In the Argot of Our Local Storyteller

Roo is an amazing communicator for one so young (21 months, for those keeping track). She gets her point across astonishingly well almost all the time, if you're willing to take the time to listen carefully and are familiar with the peculiarities of her vocabulary (where "yung" means music, "ah-doh" is water, and "die" equals "cry"). She's actually begun telling stories, which she repeats over and over to anyone who'll listen. "Mama voh dung" quickly became one of a series of "fall down" stories. "Mama voh dung, kitchen" ended up being a slightly more developed draft of the "Mama lost it" story. She also has an "O. voh dung, helmet" story to describe a memorable incident of her bro wiping out on his bike, and she also has a "Roo voh dung, bus" story, describing how she bailed and bonked her noggin on a manhole cover when we were all on our way to catch a Chicago city bus.

My favorite of the "voh dung" series, however, is the story Roo tells about her dad. A week or so ago, the Old Man asked me to pick him up an iced coffee when I was out running errands. He and O. were heading out to the movies and, having been woken by Roo a couple hours earlier than usual that morning, he knew he'd need it to stay alert in the cool, dark theater. I came home just in time for the guys to make their show, handing off the iced coffee to my grateful man. And in his sleep deprived state, he proceeded to drop it on the recently-mopped kitchen floor. As he watched the precious beverage escape from the broken cup, making a giant mess on the floor he himself had just cleaned, his nerves already frayed by lack of sleep, he lost it, shouting obscenities in a lively dance of livid frustration. Once the mess had been cleaned up and O. and his dad rushed off to make their movie, Ruby narrated the event as she saw it: "Dada voh dung ah-do, die." Daddy dropped his water, and cried.

Poor daddy.

In Which I Am Beset by the Howling Fantods

I'm not usually skittish about small creatures I come upon in my home, whether animal, avian, or insect. I've found live mice behind my toaster without losing my shit and have caught and relocated hundreds of spiders with nary a shudder. Once when a bird flew down the chimney and into the first apartment I shared with my Old Man, I calmly put on my dishwashing gloves, followed its panicked flapping from room to room, caught it between my outstretched hands, and released it off the back porch. (All of this while my six-foot-tall man kept his unnerved self as far from the bird as he could.)

On Friday I had a full-on, screetching and writhing fit in response to finding a dead mouse under the stove. I had dropped a wooden spoon between the countertop and range while cooking Roo some hot cereal, and when my Old Man moved the stove aside to allow me to get at the escaped spoon, there was a bunch of other crap in that narrow strip of no-man's-land, mostly vegetables that had jumped out of the frying pan and into the shadows. I decided to clean all the desiccated ghosts of dinners past out of this dusty zone, and had just begun nudging my wooden spoon handle at a prune that had somehow gotten wedged under the side of the stove when my Old Man, looking on over my shoulder, said "Uh, E. I don't think you should...." At that moment it came unwedged and I suddenly saw that the lifeless and mushy prune had a tail.

"It has a tail!" I shrieked. There is no font bloody enough to convey the horror with which I shrilly uttered those words. I immediately began a writhing and shuddering dance of retreat as far from the dead mouse as I could get, all the while jabbering an octave above my natural voice. I was losing my shit. My heart was racing, I could not stop the shivers running up and down the length of my body, and I couldn't seem to stop my screetching expressions of horror. If I had been wearing long skirts, I would have gathered them up off the mousey floor.

Later I tried to figure out what had made me lose it in a way I usually don't with classic "icky" stuff. Partly, I think it was the idea of a dead mouse, one I'd been poking, one that had just given way under the handle of a wooden spoon attached to my very hand. Even more than this, it was the surprising and uncanny aspect of it: a prune had essentially transformed into a dead mouse before my eyes, and that was very freaky.

What was really embarrassing about the whole dead mouse incident, however, was that the mouse ended up not being dead so much as inanimate. When my Old Man gathered up the nerve to remove the offending rodent, he was quickly relieved to realize that it was actually a toy mouse that we'd bought for our kitten when we first brought her home from the Humane Society over two years ago. She loved the thing and played with it nonstop for several days, 'til it got lost and was never seen again. Until yesterday.

So not only had I become entirely unhinged over a dead mouse under the stove, it wasn't even a real mouse.

Luckily, O. was at school and didn't get to witness his mother lose her shit. But Roo observed the whole thing from her perch in the high chair. It made a deep impression on her. For the rest of the day, she told my Old Man over and over "Mama fell down!" (which in Roo speak sounds more like "Mama voh dung!") What she really meant was "Mama broke down" or "Mama took complete leave of her senses." But "Mama voh dung" is apt. I do feel like I fell down, in a metaphorical sense. I certainly don't feel quite as tough as I did a few days ago. I'd feel better if the damn thing had actually been a real decaying rodent. At least the cat has her favorite toy back.

