Podcast

A swiss company has begun manufacturing and marketing a condom targeted to 12-14 year old boys, called the Hotshot. Jane loves the idea. Dan hates it. Have a listen and decide for yourself.

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You can read more about the story here.

Jane says…

In the last few weeks, in response to various heinous mommy crimes I’ve committed, I have been the recipient of The Look. You know…The Look that is part raised eyebrow, part firm set of mouth, and part slight head tilt? The Look that says, “You are a bad parent.”

1) I let my elementary school aged son read all the Diary of A Wimpy Kid books. Apparently the books are so subversive that my 8 year old is now going to be forever corrupted. OR maybe it’s just superfantastic with me that the kid is reading of his own volition books that accurately depict the kind of frustration all kids feel because life seems arbitrary and out of their control. So either my kid is screwed from the word go because I don’t censor his reading or he’s learning to love reading for pleasure and is discovering one of the great joys of literature – learning about the universalities of the human condition. Besides, if he doesn’t get used to books about middle schoolers acting snotty, how’s he going to handle American Psycho, which I just ordered for him off Amazon?

2) Same kid: not in a booster seat. The law is 8 or 80 lbs. Neither of my kids is going to weigh 80 lbs. until college at the rate they’re going; they are skinny little buggers. Just like the knowledge of what the evolving power of a certain Pokemon may be or that the art teacher is actually a witch, the law governing when a kid is liberated from the confines of a car seat is popular playground conversation. That boy woke up the morning of his 8th birthday and the first words out of his mouth were, “I don’t have to sit in a car seat anymore!!!!” And I totally get that. It’s a rite of passage. Less significant than, say, a bar mitzvah or first misdemeanor arrest, but it counts. Anyway, I got the full-on Look for that one. As though I were riding around town on a Ducati with the kid balancing on the handlebars all the time because really in actuality I’ve only done that three or four times. Plus. If you’re reading this and you are over 22? Chances are you didn’t sit in a car seat for most of your childhood and yet, you seem to be fine.

3) My daughter eats one fruit or vegetable a day. And sometimes that “fruit” comes in the form of a roll up. “If you just serve it to her and don’t give her anything else until she eats it, eventually she’ll get hungry enough and then she’ll discover she likes it.” Nice try, Mommy Nazi. You know not whereof you speak. For one thing, my daughter would starve herself just to give you the metaphorical finger if you tried to make her eat anything she didn’t want to. For another thing, if you’d like to come live in my house during her adolescence after I’ve allowed my darling, perfectionist, control-freak, genius monkeychild to turn food into a battleground, be my guest. I’m picking my fights, and this isn’t one of them. Besides, she might only weigh 41 lbs, but dollars to donuts (because, hell, she’ll eat those – unless they have jelly in them because jelly is fruit-like) my 6 year old could hold her own in a fair fight with Dwayne the Rock Johnson. Girlfriend is fierce.

4) My husband and I went for a run and left them home alone. This one got me the full two eyebrows up and mouth formed into an “O” whilst air was sucked in audibly. That’s right. I left them home alone for half an hour. Oh. My. God. And when I think of all those times that child predators and violent rapist Jehovah’s Witnesses came to the house and tried to get in and maul my children only to be stopped by me at the door saying, “Sorry! Mommy’s here! Go away, please!” it’s a miracle they survived the experience. Get a grip, people, would you? They know the cell phone number (and for the love of god they called me three times in that half hour span mostly to bitch about the fact that they were fighting over the remote) and aren’t incapacitated or clueless enough not to get to the neighbors if they needed anything that very moment.

