#TheDress

So I was checking my email.  Yes, on AOL!  And I saw something about the dress that broke the Internet.  I noticed at the bottom that it was blue and black, but in the main story it was gold and white.  But I also noticed that it was quite ugly and mature looking.  Now in my mind, at 45 I still think I’m 25.  So maybe someone would think that dress is right up my alley, while I’m thinking that dress is for an older lady.  I don’t know……say somebody in her 40s.  It’s amazing right.  They say 40 is the new 20, and I think they mean that we in our 40s still think that we are in our 20s.  And I’m guilty of it sometimes.  Some days I look in the mirror and I think, “Damn!  You’re 45?”  And other days I look in the mirror and I think, “Damn.  You are 45.”

Another reason why I ignored the dress was because I’m too old and too jaded to waste my time on frivolous things that the media call news.  “Bobbi Kristina has come out of a coma.”  Not my concern.  “Bobbi Kristina is getting worse.”  Not my concern.  And it’s not that I don’t care about Bobbi Kristina because I really don’t care either way.  It’s just that I don’t know her, and these things are not really news to me.  “Any Kardashian has done anything.”  I unapologetically do not care.  Life is way too short for me to give these people any of my time. 

So when I saw an article about a dress, I couldn’t give a flying fig.  However, the kids came home from school, and they couldn’t wait to tell me that for the entire day at school and on the bus, kids were arguing about the color of a dress.  Then I said, “Wait.  That dress was such big news?”  My daughter showed it to me on her iPod, and to her it looked gold and white, but to me and her twin brother, it looked blue and black.  Her dad thought it looked blue and black, and so did my younger son, but my nephew thought it looked gold and white.  They shared with me that kids on the bus and at school were seriously arguing about it with each other.  I was amazed that the kids took time out to stop roasting each other and the poor bus driver to discuss the color of a dress that looked gold and white to some and black and blue to others.

Around 11:30 pm, my husband’s cell phone rang.  I realized he was talking to a fellow employee, and when I heard him mention something about color, I couldn’t wait for him to get off the phone.  Teasingly, I said, “Was that about the dress?”  Boy was I shocked when he said yes.  My husband does not waste too much time on important things much less on trivial stuff, so now I’m curious as to why he was having that discussion at 11:30 at night.  But there was a valid reason.  The person on the other end mixed him up with another Francis with whom he was having the discussion earlier in the day and couldn’t wait to tell him that he saw it over the news.  Later the next day, I too saw it over the news!

Like I said, the dress is pretty unattractive, so whether it’s blue and black or gold and white or periwinkle and mustard, it really doesn’t matter.  The whole concept just drove home a deeper meaning to me.  We are all individuals.  Sometimes we could have the same genes and still have different perspectives.  Why are people fighting over the fact that some see blue and black and others see gold and white?  Isn’t it sufficient that they all see one ugly dress?  We have different moral compasses.  We have different beliefs about the same deity.  We have different levels of compassion, sorrow, vanity, love and every other emotion that one can think of.  What we need to do is to just accept others for how they see the same world around us.  Accept others for how they view ideas in this same world; accept others for their varying theories about everything because perspectively speaking, it doesn’t matter how much we try to make those around us see things our way; they can only see things their way.

I Don’t Call You, So Don’t Call Me

That is what I wish I could tell my son’s school.  I get a call about once a month, well, I used to, but lately it’s becoming more frequent, about something he did or didn’t do.  And I think to myself, “Are they kidding?  Do they have any idea what I go through with him at home?  But they don’t see me calling them every minute.”

I’ve always said that if he were my oldest, I would have stopped at one.  I’ve said that 2/3 or 66% is not so bad.  I’ve convinced myself that him being the youngest I’ve slacked off due to fatigue.  I’ve considered that he got the worse genes from both parents.  I’ve been trying to figure out this kid’s problem for almost 13 years.  And I think I’m getting close.  I have decided that there is not a problem; instead, I have to take the good with the bad. 

