My Little Minivan, Now in Big People Size!

This weekend we decided to test out the theory, heretofore unproved, that three car seats (a booster, a toddler, and an infant) will fit in the back of our Passat W-8 wagon.

They no fit.

Well, there was one way they could have fit: Have the four-year-old climb into the booster in the middle, then go and fetch the Britax and install it, before asking the 2 1/2-year-old to climb in. I could see my husband considering this possibility, faced with the dire knowledge of what the alternative might be. A dreaded, emasculating minivan. Then he asked sadly: "Can't we just always go places in two cars?" I sadly replied: "No."

The next day we went to what I affectionately referred to as "The Minivan Store" to check out the rambling, rolling storage facility/ aka mobile megaplex known as the Chrysler Town and Country. This car has everything! According to the ads, your kids are going to want to take their Thanksgiving dinner out to the vehicle while it sits in the driveway, and eat it at the table that you can install in the middle of the van. (The seats swivel around so that your entire brood can face one another!) There they can watch multiple DVD screens, play a game of Monopoly, or indulge in some light aerobic activity.

The storage capacity in this beast is so vast that you could open the back hatch, roll in your double/triple stroller with babies strapped all over it hither and thither, and drive off. I really wanted to love it, because of things like the doors that slide open automatically when you press a button. That's cool, when one is a mom. The doors also shy back when they sense little paws in the opening, preventing squished fingers. Also cool!

Sadly, it's on the road where the minivan starts to reveal its true lameness. If only it could just sit in the driveway, providing entertainment for the kiddies and extra seating for those busy holiday affairs. Driving around, it feels oddly like a big bucket of American plastic--almost like a toy car devised by a child and zapped to super-size via a ray-gun. The stuff inside, like the so-called fancy three-tiered console, looks flimsy, like it wouldn't last one incident of an exuberant toddler clambering over it. The turn signal seems to click the tune "rinkydink, rinkydink, rinkydink" as the minivan ponders its elephantine way around a turn. The sales rep wouldn't let us take it on the highway (he said that was saved for "special circumstances"--huh?) but we really felt that punching it up an access ramp onto 95 would not be a confidence-inspiring experience. (Maybe that's exactly why they don't allow highway test-drives?) All I can picture: Oofh, oofh, OOFH, like a fat lady trying to hoist her way out of a really soft mattress.

I wanted to love it, so I was sad. It had no verve, no oomph. During the test drive, I felt the onset of Frump. Mom haircut and bad jeans, included with package!

So, we went to look at the Mazda CX-9. Yeah, it's an SUV. What can I say? It may still be a gas-guzzling automatic, but it drives nicely and has enough power and control so that one doesn't feel trepidation at driving anywhere but the Stop 'n' Shop. I rather liked it, actually. After all, a vehicle is for driving first and entertainment second, right? We have a DVD player at home, and it works just fine. (The Mazda has a DVD option, but we've decided to decline it. Do we really want to be subject to Thomas and Friends on the road, too? How about learning to read, kid?!)

Plus, the Mazda seats seven and still has a fair amount of cargo space. Not as much as the minivan, but at least it allows you, as the husband says, to retain at least one ball. And one ball is better than none!

Shuffles Redux

Tonight on my way home I spotted our neighbor Shuffles, shuffling her way along our street with her wiglike dark hair bobbing as she moved. Her trim little bluejeans were much too high around the ankles and she wore black running sneakers and a nondescript blue sweatshirt. I stalked her in a stealthy manner, noting once again the similarities between her visage and that of a Cabbage Patch Doll. Not once did she turn, but I sensed that, yes, she knew I was there. She felt my beady eyes at her back, my hot breath upon her neck. She seemed to twitch when I darted behind this tree and that shubbery, although she thought it merely the wind's vagaries that caused her an involuntary flinch.