5) And speaking of cellphones…I dropped one of the anklebiters off for a playdate the other day and the mother came chasing after me as I backed out of the driveway, “Wait! Wait! I need your cellphone number in case of emergency! And you didn’t tell me if she had any food allergies!” It’s a miracle that the entire adult population in the world today made it past age 11. Our parents didn’t have cellphones, yet miraculously, adults responsible for our care when we were away from home managed to not kill us without the ability to reach out and touch someone. And the food allergy thing is getting out of control. If my kid had a fatal allergy to something, do you think I might have forgotten to mention it? Or even, that I might have taught my little sweetpea not to eat the DeathFood? I got a notice from kindergarten at this year telling me that a kid in the class was allergic to, I shit you not, snow peas and shitake mushrooms, so I shouldn’t send those things in for snack. Damn it! I was totally planning on sending in snowpea and shitake mushroom smoothies laced with vodka and Xanax for my daughter every day.

6) Next year, my third grade son and my first grade daughter will be walking home from school. On their own. I got The Look for this plan, too. Because do I not know?? Am I not aware??? Walking home from school with crosswalks, crossing guards, and the busiest of busybody neighbors and parents all around them is akin to shooting them each out of a cannon over shark infested waters. I walked to and from school, with the neighbor kids, starting in first grade. And every day after that until my parents finally tired of my shenanigans and sent me off to boarding school where god only knows I did far more dangerous stuff than cross the street without someone holding my hand.

Here’s what I do worry about: the stuff that is actually dangerous, like head injuries from not wearing a helmet while biking, not knowing how to swim, and trying to pull a strange dog’s tail. Children are no more in danger of abduction or predation now than they were 20 and 30 years ago. Violent crime in this country is on the decline. My daughter will not get scurvy. If my kid hurts herself or gets sick during a playdate, I’m sure that the adult supervising her will figure out that a phone call to information will reveal magical information like my home phone number or, barring that, a doctor’s phone number, or perish the thought, 911. If I don’t have faith that my kids can learn how to walk 1/3 mile in broad daylight down the sidewalk from school to home, how on earth do I expect them to learn the really important stuff, like not to mix liquor and beer. Oh lighten up…you know what I mean.

Podcast

Dan and Jane discuss the ongoing case of 9 teenagers charged in the suicide death of a classmate. You can read about the story here.

WARNING: Dan says fuck in this one. Kind of a lot. Headphones is what we’re saying, people.

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Dan’s note: Dan tells Jane to shut up during this podcast. Dan was using it as a dramatic tool, to try to cajole Jane into taking a firmer stand on an issue. But now Dan feels like a tool for saying it. Dan asked Jane, and Jane said she was OK with leaving it in the podcast. It needs to be clearly noted that Dan has ASSLOADS of respect for Jane (though it appears, not enough to not call it “assloads”), and that Dan in no way meant to demean or diminish Jane’s opinion in the matter. Dan and Jane know each other pretty well, and we call each other names frequently over the phone and in email, and pretty much every other chance we get. So for us, it wasn’t a big deal. But it might be for you, when you hear it. So Dan thought you needed to hear the back story.

Home is where the heart is, not where the school is.

Disclosure: I am a public school teacher. I was, previously, a private school teacher. I have taught kindergartners and I have taught college students. I am also kind of smart, which may or may not be evident from what you read here.

There is a very famous bloggy person whose blog name rhymes with The Flyin’ Ear Flommen who homeschools her children. When Dan and I raised the possibility of writing our opinions about homeschooling, I went there first to see what she had to say about it. Plus, since where The Flyin’ Ear Flommen goes, commenters by the truckload follow. And that’s much easier research than the tedious real kind.

And what I found there supported what my gut told me. And everybody who has already decided that you disagree with me (I’m looking at you Pam D and Nutmeg) take a deep breath and stick with me.

Most of the people who homeschool their kids do it for reasons that have nothing to do with providing the best educations for their kids. In fact, most of the time people choose to homeschool, they are doing so in order to fulfill a need of their own, and not any of their kids needs at all.

If you have a child with a disability so serious that finding a school to meet his/her educational and psychosocial needs is an impossiblity, then homeschooling is a valid option.

If you live so far from the school that your child would spend an unreasonably long time commuting to and from school to the detriment of that child’s physical, emotional health or balance and well-being of the family, homeschooling is a valid option.

If sending your child to a dangerous or substandard public school is the only option for your family because of economic hardship, homeschooling is a valid option – of course this means that an adult is sacrificing work, and therefore earning, time to be home educating the child/children.