Every day this pain in the ass kid leaves the car, he seldom forgets to give me a kiss.  When he returns home, I look forward for a kiss form his cold lips.  When he turns during the nights (he still finds his way in my bed) he always plants a kiss on my face.  He seldom sulks.  He is in a great mood 95% of the time.  Little things excite him because he is just full of life.  Is he going to be perfect?  Hell no!  Can I pick which traits will be his dominant ones?  I wish. 

This is what I’m dealing with now.  A daughter who is a perfectionist, who is usually at the top of her game.  A son who works hard, and usually gets the raw end of the stick.  And my bonus child who is alive solely to have fun.  Case in point:  They all made their schools’ basketball teams.  My freshman daughter made the Varsity team as a starter.  Ended up scoring over 125 points and was a leader in various categories.  Her twin made his Freshman team and as hard as he worked, as many times as he scored as soon as he gets a minute or two in the game, inasmuch as he scored over 60 points while playing barely 10% of each game, he just couldn’t get the respect that he deserved.  Then there was my problem child.  Great point guard.  Wasn’t a starter either.  Debatable, but won’t comment any further.  Gets thrown off the team close to the end of the season due to bad behavior.  Punishment not debatable, but still won’t comment any further.  Have to give dude some kind of privacy, after all.

But after my daughter’s last game, as my husband and I watched the local news, I was so proud to see not only the game featured, but to hear her name being called (and correctly, I might add), to see her land a deep two pointer (the reporter’s words, not mine) and to see her on the court for a few more seconds.  It was one of the proudest moments of my life as a parent.  Then it dawned on me that I was equally as proud of her twin for working his butt off and scoring over 60 points, off, off, off the bench, you know like some unheard of Broadway show.  And as much as I don’t condone his actions, I was just as proud of my Lil’ Man for never veering far from who he is.  The next morning when her brothers saw the clip, they were just as proud of her as we were, which made me even more proud that they didn’t harbor any envy towards her being in the spotlight.

As a mother, I’m thankful that I don’t punish myself or feel guilty for every little thing that my children do, although I do believe that it is all a reflection of me.  But I do worry that they will get out of control if I cannot get them to follow every step of my anal commands.  Then it hit me – there are THREE children with the same genes but not the same genetic makeup, so how is it my fault that one child listens and another one doesn’t?  How is it my fault that one child is focused and another child is only focusing on sports?  How is it that two children usually do their chores and one is usually hiding from his chores? 

So now instead of wondering where I went wrong with him, instead of hoping that he can be a little bit more like his sister, instead of wishing that he and his brother wouldn’t butt heads so much, I have realized that when that spermatozoon hit that ovum to form that zygote, it all happened haphazardly.  I was having fun then and perspectively speaking, I will have to find a way to have fun with that outcome!  

Go Daddy

I do not consider myself an animal lover.  It’s not that I hate animals.  Well, except for cats.  Well, except for Stripes, my sister’s cat.  I profoundly hate that cat!!!  Don’t like him.  He is mean-spirited, spiteful and wicked.  He has attacked me, and without provocation I might add, and too many others, for him to ever be considered a sweet cat.  I swear I never messed with that cat because I had seen what he was capable of doing.  Granted I never really liked cats in the first place, so there was no reason for me to even acknowledge that creature. 

The only bad thing(s) I ever did to our childhood cat was to lift him a few feet above the ground and drop him.  But it was for research; I wanted to see if cats really do land on their feet no matter how high you drop them.  The theory was proving right until I dropped him a few inches above ground level and realized that it all depends on how high the drop is.  Oh and I used to put him in a bag and spin it around, let him out and see if he could walk straight.  That too was for research.  I had heard that it didn’t matter how much you spun a cat around, it always had good balance.  But other than that, I am ALWAYS kind to animals.

After all, I love puppies, especially fluffy ones.  Would I own a fluffy puppy at this point in my life?  Hell, no!  I just don’t have time to take care of another living being at the moment.  Or any other moment in the future, I might add.  Have I owned dogs?  Oh yeah.  Have I loved dogs?  Very much so.  Do I like dogs now?  Not really.  I don’t particularly like other people’s dogs because I’ve been attacked by too many.  And by attack I mean been run at, been growled at and been barked at. 