I Need My Neep

I'm bleary eyed and draggle tailed, tired as hell despite the fact that most nights I spend eight hours a night in bed. But for the past week or so, too few of those hours have been spent asleep and too many spent coaxing my baby back to sleep.

Well, that's just the way it is with newborns, right? But wait: This baby is a year and a half old! She's been "sleeping through the night" for over a year. What's going on?

I don't know. My baby, my toddler, who used to be a great sleeper, now wakes up some time between four and five-thirty in the morning, raring to go. I let her nurse a bit (which always used to send her right back to sleep) and she finishes up and says "Up!" And my Old Man and I groan and say "No up. Go back to sleep." And she says "No neep" in that inimitably willful voice of hers. She eventually falls back to sleep, but only after much negotiation, whispered pleading, and plying of water or other sippy-cupped beverages.

Roo sleeps in our room, so no neep for her means no neep for us. We're planning to move her into O's room when she's old enough for a big kid bed, but for now, she's our roommate. And she's been a pretty good roommate, until a couple of weeks ago. (And for you Ferberizers out there, I'm not looking for advice. We're cosleepers, and we're not turning back now. Advice from cosleepers is, however, welcomed.) My Old Man thinks maybe she's getting a molar. If so, I hope it comes in soon. In the meantime, we're thinking of starting to sleep in the guest room. Except the guest room doubles as the office, and it's not uncommon, here in the last weeks of the school year, for one of us to be burning the midnight oil in there when the other wants to crash for the night. Maybe when school is over. Though hopefully by then Roo will be done with the "no neep" phase.

She says it every night, "No neep." Roo is talking more and more these days and it seems every little thing she says melts my heart with its cuteness and cleverness. But not this "no neep" shit. That is not a bit cute.

No Comment

Most of the time, I appreciate the fact that my six-year-old can do so much for himself. He can dress himself! He can tie his own shoes! He can brush his own teeth, and even floss his own teeth! (I'm so proud!) But there are moments, when he's dawdling maddeningly or totally spacing out in the middle of a task and we need to leave in three minutes that I long for the days when I just put his damn shoes and socks on for him and we got the hell out the door in a (relatively) timely manner.

Yesterday was one of those days. We had somewhere to be, and while my Old Man and I got ourselves and Roo ready, we were expecting O. to be getting himself ready. But he was spacing out, then putting his pants on over his jammy pants, then spacing out, then dawdling, then taking a bajillion years to tie his shoes. The whole while his dad and I were advising him and verbally prodding him, a duet of parental patter that grew increasingly shrill as the minutes toward our desired time of departure ticked ever closer.

Struggling with his shoelaces while we tried to talk him through the process, O. finally just stopped altogether, screwed up his face in annoyance, and with measured emphasis said:

"Stop commenting on my actions!"

My Old Man and I just looked at each other, dumbstruck, in a mix of amusement and sudden self-awareness. We stopped commenting on O's actions, for the moment. But I thought to myself Oh my young dear, I'm afraid we're going to be "commenting on your actions" for the next fifteen years or so.

I just hope I remember to stop at some point.

Day of Silence

Today was the Day of Silence at school, and as usual I wore my Day of Silence t-shirt and ribbon in support of all the kids who chose to refrain from speaking for one day to highlight how GLBT people are silenced in many ways on a daily basis. And as usual I gave all my classes my spiel about what forms that silence takes - how straight people can talk blithely about their spouses or significant others, about their partners in parenting or their former boyfriends, girlfriends, and crushes, without fear of reprisal or silent judgment, how they can express affection openly, how they can reap all the social and material benefits of heterosexual privilege, but those privileges aren't available to gay, lesbian, bi, or trans people, and those GLBT folks who choose to speak out and act out to claim the same rights as straight folks do so at great risk.

What I didn't do, what I've never done, is actually participate in the Day of Silence by being silent. It's hard to imagine how I'd swing that as a teacher, short of giving my students quiet seat work, which I never do for an entire period. I'm pretty jealous of my time with my students, and at this point in the year, every one of the dwindling minutes of time I have left with them is spoken for. But, when a colleague saw my shirt and asked if I was being silent today, and I made a performative utterance by answering "No..." I started thinking about what it would mean for me to stay silent for a day. And it would be hard for me, big mouth that I am. But I began to think about my own Day of Silence speech and recognize something that would be much, much harder for me than staying wholly silent for one day: staying silent for a week, or a month, or a year about my Old Man and everything related to him. That might give me a small inkling of what it would be to live without the unquestioned privilege that comes with being a heterosexual married woman, to have to verbally step around the partner with whom I share my life, who parents my children with me, who I wake with in the morning and fall into sleep with at the end of the day.

