The first time it occurred to me that I was afraid of heights was in 8th grade gym class when for some misguided reason, the teacher picked ME to demonstrate how easy the uneven bars are to twirl around.    Apart from being afraid of heights, I also do not twirl.   When you look at me, I LOOK like a sort of normal person who may be able to do an adequate amount of twirling, but I can’t.   I don’t know why.  My center of gravity is like a lead weight the size of a goat that I keep in my feet which pretty much insures that they are always touching the ground.   But back in 8th grade,  I was nothing if not intimidated by teachers and game to “demonstrate” my magical gymnastics skillz which had maybe just been dormant up until that exact moment.   I always sort of thought that I could do things, like “skate” or “do a cartwheel” but the fact that I actually COULD NOT was just some kind of trick and that I would be able to perform these feats in the exact right circumstance.   Ha ha!  I WAS TOTALLY DELUDED.

So up I went and standing there, four feet above the ground or whatever it was, I FROZE.   Like I absolutely froze.   Why am I telling you this story?   No idea.   Regardless, I couldn’t feel my legs.  It was too high!   I was expected to go HIGHER and then TWIRL AROUND?   UPSIDE DOWN?   GIVEN THAT I CAN’T EVEN TWIRL AROUND A BAR THAT IS ONLY THREE FEET OF THE GROUND?   GIVEN THAT I HAVE NEVER SUCCESSFULLY TWIRLED?

NO WAY.

I can tell you it was the world’s longest demonstration of how to stand terrified on the lower bar of the uneven bars while the teachers — who were idiots — said things within my earshot such as, “What is WRONG with her?   What a weird freak.”   And then — I do not make this up — the virtually THREW me over the top bar, made me let go, and DROPPED ME ON THE MAT EIGHT FEET BELOW.

When I got my breath back, I said in my best affronted twelve-year-old voice, “HAVE YOU NEVER HEARD OF FEAR OF HEIGHTS?”   I would have used the latin word, and in fact probably did because when I was twelve I was both smart and slightly obnoxious, but now that I am no longer twelve, I don’t remember it.   Anyway, I flunked that part of gym class.   Fear of heights was just not a good excuse apparently for inadequate twirling.

But that was a long time ago and having dutifully avoided anything that is more than three feet off the ground since then, I’d somehow forgotten how freaked out I could get exactly.

Which is why I found myself yesterday afternoon climbing the world’s tallest concrete staircase (with gaps!  gaps everywhere!  open balconies!  nothing to hang on to!) on my way to fall to my death slide down an overly big waterslide (click that because there is a youtube video of the EXACT STAIRCASE THAT I AM TALKING ABOUT) because The Bun really really really really felt bad (why?  WHY?) that usually Daddy took him and THAT WASN’T FAIR that Mummy never got to have any fun.   I was up for it because it looked, from the bottom, like a really solid staircase and my PRESCHOOLER wanted me to and damn it, I would not let him down because I used to be scared of heights a long time ago when I was young and silly and knew random latin words.

It was only when I was ON the staircase in a line up of about fifty jostling pre-teens that I realized that this little niggling memory I had of being afraid of heights was for realz.   People, if it had been possible or even slightly socially acceptable, I would have starfished myself to the wall and refused to move until they sent the fire department to save me.   IT WAS SO HIGH UP!   OMG!   I’m not exaggerating!   And!   To make matters worse!  NO ONE ELSE WAS AFRAID!   They were all dangling over the edges!  Unafraid!  Having fun!  EVEN MY FOUR YEAR OLD!   Everywhere I looked was DOWN!   A LONG WAY DOWN!

So naturally, my brain compensated for this terror by immediately supplying me with earthquake footage.   You know the type, where the staircase peels away from the wall and all the people are crushed horribly under the fallen concrete and there is NOTHING TO HOLD ON TO and my boy!  MY BABY!  Would fall all the way to the concrete pool deck!

He did not help matters by repeatedly throwing himself against the rail and going, “LOOK MUMMY LOOK AT THAT!” and forcing me AGAINST MY WILL to look at some tiny speck in the pool a million miles down.

By the time I got to the top, my legs were shaking so severely that I nearly blacked out, which would have been embarrassing and probably also fatal because “unconscious” and “waterslide” are not a good combo.    But I managed to sit down and slide and I didn’t die and yay for me.

I guess that’s it.   That’s the punchline. I did not die.  AND I had so much adrenalin coursing through my body that my asthma cleared right up.   Fear, FTW!

