The Maladroit
Mamacita says: I’ve been reminded of this classic fairy tale several times this week.
It started when I got out the Christmas things and found a few broken ornaments. The breaks were simple, so I got out the little tube of superglue, apparently forgetting last year’s fiasco and assuming I would be able to put a drop of the glue on the broken places, fit them together, and have them immediately meld together like raindrops into the sea and just as quickly.
I couldn’t be that lucky.
As I held the glued-together pieces, the glue dripped onto my fingers, and that was the only place it dried instantly. (I threw the pieces of broken ornament away; nothing was going to stick those heads and feet back on. . . .)
The first thing that crossed my mind was “lotus blossoms.” Bound feet. Parts of the human body encased so tightly that all growth was impossible. My mind’s eye watched my fingernails try desperately to grow and end up crammed painfully back into my fingers.
My Facebook friends gave me advice. “Acetone,” several of them advised. That’s fingernail polish remover to some of you folks.
So I went into the bathroom and poured acetone all over my hands.
Oops. I’d forgotten that my hands are currently cut to pieces due to constant dishwashing-by-hand (dishwasher is going to hell, I hope) and exposure to sun whilst taking a prescription drug that expressly forbade the sun. So, ouch.
Feeling like a fool, I went back to the kitchen and did a little more towards the Thanksgiving reunion. Then I remembered. I wanted to cover that grey before my sisters saw me at the Thanksgiving reunion.
So I returned to the bathroom and put color on my hair. With my ungloved hands, 
because I’m clumsy enough without gloves and gloves, even latex, turn my hands into nonfunctioning mannequin hands. So, ouch again.
Acetone and Miss Clairol in the same afternoon. On hands that looked like they’d been through the disposal.
Good thing I’d already kneaded the bread, huh.
Wow, lesson learned. I felt so much wiser. It didn’t last.
An hour ago I did the same superglue thing again. I suppose the only thing saving me from the hair dye is the empty box in the wastebasket. Also? I’m an idiot sometimes.
Hey, is that a golden goose in that guy’s arms? Wait up.
Still More Things I Haven’t Done Yet
Mamacita says: There are so many things I haven’t done yet; it’s sadly easy to find ten things when I do these posts.
1. I have never tasted Ovaltine.
2. I have never seen a single episode of Sponge Bob.
3. I still haven’t ever used an ATM machine. (I understand you have to put money in if you want to take money out. Always a catch.)
4. I have never watched Duck Dynasty. 
5. I’ve never had a manicure or a pedicure.
6. I have never used a dictionary of any kind, nor any other sort of cheat sheet, whilst playing Words with Friends.
7. I have never gotten enough sleep. During the day, 
I sometimes daydream about sleeping. I’ve been known to cry when the alarm goes off in the morning. I don’t nap.
8. I’ve never been on a cruise or any other kind of expensive, luxurious vacation.
9. I’ve never charged a client for my services if a “due date” falls on a holiday. I won’t skip the day and do it later, and I consider it a gift from me to them.
10. I have never enjoyed watching sports of any kind. If someone I know personally is playing, I can manage some of it; otherwise, I’d rather not at all.
Whenever I do a post like this I feel as if I must be the most boring person in the world.
Read It Right: Peace on Earth to Men of Good Will
Mamacita says: I am starting to look at my house with holiday eyes, and it has made me pensive. I used to look at my young students every day, every year, and wonder what they went home to every night. Sometimes, I knew, and my heart broke for them daily. With others, I had no idea. When a child comes to school in rags, shoes held together with tape and rubber bands, hair all shaggy, and skin obviously not quite clean, it’s pretty much a done deal that there’s trouble at home. Usually, these children were ravenous because the only ‘decent’ meal they ever got was at school, so Monday mornings, so they RAN from the bus to the cafeteria for that free breakfast that was sometimes the first food they’d had since Friday lunch.
Most of the time, THOSE parents never darkened the door of the school for any reason. Occasionally, one of them would actually show up for a conference, and I would sit there on the other side of the table gritting my teeth and gripping a pencil so tightly that sometimes it broke, because nine times out of ten, the parent of my raggedy little starveling was dressed pretty darn well, and it was rare that he/she didn’t reek of cigarette smoke. In other words, money WAS being spent, but not on the child.
Cigarettes in the purse, no socks on the child. Beer in the refrigerator, no decent shoes for the child. Nice clothes on the adult, rags on the child. And where was the warm coat we gave the child only a few days ago?
I can feel my blood pressure rising as I remember it.