But to be a member of PETA, to announce that I love animals more than I do people, to stop eating animal products, it’s just not that serious for me.  I will not condone the senseless acts of cruelty towards animals, but there is no way I’m going to lay down my life for an animal.

So when there was an outcry from ‘animal advocates’ about the Go Daddy Super Bowl ad featuring a lost puppy that returned home safely, only to be told by the owner that she just sold him online, I’m sorry but I just didn’t see the tragedy that ‘animal advocates’ saw.  And I use the term animal advocates loosely because I have never seen any of them stopped their car, got out and checked on the half dead skunk on the side of the road.  And I can’t imagine that they would give a dying skunk mouth to mouth or take him to a vet.  And living in the Poconos for 10 years now, I have never heard of any group protesting the hunting of deer or any other animal.

The puppy looked healthy to me.  I have no reason to assume that the owner/business woman was holding that puppy under bad conditions.  Were I to purchase a puppy, and I Googled and saw that a puppy like that was for sale, I would be inclined to purchase that puppy online.  Not everyone who sells a puppy online is part of a sadistic puppy torturing club.  Like many small entrepreneurs, some people just use the Internet as a method of doing business.  We go to amazon.com and purchase a plethora of items, and some of them we use on ourselves and our children and even on our precious pets, so what’s wrong, pray tell, with buying a pet online?

I have seen those ‘philosophical’ questions like, “If you have to save your favorite pet or a person from drowning, who would you choose?’  Allow me to answer:  If I had to save my beloved dog, Portia, who I loved more than any pet I ever had or Donald Trump, who I despise more than any individual on this planet - don’t ask why – he just rubs me the wrong way – and I could only choose one of them, without even thinking, I’d choose the Donald!  Portia was a dog.  At times, my morals might be questionable in other people’s eyes, but for Pete’s sake, I’ve always credited myself with having great values.  There is no way on this Earth, than any pet should come before any human being.  Sure, Donald is the biggest richard out there, just a tad above Kanye West, but at the end of the day, he is still somebody’s father, somebody’s brother, somebody’s cousin, somebody’s baby at one point.  He is still a human being.  And as obnoxious as he is, no animal should ever come before him.

Anyway, after Go Daddy placed that ad online just before the Super Bowl, just like Budweiser did this year and last year with that cute puppy and the horses, all hell broke loose, just like those horses did in the Budweiser commercial when that cute puppy went missing.  But whereas the cute puppy in the Budweiser commercial returned safely home to play with the horses for the rest of its life, the Go Daddy puppy returned safely only to be sold.  And that did not sit too well with animal activists.  They signed petitions.  They bitched.  And voila, Go Daddy pulled the ad for the Super Bowl AND apologized!

Well, who the hell do BLACK ACTIVISTS have to holler at?  Where is a petition for us to sign?  Who do we bitch to?  What do Black people have to do to get an iota of respect in this country?  Dammit, even a frigging Golden Retriever gets more love than us?  What the hell!!!  And no, I’m not marching.  You see what that did to Al Sharpton, right?  I’m already 135 pounds to begin with.  I can’t lose that much weight.

It cannot be about money alone because as of a year ago, African Americans had $1.1 trillion in buying power.  And as much weave as I see my sisters wearing, that figure must have gone up to $1.5 trillion; and I’m being generous here.  We make up almost 15% of the population of the United States, coming in at about 50 million people.  So we also have the numbers.  The President of the United States is Black, and so is the Attorney General; ergo we have some kind of power, along with 9% representative in Congress.

Just last year, the Hollywood It Girl was an African with a complexion the color of my keyboard and naturally short hair that no one would describe as curly.  She is just as beautiful as many girls I grew up with or came into contact with; but the world thought her beauty was a breath of fresh air.  So we are gaining in this world.  But for some reason, overall, the color of our skin, the texture of our hair, the fullness of lips and hips deter us from gaining the respect that we deserve; and as long as I live, I will never truly understand why, so perspectively speaking, don’t ask me to sign a petition for the protection of any animal while my people are becoming an endangered species.