I’ve forgotten why I thought this would be a good blog post.  Maybe I just wanted to give you a break from saving the whales.  But really, you SHOULD save them, damn it.   Because it’s important to me.   True.

It’s killing me.

So this is me, slowing down.   ON THE RECORD.

I am writing this on my blog to remind me (and you, because I am here to TELL YOU WHAT TO DO) that it’s much easier to breathe if you aren’t always trying to do 8000 things in a day and that the world will keep turning even if you are a bit late in your rewrites and the inside of the fridge is sort of gross and you have five bags of stuff to take to donate and the kids want to go to the museum and you haven’t uploaded any pictures for a week and you really should finish that bulletin board project so that pictures don’t have to be taped all over the walls and actually you should most of all be WORKING because the book is due in June and that other one is SO CLOSE to being finished that you should just get it done FIRST and money doesn’t grow on trees which reminds you that  you have to call the tree guy to see about having the trees pruned and that big branch removed so the vegetables aren’t in the shade and ALSO the vegetable garden needs to be cleared out and prepped for planting and what about the weeding and the fact that from the outside, the house looks like a crack den or at least the home of someone so elderly they can’t be bothered anymore with appearances and really you should clean the stairs at least or probably paint them and those dead leaves all over the front lawn are from LAST FALL and it’s already spring and maybe the kids should know how to read already so you should teach them and OMG there is just NO TIME for any of this so instead of doing any of it you should just sit around and feel overwhelmed and then go to the rec centre and check your blood pressure just in case the idea of all that you have to do that you haven’t done (laundry! the dishes!  the beds! the kids’ drawers which are full of too-small clothes! OH AND THE WORK!) is giving you a coronary.

Here’s the plan:  I’m going to do a bit of work while The Birdy watches Shark Tale for the tenth time (she likes the music for dancing purposes) and then we’re going to play/work in the garden.   That’s all.   Our entire day.    Maybe there will be some sparkly princess dresses, too.   And probably Play-Doh.

STOP AND SMELL THE ROSES.   That’s an order.   Granted, the roses need to be pruned first and haven’t actually bloomed yet, but you don’t have to be so literal.   Just go sniff the weeds and try not to feel too depressed about the fact that there are so many of them.   Sniffing weeds, smelling roses =  same thing, really.   But don’t do it very vigorously because the other day I went to blow a dandelion clock for The Birdy (and to spread the plague of dandelions further over our mostly-moss and weed “lawn”) and I inhaled one accidentally and it hurt for about two hours and now I secretly believe that there is an actual dandelion growing in my lung.   You laugh now but will you still be laughing when you see the X-ray?   I THINK NOT.

You know that Robert Munsch book called “I Love You Forever”?   The Bun losing his tooth has ricocheted me right into that story, except I swear to the gods that I will never climb a ladder and crawl into his master bedroom where he is asleep with his wife.  That’s just creepy.   Except I might.  Because he is my boy!  MY BABY!   [sob!]

And it’s possible that I’m a little codependent, if that means “completely too overly attached to my children in their current toddler-esque state and already irreperably sad about their inevitable grown-updness and leaving-of-me.”

So, to recap:  For him?  BEST DAY EVER.   For me?  DEPRESSING REMINDER OF THE PASSAGE OF TIME.   It’s a cute picture though, or would be if it wasn’t so clear that he’d had ham and beans for dinner that I never bothered to wipe from his face.   Oops.   So, also a depressing reminder of how unkempt my children can be when it’s late in the day and Mummy is crushed by the weight of the sentimental sadness she feels about the tooth and the little gappy place where the tooth once resided.

Aw.   Smooch.

To make a long story even longer than necessary, I’ll tell you that we are in the catchment for a French school, which is fine.   Be French.   I don’t care.   I, personally, have no skill for languages AT ALL and am not really interested in exposing The Bun to a language that he will be required to speak if and when he travels to France or Quebec, but that isn’t really spoken anywhere relevant to his life.   Likely he will now grow up to be an ardent francophile and will resent me bitterly for my choice, but there you have it.   I’ll just come right out and say it:  I HATED FRENCH IN SCHOOL.    I really did.   I ALSO think that school should not be stressful when you are, you know, FIVE.   But!  I can easily be talked into anything and as more and more people opined on the French track vs. English track, I started to be unsure.   Then I began to wobble a bit back into the idea of French.

Then I thought, SCREW IT, I’M HOMESCHOOLING!