And that thought made me question the decision I've made every year since my school began participating in the Day of Silence. That one day of silence is merely symbolic, and yet perhaps the struggle not to speak at all can remind me of all the times I might have to struggle to decide whether to speak openly about my life if my Old Man were my Sweet Woman. Who am I talking to? Where do they stand? What might I have to lose by being open with them? Can I trust them? I felt like this one simple question my colleague asked me - "Are you participating?" - made me feel in my gut some of the points I'd merely been thinking with my brain (and lecturing my students on).

My colleague also mentioned a student of hers who was silent today and who, when it came time to do a five-minute presentation on a book, something she signed up to do months ago, came up to the board, wrote the name of the book and the author on the board, stood silently for five minutes, then sat down. I know this student, who is also in one of my classes, and she's sweet and unassuming and generally the kind of person who seems to try actively not to make others uncomfortable. I can only imagine that her silent presentation was uncomfortable for her. But I thought it was brilliant, much more meaningful than if she'd talked to her teacher earlier this week and rescheduled her presentation. It made me think I could surely come up with some way to teach without words for a day.

It's possible my silence could teach my students more than my lecture. Maybe next year I'll participate in the Day of Silence.

25 Random Things About Me

1. I was born in Normal, Illinois.

2. I was relieved that my feet didn’t get bigger during either of my two pregnancies.

3. I believe in the value of 8 hours of sleep a night.

4. Despite my ongoing efforts to spice it up, my wardrobe consists mostly of solid-colored clothing in black, grey, dark red, and earthy greens.

5. I met Allen Ginsberg when I was a toddler, though I have no memory of it.

6. I like coffee, but I love tea.

7. I’ve been a vegetarian for twenty years (!), though I’m not especially strict. (I’ve been known to eat a slice of pizza after picking the pepperoni off.)

8. I have a committed and intense relationship with dark chocolate.

9. Every time I watch the complete first season of Freaks and Geeks, I have to go through a new mourning period, lamenting that there was never a second season. (You couldn’t let us have just one more season, you NBC bastards?!)

10. I love my job. I enjoy teaching about 96% of the time.

11. I think you’re either a natural at teaching or not, and if you don’t have it, it’s unlikely that any education class is going to help you become a great teacher. But I also know that lack of preparation can kill anyone’s teaching.

12. I once thought very seriously of getting a smiling tooth tattooed on my arm.

13. I have no tattoos.

14. I’ve kept a journal since I was 17.

15. My Old Man makes me laugh every day.

16. Speaking of "My Old Man," I'm currently writing a series of poems, one for each song on Joni Mitchell's Blue album. At this point, I've written drafts for nine out of ten.

17. I eat a carrot with my lunch every school day, but almost never eat carrots on the weekend. Or during the summer.

18. I think I look better with my glasses on.

19. I’m gratified that despite the clear trend to give kids quaint Old People Names, my son O’s quaint old-fashioned name remains only in the 900s on the Social Security Administrations recent lists of most commonly used names.

20. I haven't played chess on a regular basis since I was in high school, but I want to start again.

21. I don’t regret voting for Ralph Nader in the 2000 election. (I do regret that Al Gore watered himself down so much in the run-up to the 2000 election.)

22. I hate uncomfortable shoes and only wear shoes that I can walk a mile in. Except when I dress up, and then I’m continually taking my shoes off under the table.

23. I like my hair better short, but for some reason feel the need to suffer through growing it out every four years or so.

24. I’ve never had a manicure or a pedicure.

25. I read at least one poem every day.

(Note that there's nothing about oral hygiene on this list, because my oral hygiene facts are essential rather than random. Maybe next I'll do "Ten Random Oral Hygiene Facts.")

Five Words from Orange

Orange gave me five words she associates with me. The deal is that I write about those five things and then if you want blog fodder yourself, leave a comment asking me to give you five subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your blog and elaborate on the subjects given.

