there's nothing wrong with a Little Feeling of Pride; that's not a monster.

But sometimes that Little Feeling of Pride starts to grow. And grow. And grow some more.

And thus what began as a small feeling of "Wow, this is starting to look pretty cool! I think the Little Boy will really like this!" grew bigger as the Mommy saw how good the car costume looked, until it became:

"LOOK AT THIS PERFECT AND PINTEREST-WORTHY CREATION I HAVE BIRTHED! MY OFFSPRING HAD DAMN WELL BETTER APPRECIATE THE HOURS OF PAINSTAKING DETAIL I PUT INTO THIS!!!"

"BEHOLD THE DETAILED PAINT JOB AND THE WHEELS THAT ACTUALLY SPIN!"

"MARVEL AT THE HOOD WHICH OPENS TO HOLD THE HALLOWEEN CANDY!"

"KNEEL IN AWE AT THE SECRET TRAP DOOR WHICH KEEPS THE CANDY FROM FALLING OUT!"

"AND LET US NOT FORGET THESE NEAT-LOOKING STRAPS WITH WHICH THIS MIND-BLOWING MASTERPIECE WILL HANG FROM MY LUCKY CHILD'S SHOULDERS!"

(The Evil Ego Monster speaks only in capital letters, you see.)

The Mommy had never in her life seen a child as excited as the Little Boy was when he saw the Lightning McQueen car. 

(And inside the Mommy, the Sneaky, Creepy, Ego Monster grew several sizes bigger.)

The Mommy asked the Little Boy if he wanted to try on his new costume. Through the incoherent vocal torrent that came forth from the child, the Mommy decided that he said, "Yes please, Mother. I am very eagerly awaiting the moment with which you will bestow upon me this awesome object of cardboard, craft paint, and masking tape, of which I am surely not worthy." 

 (And the Sneaky, Creepy Ego Monster grew some more.)

The Mommy lowered the car over the Little Boy's shoulders... and the Little Boy panicked and began to flail his arms wildly as he felt the box surround him.

(And the Sneaky, Creepy Ego Monster began to get angry.)

The Mommy tried to calm the Little Boy, telling him that it's just Lightning McQueen --you want to be Lightning McQueen, don't you?-- just hold still for a second and let me get this on you, will you stop pushing it, you're going to break it!
And the Little Boy began to cry as he became more scared of the box that he felt was closing him in, and he fought harder to push the car away, anything to get it off of him... 

(And the Sneaky, Creepy Ego Monster also began to panic at the thought that this Creation would be completely torn to pieces before everyone could see how wonderful She [um, I mean the car, of course] was, and as it panicked, the Monster became even more angry.)

The Mommy finally managed to get the car off the Little Boy. She held the him closely and rocked him and whispered to him soothingly, drying his tears and trying to calm him down.

Inside the Mommy, the Ego Monster screamed: "ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?! ALL THAT TIME I PUT INTO MAKING THIS CAR FOR YOU, AND YOU WON'T EVEN WEAR IT! C'MON IT'S JUST A CARDBOARD BOX, WHY ARE YOU SCARED OF IT? YOU'VE GOT TO WEAR THIS!"

So after a few minutes, the Mommy again tried to put the Lightning McQueen car on the Little Boy; again he panicked and flailed and yelled and cried; again the car was removed and set aside; again the Mommy held the Little Boy.
And then she knew that he would never wear the Lightning McQueen car she'd worked so hard to make, not for Halloween, and not ever. The Little Boy was genuinely terrified of feeling enclosed by that little cardboard car. The Mommy hadn't known that he was scared of such things. 

But she was still upset, and the Ego Monster screamed again: "YOU UNGRATEFUL LITTLE TWERP! DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD I WORKED TO MAKE THIS PERFECT FOR YOU? YOU'RE DAMN WELL GOING TO WEAR THIS ONE WAY OR ANOTHER!!!"

The Mommy heard the Ego Monster's yelling so loudly in her head, wanting to come out her  mouth. But she didn't say anything, because she knew the truth: she knew that the Little Boy wasn't being ungrateful. She knew that although the Ego Monster kept saying she'd made the car for the Little Boy, she'd mostly made it for herself.

And she knew that the real reason she was upset was because she wanted the Little Boy to show off something cool she made so she could feel good about herself. 

Pictured: your child.
Not your trophy.  Not your walking art display. Not your Ego Feeder.

As she sat quietly holding the Little Boy and thinking, the Ego Monster slowly began to shrink. The Mommy finally sighed, set the Little Boy down on the floor, and got a pair of scissors. Slowly, she cut the straps off the car. Then she turned to the Little Boy and quietly asked, "Would you like to play with Lightning McQueen?" 

The Little Boy's eyes lit up and he said, "Yeah!" He knelt beside the car and began pushing it across the floor. His face beamed a huge smile as he made enthusiastic engine noises and quoted numerous passages from the Gospel According to Mater. 

As the Mommy watched him play happily, she began to realize that deep down, even before the Ego Monster existed, what she ultimately wanted was for the Little Boy to be happy. Even though he would never wear the car, he was extremely happy playing with it. And really, that was all that mattered. 