Then I thought, HA HA HA HA HA.   NO, I AM NOT.

So I lined up for registration, only I was later than I wanted to be and as it turned out, was too late for French registration anyway, the line was huge and the library was thick with frantic parents filling out forms maniacally to get their kid the coveted French spot.   I was relieved to have chosen English and also not relieved, as The Birdy started screaming and scaling the shelves like a kidnapped spider monkey up the walls of his cage.   The Bun lay down on the floor and I didn’t have a pen and MAN OH MAN, IT WAS SO STRESSFUL.

But now it’s over.   I did it.   English.   DECISION MADE.   I am still second-guessing my choice.   Oh, self-doubt.   You are so sweet, if by “sweet”, I mean “annoying, and stop it already.”

In any event, I wrote this post this morning with the intention of telling you about this thing that happened there in the library of the school during registration that made me indignant and then I got distracted and forgot why I started the story.  It’s things like this that make me realize that I am as batty as a …well, a bat.   Is that an expression?  As batty as a _____?   If so, fill in the blank.

So there we were, in the overcrowded library, lined up with forms and I had the spider monkey dangling from my hair and was dragging the lying down one along somewhere near my knees and I was dying to get out of there and also massively late for everything because of waiting in the library and this man suddenly leaped to the front of the line, waving his papers in the air and he said… I’m not even making this up because even I could not come up with something so implausible… he said, “SORRY, LADIES OF OAK BAY.   EXCUSE ME.   SORRY LADIES.   BUT IS THERE A SPECIAL LINE UP FOR THOSE OF US WHO HAVE REAL JOBS WE HAVE TO GET TO?”   There was this complete silence and no one said what they were thinking, mostly because what they were thinking was not polite enough language to use in a primary school library where there were all those short tables and tiny chairs.   I mean, what *I* was thinking was not appropriate to scream in the face of this obnoxious creep around the tiny chairs.   Or my tiny children for that matter.   But seriously, the h-e-double-hockey-sticks?  Because we were predominantly women, we were obviously unemployed?   I mean, right after that, I rushed home and donned my apron and whipped up a batch of cookies, a pot roast, and a few martinis for my MAN.   Or did I?   No, I didn’t.   What I DID was take the kids to where they needed to go and then WORKED.    You know, just like a man.

1950 called, they want their chauvinism back.   If they call again, tell them I think I know JUST the guy for them.

Here goes!   Are you excited?

We went to the library.   The Bun had a meltdown.  The Birdy ran away, laughing.

We walked up the street.   The Bun had a meltdown, complete with screaming and tears coursing down his cheeks.   I’m surprised no one called the police.   He was doing an excellent impression of a child being kidnapped.   Hilarious, right?   The Birdy ran away, laughing.

We went into a store to buy milk.   The Bun did not want MILK.   The Bun wanted cheese.  The brick of cheese that The Bun wanted was $15 and the size of his head.   I did NOT want the cheese.   The Bun had a meltdown, complete with threats and fist pounding.   Old ladies suggested that perhaps I was doing a lousy job as a mother and I ought to tell him to stop.    REALLY?   YOU DON’T SAY.   DO YOU NOT HEAR ME, IMPLORING HIM TO STOP?  NO?  REALLY?   The Bun ran away.   The Birdy ran away, too.    In the other direction.    Laughing.

We went home.   I ran away.   Oh, I jest.   I didn’t run away.    I REALLY REALLY WANTED TO RUN AWAY.

We went swimming.   There was no parking.   We were late because the ten minutes in which we could have been early were absorbed by me repeatedly saying, “PLEASE PUT ON YOUR BOOTS” in gradually increasing volume until I just about blacked out.   The pool had fourteen thousand other kids swimming in it.    The Birdy kept sliding under the water and the teacher was too busy to notice.   I had a panic attack.

We quit swimming.

We went to dancing.   The Birdy fell off a chair backwards and cracked her head on the concrete floor.   The Bun had a meltdown because a girl in his class looked at him funny.    I went in to the classroom to rescue The Bun.   The Birdy had a meltdown of epic proportions because she couldn’t see me through the floor to ceiling window.   The Bun ran out of the classroom.   I tried to cajole him to go back in, punctuating my message by accidentally whacking his eye with the door handle.   In my hurry to kiss the black eye better, I slammed the door on The Birdy’s fingers and didn’t notice for long enough that everyone else in the room came sprinting over screaming, “HER HAND IS STUCK IN THE DOOR!”

