Deck the halls!
June 11, 2004Yesterday, as you all undoubtedly remember, was Brooklyn/Queens Day. Like everyone else, we’ve been busy decorating our Brooklyn/Queens tree and rehearsing our Brooklyn/Queens carols. Did you know that in Russia, they celebrate Brooklyn/Queens Day by thrashing virgins with Siberian pine branches?
All right, I’m done. For the record, I only knew it was Brooklyn/Queens Day because I wondered aloud why there were so many kids not in school, where they should have been—in school and NOT IN THE PLAYGROUND KNOCKING DOWN MY SON—when someone helpfully announced, “Why, it’s Brooklyn/Queens Day, don’t you know!” Now that I’ve read about Brooklyn/Queens Day, I still don’t understand. Commemorating “the organization of Sunday schools”? Hurgh? I sense a “Teachers Need the Day off from Children Wild with Summer-Vacation Longing” Day. And hey, I can get with that—just don’t lie to me! Enough with the lies!
Random thoughts that have nowhere else to go and can’t stand on their own as a blog entry:
1. Men leer at you when you’re pregnant because they KNOW YOU HAD SEX ONCE. (Or maybe it’s the boobs.) What a naughty thing you are! they’re thinking. Sex! You did it! The evidence is right there. How come no one’s leering when you’re carting a toddler through the aisles of Key Food? Or when you’re a grandmother? Shouldn’t that be extra sexy? You’ve had sex, and you’ve created other beings that have also had sex. Your sex-kitten ways have spilled over to the next generation. You hussy! A spanking is definitely in order!
2. I keep reading that I shouldn’t say “no” to my toddler all the time, and I know there are some good reasons for this but then when Henry is sticking his tongue into an outlet or climbing the dog or sampling a delicacy he found behind a couch cushion I can’t remember what to say instead of no, so it comes out like “Nuuuh! Nah! Nip! Neh neh neh neh!” It works, though: he invariably drops what he was doing/eating/climbing and stares at me like he’s afraid I’ve had a stroke.
3. I’m fascinated by passive-aggressive dream-telling. Does anyone else get this? The people who have another agenda when they’re relating some dream they probably never had? I get this a lot. Or I used to, until I ran screaming from the crazies, at least the ones I could run from because they weren’t related to me. These examples are fictional but only a little:
The soon-to-be-ex-friend: “I dreamt that you didn’t want me to be my friend anymore, and I cried and cried. Then I woke up and I was so glad it was just a dream. Hey, have you been trying to call me? Because my phone isn’t working right, I think.”
The mother: “I had this dream that you were getting married, and you wouldn’t let me come. You screamed, ‘Shut up, Mom! I hate you! You’re so not invited to my wedding!’ and I was crying and saying, ‘But I love you, my youngest daughter, and I only want to give you the most wonderful wedding you could imagine,’ and you said, ‘Keep crying, old woman! I don’t care about anyone but myself! I look so pretty in my dress and you won’t see it! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!’ I wonder what that could mean?”
The bitter, creepy co-worker: “Want to hear about a weird dream I had? I dreamt I became your boss finally and then all you could do all day was refill my stapler and buy me lunch and you were so MAD but you couldn’t do anything about it. Isn’t that weird?”
The former boyfriend: “Hey, I had this funny dream that you and your girlfriend A. were making out. Isn’t that funny? Funny and hot? Hey, speaking of, have you ever done that, or, you know, wanted to?”
4. In conclusion, I ask you: Who would eat Quorn? “Despite what some of the manufacturer's (Marlow Foods) marketing materials indicate, the fungus used in Quorn is only distantly related to mushrooms, truffles, or morels.” Apparently some people did—more than once. People, if you’re vomiting for hours after a dinner of Quorn Chicken Style Recipe Tenders, give your insides a rest before you tuck into a plate of Quorn Fillets Provencale. That's just common sense.
Reader Comments (25)
Hey What's that your eating?
It's Quorn!
What's Quorn?
An unappetizing fungus!
Are there even warning labels? Could cause stomach cramps, hand paralysis, vomiting (with blood), diarrhea, and feeling like your insides want to be outside. How pleasant!
Oh, regarding leering at the pregnant. You are correct on both assumptions. I know. We are an awful sex.
"I had the weirdest dream about you the other night. I dreamed that you were marrying that guy you are dating now. It was a strange dream with a weird feel. I was at a reception type thing. It was an outdoor thing with those big tents and anyway... It just didn't feel right. You didn't seem really happy. You had an aura of guilty disappointment. Not that I'm saying he's not right for you or that I would even know something like that but I just had to tell you about it. Is that strange. You probably think I'm crazy."
Yep
By the way, I had this dream about you and Jilbur and you started making out......
(this would have been much more amusing if I was a man....)
*also, Mrs Kennedy. YES! It's all about choices...often very bad ones.
My husband and I refer to them as "teacher jerk-off days."
I used to have all these dreams that people I was scared of (professors, etc.) would tell me that they loved me. Or else they'd adopt me. But I could never tell them about those.
It's like when you stole the bubble gum when you were six years old, and stuck it in your pocket to leave the store. Every adult that looked at you for a couple days after that was looking at you really SUSPICIOUSLY.
Or was that a dream, too?
My mother teaches in a inner city school in Memphis. She has to be there before the students for breaksfast and bus duty, stay after the students for bus duty and until they are all picked up from school (ever been late to pick your kid up from school?), pay for the student's supplies out of her pocket and usually brings work home at night because it is unsafe to stay late after school. I bet she would LOVE a "teacher jerk-off day" Those would be the only days to get caught up on her administrative paperwork, which she does on the weekends at home...........
CSPI, the anti-Quorn people, are notorious scaremongers with little respect for science.
P.S. I had a dream I was stuck in a house with the family from the sitcom _ALF_, surrounded by toy trains, while some kind of plague or bioterror attack was going on outside.
--Todd Seavey, Editor, HealthFactsAndFears.com
And on 3, my mother does this to me all the time. She also thinks it's "cool" to tell me she dreamed about certain events AFTER they took place. "I knew your *name* was going to try to kill you. I dreamt about it." But I guess warning ahead of time wouldn't have been taken lightly...
Secondly: How odd! Every complaint on that page spells 'diarrhea' correctly. I'm sure it's just that Quorn attacks the intelligent. Or the website had edited the emails.
Whichever. I'm just being pedantic.