 *******************************************

EPILOGUE (2015)

 Although one's "Ego Monsters" never truly go away, my Halloween Ego Monster has been continually beaten down over the last 2 years, to the point where I don't think it can recover for at least several years.

That Halloween, since Lightning McQueen was a no-go, I ended up borrowing a costume from a friend, and the child dressed up as St. Buzz of Beyond (sans crucifix). However, he thought that the purpose of trick-or-treating was to actually go into people's houses and visit with them, instead of getting candy at the door. He cried each time I thwarted his attempts to enter every single house we went to. Needless to say, the evening ended very early.

St. Buzz is greatly aggrieved.

The following Halloween, he wanted to be a firefighter, so I made a firefighter outfit out of an old shirt, duct tape, and a 2-liter bottle. (Hey, it was cheaper than a store-bought costume and plus... duct tape! Hel-LO!) The boy put on the jacket, said he liked it, took it off, dropped it on the floor, and never wore it again. 

To top it off, he cried AGAIN when he was taken out trick-or-treating (instead of a firefighter, he went dressed up as a 3-year-old boy). He only settled down when he went back home to help give out candy to the other kids. 

This Halloween, I made him a costume, but I have NO expectation of him wearing it. If he does, fine; if not, it's something he can still play with. And if (like the firefighter jacket) he never plays with it, I'll pass it on to someone else. 

And who knows, maybe we'll skip the trick-or-treating altogether and just hide candy around the apartment and have both boys go on a free-for-all candy hunt.

As long as we all have fun, that's really all that matters.


P.S.  And true to form, last week made his Halloween Costume Strike record 3-for-3. He wanted to be a train engineer, so I made a cardboard train for him, and gave it to him a few weeks early so he could play with it and get used to it. But when it came time to wear it on Halloween, it was a no-go. Thankfully he already had on his striped shirt, bandanna, and engineer's cap, and he had a blast with that. And the train is being played with by both boys, so it's still a win in my book.



image credits: gamesdbase.com; amazon.com; freedesignfile.com;

Sleep Deprivation: Be Honest, It's 25% Kids, 75% ME

So, I had the brilliant idea to have a sleepover last night. It wasn't necessarily a bad idea, as it was just two siblings who are a few months older than my two kids; the kids all get along well together and we've had them over before, so it wasn't as bad as it could've been, considering I was dealing with two preschoolers and two toddlers all by myself. (My husband works 3rd shift.)

When you went to sleepovers, camp-outs, or lock-ins, did you ever have that one kid who would always try to stay awake long after everyone else had already gone to sleep? Yeah, well, I was that kid... and my boys are following in my footsteps. I did everything I could to tire out four little boys, including pulling all the cushions and pillows off the couch so I could introduce the Younglings to the wonderful game of "The Floor Is Burning Lava". 

At about 10:15pm the Guest Children were asleep. My kids, like ADD meerkats on a sugar binge, stayed awake until sometime between midnight and 1... only to wake up again around 4am. It is currently 6:50am as I type this, and my oldest is STILL. AWAKE. (Follow-up: he didn't go to sleep until after 10:00am.) 

As I lay in my bed in the wee hours of this morning (sometime approximately between WTF-o'clock and FML:30) hoping in vain that the unsuccessfully-furtive sounds I heard via the baby monitor would eventually stop, I did the usual "I miss those days when I actually got sleep... you know, before I had kids" grumbling that sleep-deprived parents always say when their kids won't go the hell to sleep. 

"Ask me for another glass of water! Ask me again! I DARE you! I double-dog dare you, muthafuggah!"

Then I suddenly realized... my bitching was complete bullshit. The truth was that I used to keep myself awake just as much --if not more-- long before the kids came along: 

- "Aw darn, it's almost midnight; I need to get to bed so I can get up for work in the morning. I better do this last quest so I can level up my Wood Elf character in Morrowind before I finish." Forty-five minutes later: "Oh, now that I've leveled up, I can get that enchanted Daedric sword! But first, I need to sell a bunch of loot before I can buy it..."

- "Just one more episode of Dr. Who/Dexter/Entourage/Star Trek TNG!"

- "I'll put down this Game of Thrones book as soon as I finish this chapter." Thirty minutes later: "I can't stop NOW! I've got to find out what happens next!"

  

Spoiler: lots of people die, then there's a dozen pages describing food at a feast...

-  "Let's see what my friends are doing on Facebook." 

- "This blog post will just take a few minutes..."

Okay, thirty minutes, TOPS.

As easy as it is for parents to blame sleep deprivation on our kids, it's a lot like blaming a bad fart on your pet: yeah, sometimes the dog really is to blame, but most of the time, you really shouldn't have had Taco Bell before bed. Taking care of kids takes a HUGE amount of time, and so to compensate for it, we binge-watch Netflix, or mindlessly wander around Reddit or FB for hours, or go on a video game bender. 

Why do we do those things when we could be sleeping (especially since we usually do this while the kids are actually sleeping)? Because we want to zone out or have our "adult" time when we can do what WE want in peace and quiet. When V.2.1 was born, just about every other parent said, "Be sure you sleep when the baby does, otherwise you won't get any sleep at all!" While that's great in theory, the reality is that when the baby was asleep, half the time I wanted to sit and watch a few shows on Netflix or play Xbox or whatever. 