We went home.

The Bun had a meltdown.   The Birdy had a meltdown.

Rinse.   Lather.   Repeat.

Word of the Week:   AWESOMETASTIC.

Sometimes you have to laugh.   Because if you don’t laugh, then you’ll just walk around crying all the time and people will judge you.   They won’t HELP you.    Trust me.   But they WILL judge.

Here is a picture of The Birdy and The Bun, entirely belying their behaviour of EVERY DAY THIS WEEK.    (I don’t take pictures of the meltdowns.)(Or the shocked, disapproving stares of onlookers.)(But maybe I should.)  Uploading this picture has made me realize that I’m more than six months behind on editing and uploading pictures and that I FORGOT TO TAKE PICTURES ON CHRISTMAS DAY and am now having a massive panic attack, complete with breathing into a paper bag, because when you are me, getting behind means that OMG I WILL NEVER CATCH UP AND WHAT AM I GOING TO DO AND OH NO I NEED TO GET SOME WORK DONE BECAUSE I’VE JUST WASTED HALF AN HOUR LOOKING FOR THIS ONE PICTURE AND HALP HALP HALP SOS I WILL NEVER HAVE FREE TIME FOR MY HOBBIES AGAIN!!!!!  Or, you know, something like that but with more screaming.

But my story was about the barf, and about how last night The Birdy announced she wanted to go to bed at 5:30 and I was all for it because, why not? She was tired. Up we went, she fell asleep quickly, I spent the next three and a half hours cajoling The Bun to sleep. And then… THEN… The Birdy called me. When I went into her room, she’d fallen asleep again but there was a SMELL. That smell. The unmistakable smell of Birdy Barf. But I couldn’t find it, peeps. I COULD NOT FIND THE BARF. I still haven’t found it. I told you the story didn’t have much of an ending. I am now washing all of her bedding but the vomit is stealthy and obviously camouflaged as a pink bear or piece of carpet, I STILL DO NOT KNOW THE SOURCE OF THE SMELL. Part of the source, of course, is me because I lay with her all night while she woke up and variously tried to pull non-existent stickers from my hair, demanded the “other mummy” (no, I have no idea what she means by that either), attempted to pry my nose off, and screamed about dinosaurs, monsters and ghosts. Guess who is tired today? There is no prize if you guess right, the prize is just knowing that you have a high enough IQ to not bother clicking that DM on Twitter that seems to really really want you test yours.

This is all I have. But I am preparing a FIVE THING FRIDAY for you as well, because I know you miss those, I’ve been busy writing and rewriting things that aren’t blogs but also have four letters and begin with B. As it’s almost Christmas, I know you are waiting on bated breath for FIVE THINGS TO BUY FOR YOUR WIFE FOR CHRISTMAS SO YOU CAN STOP PANICKING ALREADY AND IT’S NOT EVEN DECEMBER QUITE YET. Stay tuned.

By the time we got to the gym where the shots were being doled out, I’d almost forgotten why we were there, and then when I remembered, I had a panic attack because actually I DON’T LIKE SHOTS but being a MOOOoooooom, I have to pretend that shots are AWESOME and I LOVE them, which was getting increasingly difficult as the shot itself approached. But I am nothing if not All About The Kids, so I pretended that the shot felt like being KISSED BY AN ANGEL which is true if the angel is also a vampire and dragging her teeth slowly through your flesh while spitting poison into your veins. Those shots? Hurt. Actually, that’s a lie. The H1N1 shot hurt not at all. In fact, I thought maybe she hadn’t done it. It felt like being prodded gently in the arm by a jersey cow. The FLU shot (and I have no idea why I agreed to have it, but by the time I got to the nurses, I was very susceptible towards doing anything they said just to get out of there) hurt like [insert swear word here].

Did I mention that our nurse was lovely? She was. She had the most amazing skin and claimed to be 40, i.e. older than me, but I do not for a minute believe her because I swear she was twenty-five and just messing with me, and honestly, in my next life, if I get to make a wishlist, at the top of my list is going to be “lovely skin” although I realize that you don’t get to choose and probably, if I’ve learned anything at all from Fairy Tales and other grimly moral stories, if you ask for lovely skin, you get it but you also get an extra leg or seven nipples or worse. So you should ask only for world peace and doves and happiness for all and then that’s when you get the lovely skin. You know, in case it comes up, you’ll thank me for that advice later.