I know ye, Shuffles. I know that you stole my little cat Potatoe exactly two years ago, and keep him close by your side in your darkened house with drawn shades, the house that smells of old cabbage and bunions. I know you read your horoscope this morning, and it alerted you to the possibility that a stranger will spot you bagging groceries at the Stop and Shop and whisk you off to Hollywood, where you will star as a stripper in a low-budget remake of Showgirls.

I am aware that you set out your black running shoes next to your white this morning and thought: "I shall choose the black. Today, I shall choose the black." And that Potatoe curled around your bony white ankles as you sipped your weak tea and ate a fried egg, and the egg dripped down over your chin and you wiped it with a rag that was once a pair of faded, grey Granny undies, consigned to the cleaning supply closet. You read OK magazine as you ate, and entertained rude thoughts about Britney's midriff, and agreed with the poll that suggested her career was ruined. And yes, Shuffles, you let yourself gloat in the fact--for one quick moment--that your stomach is flatter than Britney's can ever now be. That decision not to fall in love, marry, and have children--a doom-laden sequence that leads inexorably to midriff spread--has its rewards, and they are sweet rewards indeed.

After you ate your breakfast you sorted your cutlery, brushed your wiglike hair, and wrote a letter to the mayor of New Rochelle demanding redress for all sorts of ills, including the noxious sounds emitted by the cement trucks that pass along the 95 entrance ramp. You also spoke firmly about the need to replace the stop sign at the corner with one that does not have a sticker on it reading: "No Jesus, No peace. Know Jesus, Know Peace." Not that you have anything against old Jesus, but enough is enough with the grafitti. WWJD indeed, Shuffles--why, he'd be an upstanding citizen, just like you!

I think we are sympatico in a way, Shuffles. I'll bet that you wouldn't fit in with those Pelham moms, either. You'd find them distasteful, as I do, and you would spurn their SUVs with many rude hand gestures, if you only had a car yourself and weren't forced to shuffle, shuffle everywhere. You would give them that owl-eyed stare from behind your giant, round glasses--smeared with fingerprints--and think to yourself: "Poo. I don't like them one bit." I applaud your dignity, Shuffles!

I think you don't think much of our neighbors, either. Some of our close companions here are Lumpen, unassailably stupid, and built like brick shithouses. Not all, mind you. You know what's what, who's good, and all that. You are a shining beacon of hope, Shuffles.

Except there was that odd moment the other night when, on your way home in the darkness, you stopped right across the street from our porch. You turned and stared--for a long, long uncomfortable minute. You stood still like a hunting dog, poised to lunge. I stared back, but partially shielded by one of our porch columns, so that you couldn't see the whites of my eyes. What were you looking for? I held my breath. Would you step across the street, that great divide, and confess your misdeeds?

"I'm sorry I took your cat," you might have said. "I was just so dreadfully lonely." But you said nothing. You left, eventually. Back to your home with the green shuttered door and the crappy peeling paint, head down and shoulders hunched, flipping your hair over your shoulder like some hoochie teenager and moving with that perplexing gait...shuffle...shuffle...shuffle.

I guess you can keep my cat, Shuffles. He piddled in our basement anyway, and he was as dumb as a post.

Pelham Housewives Smackdown!

Last night I wrote this letter to the director of my son's school. She's a decent and nice person, so I was decent in turn. I thought, however, that I would edit the letter to illuminate my true and more heartfelt feelings about the subject.

Dear_____,

I appreciate all the changes you've made to make the parking at the school easier and safer--they seem to be doing the trick!

I thought I would bring up one concern, however. I'm not sure what you can do about it, but I see some rude behavior from the moms skinny, nouveau riche beeatches who drive the giant SUVs motherfucking, gas-guzzling, planet-wrecking, gargantuan pieces of shit that take up half the road. As my nanny was pulling out today from a parking spot, she paused to let someone ahead of her pull out. The mother in the SUV behind her leaned on the horn and angrily gestured at her to "get a move on." My nanny was shocked and appalled that another member of the school community this nasty bitch would be this rude. Perhaps a gentle reminder about courtesy public slapdown in the next newsletter school ampitheatre--come on, me and her, mano a mano--would be helpful?