Otherwise. Send your kids to school. You don’t like the district you’re in? Move. You can’ t move but you don’t like what or how the curriculum is being taught? Get involved. It is the responsibility of every citizen of this country to support public education. It has always been in the best interest of every American citizen to have a well-educated populace. You don’t like the schools? Think beyond your own kitchen table and consider that one day you might be depending on one of those people attending the school of which you disapprove to fix your car, fill your teeth, or prepare your tax returns. At the risk of getting all hoity toity up in your grill, Gandhi said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” You don’t like what you see? Change it. And not just for yourself, but for all of us.

Anti-homeschoolers argue that homeschooled children miss out on a ton of valuable socialization. Homeschoolers argue that this is nonsense because their children are exposed to lots of people through the course of the day. Frankly, I think this particular issue is a wash. Six of one.

But. Not everybody can teach. If you’ve ever had a shitty teacher, you KNOW that’s true. Parenthood, and an intimate knowledge of your kid and your kid’s learning style and temperament doesn’t automatically qualify you to teach. Most reasonably intelligent and motivated people could do the research and background work to learn what they need to in order to convey the facts, the data, the processes, the equations, the terminology, the basic skills that teachers convey. But to say that this is all school does is shortsighted and just plain wrong.

School settings create environments in which students can do two things:

1) establish their own identities, as is developmentally appropriate and natural, separate from their parents and families of origin. That separation and subsequent emotional growth is thwarted when the student doesn’t have as many opportunities for self-exploration outside of the family circle.

2) learn how to think, communicate, behave, and relate to people in groups, even and especially when members of a particular group – including, sadly, teachers sometimes – are objectionable, dumb, and not especially nice.

Unless there is a really good reason to keep your children at home, and unless you are willing to devote a huge amount of time to the work of teaching your kids (Most people underestimate how much time and energy teachers spend in preparation and response in a regular education classroom setting with a determined curriculum. Planning an alternative curriculum tailored to a student’s individual needs while still maintaining the state standards is a massive undertaking. You cannot work outside the home and homeschool.) you are doing a disservice to your children and to your community and to all of our futures by homeschooling.

Podcast

There was a girl. She liked a girl. She wanted to take that girl to a dance. But the school said no. Kevin Bacon tried to help out, but in this version of the story, John Lithgow was way too powerful, and he cancelled the whole dance.

Here’s what Dan and Jane think about it.

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How confident is Dan in his masculinity? Here he is in drag, circa 1985. Spoiler alert: Have a hanky ready. It’s gonna bring you to tears.

Robert Graves Was Onto Something

My son is eight and prefers showers to baths. My daughter is six and takes about a month and a half in the tub, so often showering is more expedient and leaves us time for some other trivialities – like eating meals and occasionally leaving the house. I loved giving my babies baths when they were, well, babies, but now it’s just a pain in the ass, so I’m perfectly happy for them to shower instead. The only hitch in this is that they are both terrible at thoroughly washing and rinsing their hair. My kids have a lot of hair. Well, my son does anyway. Think Troy Polamolu, but blond. And 61 pounds. And without nearly that much hair.

So instead of reaching in and scrubbing heads and getting good and soaked anyway, and because we’re always short on time, a few times a week my husband or I ends up showering with one of the kids. Except for the one time when my son was about 2, pointed to my crotch and said, “Uh oh. It broken,” (thus proving once and for all that men are hardwired to assume that the penis is of central importance and the source of power to be guarded and protected at all costs) neither of them has ever said or done anything to make any of the four of us uncomfortable about our nakedness in the shower. I wasn’t exactly thrilled when my daughter pointed out that I was fatter than her father, but I can’t really blame her for being an observant little shit girl, now can I? Yes. Yes I can. I will hold it against her until she is 17 and on her way out the door to the junior prom and then seek revenge in a way that only a mother can.