The Birdy went first, and as expected, she was delighted to rip her shirt off and leap about with the nurse’s keys while chattering away about whatever The Birdy was chattering about, which I can’t remember. She barely paused in her monologue when the needle went in and was pretty excited to have bandaids and to leap up and continue with what she was saying. She did not appear to register the shot at all. Meanwhile, The Bun was getting increasingly anxious. I could tell he was faking being brave and it was KILLING me because oh my god, until you are a parent you don’t know how easily your heart will be ripped out of your chest and wrung out by the sight of your 4 year old pretending to be brave while his chin trembles in fright. He maintained a half-smile during the entire ordeal and did not cry because, he later told me, he hadn’t realized crying was an option. When he found out our neighbour’s son cried, he was beside himself. Why was Matthew allowed to cry and he hadn’t known you WERE ALLOWED? Anyway, TRUST ME, it was poignant. Maybe you had to be there.

In any event, after the painful shots, which were then becoming increasingly, insanely painful as the injected arm tried to vigorously reject the dose of mercury and squalene and assorted other crap and additives that it had just received, we were sent to the waiting area so in case there was some reaction, we would be near nursing professionals.

This is when The Bun lay down on the floor and began moaning. He mumbled, “I’m going to go to sleep, Mummy.” Because he still calls me Mummy. Like a normal preschooler who has not morphed into a teenager overnight. The Birdy at this point was trying to unfold bleachers from the wall, it looked like something that was going to end badly, so I was distracted, which is no excuse for shouting at The Bun, which is what I did, because I assumed he was fooling around and was not actually ailing, which was stupid because we were in the WAITING FOR A REACTION AREA and he was clearly HAVING A REACTION. After I shouted at him, I inspected him closely and realized he was absolutely soaked with sweat and his lips were blue.

We rushed back to the ER nurse who we’d just met at our station and she picked up The Bun as though he weighed 4 pounds instead of FIFTY, which is what he weighs and whisked him to the hospital-like bed set up in the corner, meanwhile I tried to catch up and concentrated on not DYING OF A HEART ATTACK BECAUSE HOLY SHIT HE WAS GOING TO DIE AND OBVIOUSLY I’D MADE THE WRONG CHOICE ABOUT THIS VACCINE. He didn’t die. This is not that kind of post. But it was scary. It wasn’t THAT scary at the time, it’s almost scarier now when I flash back to his face, bluish in colour and the sweat and the way he wasn’t really responding and seemed to already be drifting away. That is something you never want to see in your child’s face, TRUST ME.

I’m not telling you to sway your decision about what you are going to do with the H1N1 vaccine. Do what feels right to you. I feel OK knowing that I’ve protected him from a virus that could have terrible ramifications, but if I had to do it again, after seeing him the way I saw him, I doubt that I could.

He recovered pretty fast, within about twenty minutes he was sitting up and a nurse was stroking his sweaty brow and another one was gently dribbling orange juice into his mouth and I could tell that the balance had shifted between him being in a bad way and him actually relishing this lovely attention. His lips turned pink again and he was able to sit up and by the time we left, he was running around and shrieking as though nothing had happened. Which was good. It was perfect. It was the best ending to that story that I can even think of and I’m good at thinking of alternate endings. So then I went to the toystore and bought him a game that he’s ALWAYS WANTED because at that point I was so relieved that he’d pulled through that I would have bought him a boat or even a small Ferrarri or a goat for the backyard if that is what he asked for. The Birdy got a prize, too, although I am pretty confident she had no idea what was being rewarded as she’d forgotten all about the shot and was now more concerned about whether or not I was going to change her diaper already. Next up, toilet training!

Update: This morning, I woke up so dizzy I couldn’t stand for a few minutes and my arm feels like it’s been thoroughly smashed with a bat. The kids are grumpy (see: arm pain) and I almost threw up and/or fainted in The Birdy’s ballet class (all apparently normal after effects of this vaccine). This vaccine can BITE ME, although arguably it already is, so maybe it can just let up already because I’ve had ENOUGH.

Back to our regularly scheduled nonsense posts about nothing forthwith, I hope.

You lost me right from the start in a multitude of different ways.