Why, why, WHY, when these poor kids are constantly removed from these ‘homes,’ are they just as constantly put right back in to be mistreated just like before? Sometimes, in fact most times, ‘keeping the family together’ is NOT important. Sometimes, splitting a family apart is the best thing that could ever happen to it. When parents do not behave like adults, they have no business inflicting it on innocent children. Get the kids out of that house, and put them where they’ll be fed and clothed and loved. Any adult who would buy cigarettes when his/her child has no socks, is a monster, not fit to raise a child. Addictions? Cry me a river. The needs of children always come before any needs of an adult. And especially before an adult’s hobby, toy, or habit. Oh, and does anyone really think these children will ever again “tell” what’s going on at “home?”
I like to think that most days I am reflective and wise, but sometimes it really gets to me and I am just angry and far from wise. Oh, so very, very far.
This one time in band camp in one of my college classes, we were discussing “It’s A Wonderful Life,” in relation to our own lives. I asked my students to think about how life might have been for their loved ones had they never been born.
That was when we all learned that one of my lovely students, who was only nineteen, has been the ‘mother’ of her seven siblings for eight years, ever since her mother sensed a better deal down the road and ‘left.’ If she had never been born, those siblings would probably have been sectioned out to foster homes. Her brothers might have gotten in trouble with the law, with nobody at home to supervise them. Her sisters might have sought ‘relationships’ in an attempt to get affection. Her father might have succumbed to his depression if he had to work four jobs knowing nobody was watching over his children. She told us that her youngest sibling was only two when their mother ‘left,’ and that he started calling her ‘mom’ within a few days of her leaving. She talked about cooking, buying clothing, budgeting, potty-training. . . . when all the other girls her age were playing with their dolls, skating, watching Sponge Bob, and later dating, hanging out, and staying after school for ball games and club meetings. Was she sorry? No, she would not have done it any other way, but it would have been nice to have been a child when she was a child, and a teenager during her teens, instead of having to be an adult because an actual adult wasn’t done acting like a teen.
My students tell me these stories all the time.
I think one (of many millions) reason so many kids loved Harry Potter was that he, too, lived a life of horror with abusive,, neglectful, unloving people, and was RESCUED! Rescued, and removed, and sent to live with nice people who loved him. Even the yearly returning to the Dursleys was endurable once he knew he would not have to live there forever. How many of our children stay sane mainly because of the hope of rescue?
So they’re rescued. And then they’re sent right back because some adult says he/she’s sorry.
Abusive adults aren’t sorry for how they treated a child. They’re only sorry because while the child wasn’t living with them, they didn’t have welfare money for cigarettes, booze, meth, and cable.
Look around. Every person has a story to tell. Sometimes you can tell by their outsides, and sometimes you can’t. Usually, we can’t. Marilla Cuthbert told Anne Shirley this, and it is true.
Most of the time, that story has something to do with their home, and who was there, and who WASN’T there, and who did his/her job, and who didn’t, all of which are choices. Free will choices..
Some people are parents via biology or adoption, and others are parents via fate. There is no guarantee which kind will be the best kind.
I would bet money, though, if I had any money, that an adult who would put his/her own selfish wants and addictions over and above the needs of a little child, is not even going to be in the running. Shame on them. Shame, and more shame. Hell is too good for an adult who puts his/her own wants and even needs above the needs of a child. If you have gloves and your child has no socks, you’re a beast.
I do not understand many things in this world, and one of them is this: when “everybody” knows a home is not a fit place for a child, why does “everybody” talk about that fact, yet allow the child to remain in the home?
“What a shame, those poor kids, alcohol, drugs, prostitution, gambling, live-in lovers, possible molestation. . . . .” and then we watch them get on the bus, knowing they’re going “home” to hell house.
I know that mistakes are made all the time, in removing children from so-called ‘homes,’ but I think even more mistakes are made all the time in NOT removing children. Why should their worthless parents have all the rights, and the children have none?
I am so down tonight. I wish I could gather up all these kids and wash them, and feed them, and put clean socks on their feet, and intact shoes, and pretty clothes. I wish I could fill Christmas stockings for them, and hug them, and give each one a doll or toy of some kind that would be their very own and nobody else’s. And if their worthless deadbeat parent tried to take it and sell it for drugs or booze or a manicure or anything whatsoever, I hope a sensor in it would explode and wipe that bum off the face of the earth. Peace on earth, yes.
Read it right: “Peace on earth to men of good will.”
The other kind can bite me.
