Caution: Backhand!

Dorian had his 15 month check-up/vaccinations today.  I love the kids’ pediatrician.  He is a kind grandfatherly man who has seen Dante grow up and who is now watching Dorian follow along.  His office also hosts a rotation of Med students circulating monthly through in and out so that every time I go, I am met with another fresh face, who has never seen me or my children before, and who is not sure whether or not they are going to go into the field of pediatrics and is just making the required rounds of the different medical disciplines.  The office also has an RN on staff who takes care of the children when the Doctor is not in and she knows me very well also.

Today, the RN was in the office and there was a young Med student as well.  The student examined Dorian and asked me all the routine questions (yes he eats food, no we don’t beat him), then went to get the head nurse for the “complete” exam (meaning, please check my work to make sure I did ok).  I had a few questions for the RN regarding weaning from nursing and some concerns as to why Dorian wasn’t articulating any actual words.  What she told me isn’t what this blog is about, rather what she prefaced with is.

Before answering my questions, the conversation went a little bit like this:

RN: So you’re concerned about weaning and speech?

Me: Yes, not terribly, but yes.

RN: Look, you’re definitely not a bad mom. Probably one of the best that comes through here, but you baby him too much.

Me: That’s true, ha ha, he should be out getting a job already!

RN: Ha Ha, it’s like I told her (points to the Med student) before she came in to meet you, “Don’t judge her on how she looks, she’s a really good mom”.

Me: Ha Ha …..wait….(needle on the record sound).  What did you just say?

RN: Oh nothing, I just warned her (points to Med student) not to worry and that you are a great mom!

Me: Worry?  About what?

RN:  Well, you know, how you look.

Me: So my looks would make me a bad mom?  What part? My hair? My tattoos?  My fat?

RN: Well you know how some people are, ha ha.

Me: Ha Ha, now about the weaning?

I know, I know, in rare form, I decided NOT to pursue the matter and just let it go.  She did, in fact, say I was a great mom (probably one of the best), but it was prefaced with a warning to a complete stranger that I might not “fit the part” of this great mom role I play so well.  Because of course, everyone knows that being a great mother is synonymous with your appearance.  Just ask these “normal” looking moms:

 

Susan Smith: Strapped her 3 year old and 14 month old into their car seats, then let the car roll into a creek, drowning them because her boyfriend (who she was having an affair with) didn’t want children.  She filed a false carjacking report, claiming a “black man” kidnapped her children.

Marybeth Tinning:  From January 3, 1972, the day her first daughter died, until December 20, 1985, when the last was found dead in her home, all nine of Marybeth Tinning's children died “mysteriously”.  She later confessed to “smothering” them.

Diane Downs: In May 1983, Diane she sped into an emergency room dropoff with her three small children, aged 8, 7, and 3, inside her blood-soaked car, shot at close range. She tried to blame it on a carjacker.

Patricia Blackmon: beat her 28-month old adopted daughter to death so severely that a clear imprint of the sole of her shoe was embedded in the child’s chest. Blackmon claimed the child had “fallen out of bed”.

Debra Milke: Conspired with her husband and his roommate to kill her 4 year old son.  Told him they were going to see Santa Claus.

Darlie Routier: brutally stabbed her 7 year old boys to death, then claimed an “intruder” did it.

 

So, I guess what I am saying is that if you see a mom who looks like me, chubby with pink hair covered in tattoos, you may want to think twice about ASSuming I am a bad mother.

I’m Not Racist: Part Trois

If you’ve been reading my blog for the FIVE YEARS I have been writing it, you are familiar with my favorite phrase “I’m not racist….but….”.  I’ve blogged in the past about this favorite phrase of mine, in particular about my “not racist” neighbor: the bottle bleach blonde pushing 60, trying to look twenty, whose shorts are so short the world is her gynecologist.  If you want to refresh your memory (or if you are new to my blog and want to check out my past awesomeness), read these two entries before reading this one:

I’m Not Racist: Part I

I’m Not Racist: Part 2

Ok done?  So you know sort of what I am dealing with here?  Ok then, Here we go.

The phone rang this afternoon as I was sitting down with Dante to do his homework after school.  On the other end was Blondie, the woman next door in the aforementioned blogs.  In her “I’m trying to sound six years old” baby voice she asks me if I know anything about computers and could she come over so I could fix “something terrible” that has happened to hers.  I tried to explain to her that I wasn’t super computer savvy and that I was in “homework time with Dante” but she started TO CRY and said she only needed two minutes and this *thing* on her computer was so horrible that she needed it off right away.  What am I going to do?  Say no to a six year old?

So she comes over with her Mac Air laptop and I’m instantly confused because I’m a Dell PC girl.  I know, I know, all the “intellectuals” have Macs, but that proof was just negated the minute Blondie walked into my house with one.

So I ask her what is wrong with her computer and she tells me that it’s something on Facebook.  Something so tragic and horrible that her “reputation as a hairdresser” is at stake and I “need to help” her because it is “devastating”.  I ask her if it is a naked picture of her (barf) or a picture of her doing something dirty (double barf) or just a picture that shouldn’t be on her business site and she STARTS TO CRY again in her mewling six year old baby girl talk and starts telling me that her niece put something on there as a joke and now everyone can see it and it’s devastating and horrible and it’s disgusting and on and on and on and on.

So I tell her to calm down, log into her Facebook, and that I would do my best to get rid of it.

She logs into her Facebook, repeating over and over and over again how “horrible” and “embarrassing” and “truly not me or my lifestyle” this *thing* is on her page that I am seriously preparing myself for a picture of Blondie spread-eagle on a Camaro or deep-throating her husband.  She tells me to click on her workplace link, a hair salon in Louisiana with a similar name to hers, which is “so wrong” and “not the right place”, and “oh my god, you’ll see what I mean now!” and this is what comes up:

That’s it.

I’m not kidding. That’s it.

Seriously.  THAT IS IT.

That is the picture that has this woman in hysterics over her reputation.  That is the picture that she has deemed as “horrible”, “disgusting” and “devastating”.

That.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!?!

So I look at her and I say, “I’m sorry, I realize that it’s not your shop and the wrong name and location, linked to you, but what is so terrible about that picture?”

And then I get the famous phrase, “No, no, no, Alessia, I’m not racist…..but I just don’t do BLACK HAIR”  (and trust me she said the words “black hair” as though I was saying “Rick Perry” or “spiders” or “George Lucas fucked with the original Star Wars again”.)

This woman was so devastated by this picture that she had to run right over to my house so I could delete it (she couldn’t figure out how to change her workplace in the profile editor) but not before spending twenty minutes “preparing” me for the absolute “horror” I was about to witness.

But she’s not racist.