Let’s start with the opening scene. You know, the scene that grabs the imagination of EVERY KID WHO HAS EVER READ THE BOOK IN THE LAST 45 YEARS? The scene where — after being sent to his room — the boy’s room begins to grow jungle trees and eventually a river appears AND A SEA where the walls once were and the boy is transported to the land where the wild things are on a SPECIAL BOAT. OH MY GOD, I WANTED TO SEE THAT HAPPEN ON FILM SO BADLY. There was such a vast array of possible cinematic brilliance you could have squeezed from that one page of illustration alone! Awards! Recognition! Screaming fans! Thrilled kids! And what happened? Well, you cut that bit. Instead, the kid runs away and the trees are just trees and the river is, you know, an actual river and the boat is just a boat. It’s the opposite of magic. It’s just… reality. Kind of a depressing reality behind a chainlink fence where the boy runs to escape from his spread-too-thin mother WHO DOESN’T EVEN BOTHER TO FOLLOW HIM PAST THE FIRST BLOCK OF HIS MAD DASH FOR FREEDOM.

Maurice Sendak’s book stars a mischievous little kid — an Every Kid, if you will — who is instantly relatable by every single person who reads the story because (and not in spite) of the fact that he’s not particularly defined by his environment. Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze version stars a different sort of little kid — this one is Every Kid That No One Has Time For Who Will Never Get the Love And Attention That He Craves And Is Physically Hurt By His Sister’s Friends And Emotionally Wounded By His Sister Who He Loves Anyway And His Mum Is Really Really Busy And His Dad Is Either Dead Or Just Absent And Oh My God Your Heart Will Break Just To Look At Him Curled Up In Bed Just Wanting To Be Loved. And you send this fundamentally depressing child to a land where, instead of being surrounded by like-minded silly individuals who happen to be monsters, he is surrounded by true monsters. Real monsters. Monsters who (duh) embody all the disappointing characteristics of the people around him, but in such a simplistic way that they become one-dimensional (and scary) caricatures. They become the kind of monsters that kids truly are (and should be) afraid of. The kind of monsters that at first appear lovable and then — without warning or even a real reason — turn on you and threaten to kill you but MAN, don’t you know? IT’S BECAUSE THEY LOVE YOU SO MUCH.

What?

It’s a whole special boat of pretty heavy concepts for little kids, brought to you by the wild camera angles and nauseating camera shake of The Blair Witch Project.

So the Wild Things are child-like adult creatures who are snivelly and self-involved and worried mostly about why everything isn’t going their own way, and who — generally speaking — eat their kings when it happens that the kings cannot make them happy. They wallow in misery, lash out in anger, blame everyone else for their inner conflicts, and, in short, are egocentric violent brats. In fact, much like little kids but presented in such a way as they are not kids at all. They come across as adults who cannot cope, adults who cannot get past their childish ways, adults who need someone else to cope for them, the sorts of adults that represent not safety and joyous freedom (which they represented in the book) but rather anxiety and fear. I’m betting the kids who relate to this film the most (and not in a good way) are abused kids, kids with alcoholic or drug-addicted parents, kids who are scared and in trouble and alone, kids who have been repeatedly disappointed by the adults in their lives. Kids who expect that adults are, in short, helpless. So in the scariest scenario of all, the Wild Things are adults that need to be taken care of, forcing kids to become adults before their time. And when it happens that Max cannot be their King, cannot take all their sadness away, cannot fix everything that is broken in their wretched little world, they turn on him as though it is HIS FAULT. The number of times Carol (the monster character in whom Max seeks safety and protection) unpredictably turns on Max in a way that effectively parallels an abusive parent whalloping his victimized kid is disturbing, and even more disturbing is watching Max as an abuse-apologist: Oh, he didn’t mean it, that’s not who he really is, that’s not what he meant, it’s not his fault he acts that way, it’s not his fault that he hurt you, that you destroyed your house, that he will kill you if you do not please him.

And he’s sorry. He is.

Really, Max? Because he didn’t say so. You did. Because like every kid of every wretched parent, you WANT him to be sorry, you WANT for that not to be who he really is, you want things to be different. In the book, in fact, when the monster says, “Please don’t go, I’ll eat you up, I love you so.” Max says, “NO”. In the movie? Not so much. Well, the monster says that. But Max says… nothing.

Wow! What a fun film to take your kids to see! Maybe we can all buy a stuffed Carol to take home and cuddle at night! And then we’ll just hope that he doesn’t eat us while we sleep.

But if he does, he won’t really mean it, will he, kids?