Sleep vs. video games/tv/books/Internet? It's a toss-up, even when you DON'T have kids.


And then when you have kids, Murphy's Law kicks in with a vengeance. Say you make dumb decisions Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights, and stay up late wasting time. You don't get as much sleep as you should, but you can function okay. Then Thursday night you go to bed early... only to have your kid decide to stay up until 2am.

"U mad, Mom?"

So whose fault is it when you can barely get through Friday without an intravenous coffee drip? Yeah, the kid kept you up last night, but your body's feeling the cumulative effects of three nights of YOUR bad judgement. And all too often, we (and by that I mean ME*) end up taking our fatigued frustration out on the kids and blame them for the fact that we can't (or more likely won't) go to bed at an intelligent time. 

I'll be honest and call a spade a shovel: I have no right to get upset at my kids for waking me up after I had 2 hours of sleep last night, because the truth is I'm the dumbass who stayed up til 2am wasting time on stupid stuff. 


I'm also the dumbass who needs to stop writing on her blog and go to bed, considering the kids are FINALLY asleep.  





*- or I, for the Proper Grammar Patrol out there

Image credits:http://media.avclub.com; underthebutton.com; sunsetstation.sclv.com

Compromises: My F*cking Language

I'll say it now: I like cussing. I saw a bumper sticker that said "Everything is funnier with the word 'fuck' in it", and I'm inclined to agree with that statement. Many words are improved with the addition of some slang fornication thrown in there. (And as Mythbusters showed, cussing an be a helpful stress reliever!)

But when you have little kids, having a recreational cussing habit becomes as problematic as a roomful of over-caffeinated parrots with Tourette's: they loudly and continually repeat everything they hear, and they have absolutely NO discretion.

"Hey. Hey! HEEEYYYY! Guess what?! Mommy got stuck in traffic and I learned a BUNCH of new words!"

So when I first found out I was pregnant with v.2.1, I immediately began working on editing my  very adult vocabulary, and began creating "substitute words" to take the place of my preferred verbiage. Nowadays, around my kids, my frustrated outbursts consist of exclamations of "son of a birch!", "fudgeballs", "criminey", "geez louise", and "aw, shi-- I mean... oh nuts!". (I never got around to coming up with a good substitute for "shit"; someone suggested "sugar", but my brain never quite gets it to my mouth fast enough.)

Yeah, they're stupid. They're cheesy. They sound like something a bunch of goody-two-shoes kids at a Bible camp would say, instead of an adult with an affinity for George Carlin's humor. And when the preschooler deliberately wakes up the soundly sleeping baby from a nap (again), I have to exercise some massive self-control and refrain from bursting into the room and yelling, "Dude, what the FUCK?!"

Why is it such a big deal to me to watch my language around my kids? It's not because I think cuss words are "bad". In truth, cuss words aren't bad in and of themselves, they are merely words, and words are neutral things. It's how you put them together in a certain context that can make them good or bad. 

What it really comes down to is respect for other people. As an adult, I know who I can and can't cuss around, and when it is and isn't appropriate. Unfortunately, my little caffeinated-Tourette-parrots are too young to understand either of those; as a parent, it's my responsibility to teach that to them.

Example: NOT okay to cuss around (but if Granny hits the bourbon, you'll probably learn some new words.) 

Simply saying, "Don't say that!" doesn't teach them anything except "say those words when Mom and Dad aren't around". But if I explain what words mean (their definitions, connotations, and implications) then my kids will have something more powerful... a real understanding of the power of words. 
Some of the most hurtful things don't involve a single word of cussing, blasphemy, profanity, or swearing; rather, it's usually when normally-innocuous individual words are combined to make hurtful sentences spoken in anger or pain: You're fat. You're ugly. I wish you'd never been born. I don't love you. You're stupid. 

See? No cussing! But still hurtful.

I want to teach my children that words themselves are incredibly powerful, and that certain categories of words (in this case, cuss words) need to be used more responsibly out of respect for other people, because they're more inflammatory. I'm willing to compromise by NOT cussing around my kids for the next several years, if it means that I can use that time to teach them a.) words have meaning, and b.) you need to try to be respectful of other people when you talk.

So, that means for now --while my impressionable little Tourette-parrots are young-- I'll have to keep saying "Boogers!" when I stub my toe, or yell "Watch where you're going, you stupid politician*!" when someone cuts me off in traffic. But I know there will come a time when my kids will be old enough to be allowed to cuss around me, and I'll be free to cuss around them.

And when that time comes, I'll be so fucking happy!


*- my brothers and I developed an elaborate set of insults when we were kids. We considered "stupidhead" and "butt monkey" to be too juvenile, so we resorted to calling each other: lawyer, politician, news reporter, Barney the Purple Dinosaur (if you really wanted to get personal), chemistry teacher, used car salesman, etc.





Image credits: parrot (everywhere on the Internet); karinintex.blogspot.com; coolcostume.com; jamieonline.wordpress.com