Picket Fence Post

The Picket Fence Post family survived two Thanksgiving dinners this past weekend and managed to fill two squares on the Dysfunctional Family Bingo card . . . though I’m not sayin’ which two because my loving family members read this blog.

*waving, ‘hi’ to family*

The day after Thanksgiving I (at my parents’ house where the kids watched about 47 hours of TV), we attended a Christmas parade featuring giant balloons (Cat-in-the-Hat, Strawberry Shortcake, etc.) and a few street cleaners which were, no lie, part of the procession. The kids’ favorite part, I suspect, was gathering the pieces of candy which were hurled in their general direction by parade participants. Given that two out of the three kids didn’t really eat much at Thanksgiving dinner — unlike their parents who stuffed themselves –they must’ve been hungry.

As soon as the parade concluded, we went inside the mall along the parade route and got in line to visit Santa. Panic ensued when the skeptical Eldest Boy told me, “I’m not going to see him. He’s not the real Santa. I’m going to write [the real] Santa a letter.” And the kid refused to get in line.

I was concerned that his move would taint the experience of his siblings and prompt a crisis of Christmas faith, but The Girl and The Youngest Boy were distracted by the fact that they didn’t know exactly what they want for Christmas (making Christmas shopping vexing!) and didn’t know what to say to the big guy in red. (The Spouse and I suggested that they tell him they’ll send him a letter with a specific request later.)

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The heinously evil mother sat her newly-minted 7-year-old down to write thank you notes to the people who had given him birthday presents. She’d purchased some cheery Snoopy note cards. She wrote out six different, short scripts on scrap paper for the child to copy onto each card. While the child was writing out the cards, the mother was addressing and stamping the envelopes, six in all.

“I HATE your stupid writing!” the child burst out while writing the first card. “I can’t read it.” (*slams a fist onto the kitchen table*)

“What can’t you read?” the mother asked. “I’ll tell you what it says.”

Frustration was building as the child continued to mutter and fist-pound but not identify what he couldn’t read. “This is just like cursive writing,” he said of the printed scripts. “I HATE your writing. Don’t ever write anything again!”

“Tell me what you need me to read,” the mother calmly repeated, looking over the scripts and recognizing that, indeed, when she had written the word “for” the “r” kind of resembled a “v” but thought everything else was fairly easy to make out.

But the child didn’t want the mother to help; the child wanted to complain.

“What? ANOTHER ONE?” he shouted as he was handed his fourth blank Snoopy card and accompanying script. “I HATE this.”

The mother began to get annoyed. “You’re lucky that you have the cards all written out and you just have to copy them and not figure out what you were going to write for each one,” she said, noting that the child’s writing was starting to deteriorate into scrawl. “Make sure to write nicely so people can read it. This is the least you can do for people who gave you a present.”

The criticism provoked the child even more, as he grew more and more agitated. “Why do I have to write what YOU say? They’re my letters.”

“Fine,” she replied, “write what you want.”

The kid wrote the next letter. It said: “Thank you for the chek.” (The original script said, “Thank you for thinking of me on my birthday and for the check.”)

The mother laughed. “That’s kind of short,” she remarked, getting a sinister kick out of this tedious, hard labor to which she was subjecting her youngest child.

“What?” he replied as she handed him another card. “MORE? (*pause for sniveling*) I’m going to throw up.”

The mother laughed again at the thought: Vomit-inducing thank note writing. “That would be a first,” she thought to herself.

When the child finally finished – slamming each thank card on the table with his sweaty hands – the mother put the notes in their respective envelopes and handed them back. “You can seal all of these and put them in the mailbox,” she said.

“Noooo!”

The mother, thoroughly amused, walked out of the room chuckling.

Image credit: Easy Free Printables.

We’re still trying to shake off that vacation feel and jump back into our regular, everyday life . . . but we’re not doing so well. The reason: The Boys’ first season of Pop Warner football started last night with equipment pickup. They just had their first practices (which lasted approximately 47 hours and run for 49 consecutive days, while $98,000 worth of new equipment put a huge crimp in my credit card and The Spouse and I look forward to months of making the 20-minute each way trips to drop them off and pick them up from their bazillion practices. So I’m gearing up for a long, grumpy season of hauling boys and their smelly equipment around . . . but I digress. I promised Cape tales in this blog entry. Here are the highlights:

Lucky Number Seven

We celebrated the 7th birthday of The Youngest Boy during our summer holiday by playing a rousing round of mini-golf (thank God no one won a free second round on the 18th hole) at one of the Cape’s 118 mini-golf establishments. The one we went to has a farm theme . . . because when you think Cape, you automatically think farm. The birthday boy not only miraculously got two holes-in-ones (miraculous given that he viciously pounded the golf ball on numerous occasions sending the white sphere of death sailing through the air), but we also allowed him and his siblings to waste much of our hard-earned cash in the arcade afterwards. Who knew that the most fun was to be had NOT in playing the games, but in cashing in tickets ”earned” by playing the games to get a prize worth 17 cents? (For the record, all the kids selected from the prize area some form of plastic weaponry and plastic rings guaranteed to cut off their circulation.) After mini-golf, plastic guns and birthday pizza, the birthday kid also got to go to the beach and later enjoyed a chocolate Hulk birthday cake. Plus presents.

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Item#1: OK Free Play

The Boston Globe ran a great column this week by Derrick Z. Jackson extolling the benefits of letting kids play on their own without adults chasing them with bottles of Purell and micro-managing everything. Jackson quoted Susan Linn, Harvard psychologist and author of the book The Case for Make Believe, as saying, “In saving make believe, we are saving ourselves.”

Jackson added: “What it means is an America where boys and girls are encouraged to not use the screen as a first resort of socialization. The first resort becomes themselves, scripting fantasies on porches and yards, becoming their own heroes and heroines, or just sending a letter to their teddy bear.”

My childhood summers were marked with great flights of imagination ranging from re-enacting Star Wars scenes in our living room with my brother using his action figures and ships (I always had to be the Evil Empire . . . fill in your wisecrack here), creating myriad secret clubs with convoluted rules, and staging countless shows with my brother and neighbors in our driveway (anything from dancing and singing performances to puppet shows . . . in fact my first boyfriend told me he once paid ten cents to see a puppet show at my house.)

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