At the end, I’m left wondering who this movie is for. It is certainly not for preschoolers, though I have no doubt that millions will see it. (Mine won’t.) It isn’t for the people, like me, who have a nostalgia for the book and were dying to see how that magic would translate on screen — for us, it’s just a bastardization of a much loved children’s book to turn it into something dark and fundamentally disturbing. It’s a bunch of missing words and altered lines. It’s taking something about mischief and turning it into something ugly about human nature. There are a lot of truths in here, but they are truths I’d rather my kids didn’t have to think about for a good long time.

Oh, hang on. I’ve just realized who this film IS for, it’s for the rest of the crowd that filled the theatre late on a Friday night: It’s for teenagers. Teenagers who are really really high.

And that’s a really REALLY big disappointment.

Let the wild rumpus stop.

- The Bun has always been a dancer.   Since he could get up and move, he has, every time there is music on.   While we are driving, he seat-dances to songs on the radio.   Sometimes he says, “Mummy!  Look!  My eyes are dancing!”   Then he blinks them around manically.   “I can’t stop!  Look now, my tongue is dancing, too!”   You can imagine what that looks like.

- I found a dance class that — although it’s really far away from our house — combined ballet, tap and jazz.   Something I thought would give him a sense of all the different kinds of dancing he could do, not including eye dancing and tongue dancing, which he’s already pretty good at.   He’s also really good at Word Dancing.   Word Dancing is when a movie ends and you leap out of your seat as though you’ve been electrocuted and enthusiastically crump all over the furniture and often your little sister, too.

- We went to the class.  It was a nice day.   On the way, we passed some horses and a cow.    We used to live way out there in the sticks and I’m glad we don’t anymore, though I guess if we did, we wouldn’t have to drive so far to get to ballet.

- The class consists of 15 little girls in pale pink frothy tutus.   And The Bun.

- The Bun was not pleased.

- The Birdy was not pleased.   She was not to be allowed to dance?   WTF?   This, after all, is where she takes ballet, too.   On a different day.    The Birdy commenced throwing herself against the viewing glass and wailing.    The sun conspired to make the viewing glass more of a mirror than an actual window, so everyone in the waiting room watched The Birdy leaping around, not very gracefully, and screaming MY TURN! at the top of her lungs.

- The Bun, alone in a crowd,  was blinded by the pink.   Tears threatened.   His chin wobbled.  This was not the dancing he had in mind.   This was…. GIRL DANCING.   What if they made him wear a dress?   Who were all these girls?   Why were they all staring at him?   Why was the teacher speaking Spanish?  (She wasn’t.)  Why did he think the teacher was speaking Spanish?  (No idea.)    WHY DIDN’T HE DANCE?

- I stuck to my guns.   After all, he had $65 worth of fancy dancing shoes and besides, I KNEW HE WOULD LOVE IT.   I called him to the door of the class.   I applied my best Happy Mummy Brightly Smiling Enthusiastically face.   I said, “JUST TRY!  You’ll love it!”    The Bun tried.   I applauded and gave him the thumbs up.   Multiple times.   Many many thumbs up.   While holding a flailing and wailing Lola at enough of a distance that she didn’t scratch out my contacts with her tiny claws.

- The Bun tried to do an arabesque and fell.    GAME OVER.

- The Bun spent the rest of the class, eyes folded over his chest, pretending he wasn’t about to cry, and making faces at himself in the mirror.   The Birdy spent the rest of the class screaming The Bun’s name over and over and over again.

- I do not know what to do about his yearning to dance and his loathing of all things pink.   Incompatible!   Does not compute!

- I will take him again this week and hope for the late entrance of at least one other boy.   PLEASE.   AT LEAST ONE OTHER BOY.   You know, NOT wearing a pink frothy tutu.

- I bet he’ll like it this time!

- I know that I’m delusional.

- But those shoes are expensive.

- The fact I even mentioned that means that I’ve become the exact parent that I swore I would never be.   Next thing you know, I’ll be shouting, “Kids are starving in Africa!” when they refuse to eat their dinner.

- Or my favourite:   “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about!”

- Which is completely ridiculous when you think about it, because in that scenario, the kid is ALREADY CRYING.   Threatening them with more crying is a bit pointless, no?

- The End.

- Oh, I forgot the card in my camera, in case you are wondering why this post is not accompanied by pictures of 15 adorable 4 year old girls in tutus enthusiastically playing at ballet while The Bun in blue shorts and a t-shirt enthusiastically played at sulking miserably with his own reflection.