Frankly--and this leads me into another rather difficult topic I have often thought of broaching--the behavior of some of the parents at the school saddens me sickens me and has made the town of Pelham a dark blot on the landscape forevermore. It is, in fact, the reason that we do not plan to send our son back next year, nor will we be sending his younger brother in the future. The school and teachers are wonderful, but many of the mothers are unfriendly, uncommunicative, and seem to belong to an exclusive club that desires no new members total freak-ass beeatches who have never worked an honest day in their lives and have nothing better to do than complain about "the help." Oh yeah, and I'll bet they have ostentatious, tacky gold fixtures in their bathrooms, too. And their husbands are old, bald, and have small penii.

It is a shame that at this point in my life, I should be sharply reminded of junior high-school cliques when this sort of thing has no place in a school community. Sadly, I am not referring to the children but to the mothers loathsome slagmounts to whom I alluded earlier. Last year, I attempted to set up several playdates for my son in order to extend his school friendships, as suggested by his teacher. In every instance but one, the mothers rebuffed me by not returning my calls and making no overtures of their own went back to picking out tacky shit for their oversized, repulsive homes. Eventually, I gave up--to my son's detriment. While he was invited to the birthday parties along with everyone else, only a few mothers even took the time to say hello to me. [Yeah, even the short, squat one with the glasses who has an extra Y chromosome. Yeah, her too. If you're gonna be a beeatch, says my husband, at least be hot. This woman looks like she just popped up from a groundhog hole. And her name is Donna. Yeah, I'll name names! Or maybe it's spelled DAWNA? Or used to be before she was found turning tricks in a Hohokus lesbian strip club. ] The lack of friendliness has been downright bizarre the source of my recent "I'm a-gonna go put human poo on the steps of the craphole Pelham Country Club" fantasies.

While this year it's too early to tell, I don't have high hopes based on last year's experiences. Seeing mothers in tennis skirts stand on the frontsteps and gossip about their nannies no-account trash who were no doubt scooped from the Bronx by some wealthy schmucks with extra money to spend on Botox doesn't make me feel like this is the right community for me makes me want to slap, slap, slap my sillies out--just like the kids' song!

I realize there is little you can do about people's attitudes, but I believe that a school should be a welcoming, loving community from child to staff to parents. This has a huge impact on my perceptions of the school as a whole. I find myself saying to friends who ask: "Yes,it's a lovely school, but the parents just aren't very...nice are complete, human shit. The community is cold. Therefore, I don't recommend it for your child stay the hell away!" Occasionally, I get the response from a fellow local parent that "the school has the reputation of being extremely snobby filled with people better served by being fed to carnivores in a Roman circus." It's unfortunate that this should be the case when my son adores the school and his teachers.

Realistically, I don't want him growing up in a community where he has no outside contact with his friends other than the school hours. Nor do Iwant him to think that such rudeness and unmerited elitism are a good way to behave; I fear that his young school friends, given a few years, will morph into small versions of their parents [yeah, you know they will, and it's gross].

I don't mean to suggest that you can "do something" about this or even that my perceptions can be anything other than subjective are anything other than a priori fact, objective as gold bricks. I have never had a problem with the school staff or the teachers. I do feel that to keep silent about why we are not returning next year wouldn't be right; not only because you might make the faulty assumption that we're not happy with the teachers or academics. Of course, if there is anything that can be changed I would prefer it to be now, when my son is still in the midst of his school experience.

Although school should not about me and is about my son, my experiences there do make an impact on him. I do wish I had the experience that friends of mine have shared about their children's preschools, in which the community is nurturing, diverse has more than one token "colored" child in the ENTIRE SCHOOL, lasting, and inclusive. Perhaps there are
subtle things that can be done to coax the school parents in that direction beat the tar out of the motherfuckers? If you can affect the general climate in that regard, more power to you.

Thank you for listening. New Ro is in the house!