I mentioned something like “we were talking while we were in the shower and…” the other day and a friend of mine almost fell off her chair. She was semi-cool enough not to say anything judgmental but was clearly rattled by the thought of my husband showering with his six year old daughter or me showering with my eight year old son. Hmmm…and then I was forced to think about whether this is OK or not. Which I resent, because thinking is hard and makes my head hurt and takes time away from more important activities like trying to decide if I like the edges of brownies better and therefore should buy one of those weird shaped brownie pans or if I like the middle better, especially when it’s a little undercooked and smushy.

I did what any self-respecting parent would do, asked a bunch of women who were drinking margaritas and eating tater tots and wearing bowling shoes what they thought about parents bathing with their non-infant kids. One woman out of the ten said it creeped her out and she’d never done it. Everybody else sort of shrugged and said, “I dunno? Does it seem weird?” And the one whose kids I know the best so I can attest to how normal and cool and fun and smart and well-adjusted they are said that she’d wondered the same thing and asked around, too. The response she got made perfect sense: The kids will let you know when it’s weird.

Sometimes you ask for advice and the advice you get seems sort of kind of OK but doesn’t really fit. This advice clicked into place in a very satisfying way. It felt right and got to why I don’t think it’s a big deal to be naked around my kids. Nudity does not equal sex. Nudity does not even equal sexuality. Assuming the connection of the two on my kids’ behalf is weird. Like all obscenity trials have demonstrated, obscenity or indecency is in the eye of the beholder. And nobody here is beholding anything obscene or indecent. We’re just showering. And showering is something you do naked. And naked is the way we all are under our clothes.

I reckon my kids will develop their own body image and self-concept issues without me adding the burden of making their bodies secret or potentially shameful. In the meantime, at least everybody is clean.

Dan says…

As is becoming routine lately, Jane’s dragging me into some of the darker corners of the internet. And then regretting doing it when I run off and play with all the new, slightly sketchy friends I make.

Like Twitter.

And two days ago?

Chat Roulette.

If you’ve never been to this website, here’s how it works:

It’s a live video and text chat site. You hook up your web cam (a cam isn’t required to use the site, but people with cams rarely want to spend time with people without cams), agree to some terms, then click “Play.”

Within a few seconds a live video feed pops up of someone, somewhere in the world. It’s roulette, so you have no idea who it’ll be and no idea where they’ll be from. With that person or people you can text chat while you watch them on video, or talk to them with live audio, and it’s all in real-time. The site originated in Russia and is just now climaxing in popularity in the United States.

And in this web-fueled era of HEY! LOOKIT ME! you can almost guess what you’d find on a site like this. Or maybe you can’t.
Penises, Jane readers. For as far as you can throw a Johnsonville.

Ladies’ Night exists at bars for a reason. Frugal men led by profligately spendy cocks will fill corrugated steel buildings and drop a small fortune on overpriced alcohol in the hopes of securing the affections of a woman for the night (or possibly longer). And this phenomena, this lottery odds’ worth of disproportion of women who are looking for piggish men and the piggish men volunteering themselves to women is played out in disgusting, hilarious detail on chatroulette.com.

I don’t want to bore you with this here, but I’ve created a page describing all the weird shit I’ve seen on Chat Roulette. It is staggering.  Click here to see most of it.

Now I know Jane’s seen a bit of what Chat Roulette has to offer and I know she’s going to come out against it.

Me? I’m totally in favor of it. The tropical rain forest vaginas, the completely naked and flexing men, the talking golden retrievers. All of it. And here’s why:

1) Often it’s disgusting. Sometimes it’s polite and friendly. But it’s personal expression. You know, 1st amendment stuff? Do we really want to invite Big Brother in to start squashing personal freedoms because of one little website that is easily blocked from a browser? Should we start burning books again?

2) It’s superficial and harmless. Nobody is actually hooking up. Nobody is obligated to anything. You don’t like what you’re seeing, you click “Next” and get connected with the next random person. Like flipping through cable channels.

3) You can meet normal people from all over the world, too. I had a nice chat with a person in Chile. Right – where the earthquake happened. Do you know how to say “earthquake” in Spanish? “Terremoto.”