But I did not do that very much because my camera is broken and also because I’ve been finding the whole thing so overly intensely stressful and anxiety-inducing that I’ve been having too many panic attacks to actually frame artful shots of The Bun’s happy face.   Which is good because he isn’t particularly happy.   The IDEA of school has been fantastic, he’s been painfully excited about its eventuality.   But I just don’t think he wanted “eventually” to mean “NOW”, per se.

We had our first “day” of school on Wednesday, during which time parents and kids went to the classroom in groups of three and learned the complex system of snack requirements and filled out paperwork.   The Bun was overwhelmed by the idea that he’d have to choose a blue piece of paper or a green one.   WHAT TO DO ?  And I was stymied by the snack thing, I’ll admit it.   For one thing, The Bun cannot eat anything crunchy or difficult to chew or with peel on without gagging and vomiting wildly.   This is something to do with oversized tonsils — I don’t fully understand it either.   So in a school where snack time is all “Bring an apple and we’ll share it with the class!”, my brain begins to spin.   But he’ll choke!  And vomit!   And thus be socially alienated from the other kids!   They’ll call him The Puker!  He’ll never live it down!  Also, how can an apple be shared with the classs?   One apple?  FIFTEEN KIDS?  While I asked a flurry of intense, snack-related questions, The Bun burrowed up the back of my sweater and masqueraded as a giant hump on my back.   Unfortunately, this had the bonus effect of — unbeknownst to me — pulling my shirt in such a way that my ENTIRE RIGHT BREAST was exposed.   I guess it was about twenty minutes into my snack-related questions when I realized that my boob was cold.    NO ONE TOLD ME, PEOPLE .    Not one person made a secret signal to suggest that they were all enjoying (or not enjoying, as the case may be) the sight of my exposed nipple.   What kind of school is this?   Already I’m getting paranoid, like they all know each other from past educational experiences, such as violin class, which we did not actually DO, and that they communicate using only their extrasensory supermummy powers.   Such that while I was rabbiting on about how raw carrots could be problematic for my wee bairn and he has big tonsils, don’t you know, they were saying to each other  — silently — HEY, DON’T TELL THE NEW CHICK ABOUT HER BOOB!  HA HA HA!    Yes, I think they were laughing.   Inside.   Luckily for me, I was wearing a bra.   Sadly, it was transparent.    This is the kind of unexpected bump in the road that happens to me.   It is.   As a result of my subsequent humiliation, I instantly forgot everything I’d learned about the snacks.

Here, The Bun artfully demonstrates how Mummy looks when she goes out, only his shirt wouldn’t stretch far enough and I wouldn’t allow him to rip a $35 t-shirt.

The next day, the kids were to be dropped off for one hour to be taken on a school tour and introduced to some other kids and generally to take baby-steps towards their first REAL DAY.   The night before, The Bun announced remorsefully that actually he wasn’t going to be able to attend because he’d made other plans.   As he’s four, I thought this was pretty unlikely.   “What will you be busy doing?”  I said.   “I’ve made some plans to visit Valdes Island,” he said loftily.   “So I’m sure you understand.”   Er, right.   Except for NO.    He stayed up very late the night before, worrying about how monsters would eat him if he went to school and also he didn’t really want to go and the teacher would probably be mean to him and if I wasn’t there, I’d probably feel badly when he DIED from a MONSTER BITE.

He went.   He had fun.  At least, he wasn’t one of the cryers.  I thought it was all good, but when night time rolled around, there we were again.   “I’m afraid I can’t go to school tomorrow,” he said.  “I’m going to be busy.   Oh, well.”    And there we went again.   Scared!  Monsters!   Busy!   No time!  ANXIOUS!

He went.   He had fun.   But this time, I believe he may have been one of the cryers.   At least the teacher said his transition was “difficult”.  I don’t know what that means, but I’m guessing “tears”.    HE claims he had fun.  But he’s disgusted — DISGUSTED — that he’s now spent what amounts to three days at school (in his mind) and he has yet to LEARN HOW TO READ.   It’s an outrage!  A crime against humanity!  In fact, he’s convinced that every other kid was secretly taught how to read by the teacher and he’s the only one who wasn’t.  So while he was playing beanbag tag, the others were communicating lessons back and forth using Top Secret ESP  and he was LEFT OUT.   I have no idea where he gets this brand of paranoid thinking from.    Weird, huh?

Notice how the pictures, like me, are overexposed.   If anyone knows how to fix this, please advise ASAP.   I mean, other than photoshopping them back to relatively normal levels.    Hey, if only you could photoshop your life (and/or bank balance) back to normal levels, that would be good, too, don’t you think?