4) There’s nothing on this site that you can’t already find in a million other places on the web.

5) The site is extremely dangerous for kids. Wait. That’s not why I’m in favor of it. Please see above. The thing is, it’s called parenting, people. Last night I briefly chatted about former New York Rangers goalie Ed Richter (I’m a Red Wings fan) with what appeared to be a young man of about 14. In his room. Alone. On Chat Roulette. For a scant few seconds I saw a boy of about 10 with his little sister (5? 6 years old?) at a kitchen table, flipping through rotations of chatters. If you’re on the site for more than 3 minutes, there’s no way you don’t see at least one guy masturbating. And these kids are seeing that. But they can see that anywhere. I mean check Wikipedia for fuck’s sake. Chatroulette isn’t bringing anything new to the table. As parents, we have to do our jobs and limit our kids’ opportunities to see this.

6) It’s hilarious. It gives me an avenue to poke fun at people without consequence. Or be a parent when some other kid’s parents have abdicated that role. Or be a voice of reason TO a parent when they clearly have trouble exercising good judgement. (see the page of weird shit I’ve seen)

7) All of it is easily fixable. That’s the most interesting part to me, and I would be surprised if this DOESN’T happen in the next 60 days. I run multiple discussion forum websites and they all require registration to participate. Chatroulette.com does not. Got webcam? Got internetz? Then you’ve got freakdom. Something as simple as requiring registration/login with IP address logging, following all COPPA rules, and the problem goes away. Better yet, do all that, and then provide a place within the site that’s set aside for a freak-for-all, for the shaved, masturbating men and the very large, untrimmed, masturbating women.

This is nothing new. Just a new variant of the same old.

Tosh.1, maybe. Now with more penis!

Jane says…

I feel a little bit like that stand-up comedian who carries on about why you park in the driveway and you drive on a parkway, but I’m plowing through the cliché anyway.

IT WAS A KILLER WHALE. WHAT THE HELL DID YOU EXPECT??

Anyone who has ever tried to contain a screaming toddler in an enclosed time-out space knows that attempting to keep wild things in captivity is a bad plan. Mother Nature is not a huge fan of the Zoo, or the Wild Animal Park, or the Sea World or Sea World derivative.

My dog is so utterly domesticated that she’s tried to sit in an easy chair and join in conversation during dinner parties. On more than one occasion. Nevertheless, that bitch still tries to bite my arm off if I make the foolhardy error of trying to take a hunk of rawhide away from her. Would you expect anything less from a tiger or lion or bear or predatory sea-dwelling mammal?

“But how do kids learn about animals if they can’t see them in zoos?” I’ve heard this before, and to those of you who would ask the question I say this, “Go away. You aren’t smart enough for me to talk to you.” PBS? The Discovery Channel? The Internet? Wait…wait…I got it…ready? Ready? Brace yourself…Books!!

Wild animals in captivity are entertainment, not education. Pretending otherwise is ludicrous. Zoos and the like exist for profit, not education. Certainly, there are conservation efforts that are supported by zoos, but I refuse to believe that kids wouldn’t be introduced to animals in such a way that they should grow up to care about their welfare if wild animals weren’t trapped and caged.

These animals don’t act like animals in the wild, and often they don’t even look like animals in the wild. They pace and develop other nervous tics, some dangerous to their physical health. They are often subject to changes in the environment to which they are unsuited – their cycles and rhythms are off. Without the opportunity to hunt, or be hunted, they aren’t fulfilling any evolutionary destiny or purpose either. They are bored. Taking another page from the toddler playbook, if you try to keep a bored toddler subdued for too long, you will end up maimed, or at least emotionally scarred.

Mother Nature will put up with a lot from us. But when she has something to say, she says it loud.

Note: I take my kids to the zoo. I’ve taken them to Sea World (boring and expensive). So, mommy’s a bit of a hypocrite. Mommy’s also a bit of a buzz kill, because the whole time we’re at the zoo, I’m pointing out how miserable the animals look, especially the elephants.