1. Literature - Love it. Live for it. Shapes my whole life. I liked studying it so much as a young 'un that I couldn't think of anything I'd rather do than get paid to read and talk about it with a captive audience. I've been teaching for eighteen years in all, from junior high to college and back to high school, and I've never tired of talking about books and poems with kids of various ages. My students are sometimes surprised to learn that I reread a novel every time I teach it. I couldn't do otherwise - I'd feel like a fraud. But I never get sick of reading the books I love again and again. I find something new every time I read, and then invariably I learn something new from my students. My Old Man is a literature fanatic and an English teacher, and we talk about books constantly, and when we're not talking about books we talk about TV shows or movies like they're books. One of the things I love about my Old Man is that he reads incessantly, and makes reading a priority in his life, more so even than I do.

2. Teeth- Obviously, oral hygiene is very important to me. But in addition to my strictly hygienic interest in teeth, I do like them aesthetically. I appreciate a nice set of straight, white teeth, but I can also appreciate quirkier smiles. I have a weakness for the diastema, which is the space between the two front teeth. Think Lauren Hutton, Madonna, David Letterman before he got his fixed (the idiot), and of course, Chaucer's Wife of Bath. And while I do appreciate white teeth, I find it very unsettling when someone has teeth that are unnaturally white. In fact, I sort of hate teeth whitening in general because, in addition to the fact that it's one emblem of our vapid appearance-obsessed culture, it kind of ruins real white teeth. When I meet someone who has really nice white teeth, I find myself wondering if they're really white or just whitened. Sad.

3. Musicians - I like music. Musicians can be a bit of a pain in the ass. But then again, some of my best friends are musicians. I always feel weird when someone calls me a musician, because for me that word conjures up classically trained people who play more than one instrument and read music like breathing air. I just play guitar. And sing some.

4. Teaching- Well, I sort of got into that with #1. And then there's my why I love teaching post. Go read that. (Really. It's a pretty damn good post, if I do say so myself.)

5. Fashion (anti-patriarchy-wise) - The "anti-patriarchy-wise" is Orange's, but I think I would've had to go there in any case because how can you not if you're a feminist and someone asks you about fashion? I like to think of myself as rational when it comes to fashion. Which means I don't go in for the extreme stuff, femininity-wise, but I still live in my culture and am influenced by it in some ways. I think high heels are a mean trick played on women, but I can see their appeal. (Kind of like cigarettes - I'd never smoke in a million years, but I understand why it seems cool.) Myself, I try not to wear shoes I can't run in, if push comes to shove. And though I do have some two-inch chunky-heeled shoes I like and wear when I'm a bit dressed up, I really prefer shoes that I can walk a mile in comfortably (especially since I tend to walk a mile or more quite often in my walkable little college town). I don't judge my friends who like heels, but I do sort of enjoy hearing Twisty rant about why high heels are stupid and essentially a tool of the patriarchy. I also don't wear clothes that I find uncomfortable, but I will admit that my style of dress has changed with the times. Back in the 90s, I wore guy's jeans and big shirts. Over the past decade, my clothes have gotten less androgynous and more close-fitting. Part of this is because my life has shifted from that of scruffy grad student to high school teacher, but I know that part of it is because fashion has changed and I've been influenced by it. I try to resist fashion trends I find stupid, which isn't hard, but there are always some changes in fashion that catch my eye and end up influencing me, sometimes without me even realizing it. (For example, I've gone from finding flared pants silly and retro to having a pants wardrobe that's 90% flared. How did it happen? I'm not even quite sure...) It kind of goes without saying, but high fashion is silly and often blatantly misogynistic, and I find the cult of the fashion model one of the most disastrous facets of modern culture for the interests of girls and women.

New Directions in Family Rock, Part II

So, how to incorporate the baby into our rock-and-roll lifestyle? That's been the burning question ever since Roo was born.

At first, it wasn't such a pressing issue. She was a tiny infant and took up so much of my and my Old Man's time and energy, the question of rocking out in the basement was entirely moot. And O. was on his drum strike, so all our rock equipment began to gather dust. But then my Old Man starting picking up the drum sticks, and slowly O. was seduced back down into the basement by the lure of getting to play chaotic noise rock on his dad's electric guitar. Then O. got his own guitar, and then he finally got back on the drums.

Just as I abstained from sex for a spell after Roo was born, I abstained from rock, and for many of the same reasons. I was tired. My breasts were too big and swollen to want to be touched by man or guitar strap. I just didn't have the right hormonal kick to work up the urge. I was tired - did I mention that? But my rock libido took much longer to come back than my libido libido. I was playing a lot of acoustic guitar, playing for the baby at bedtime, playing for myself during her naps. Somehow the sweet mellow tone of my Yamaha hollow body was just what I wanted. I got my fingerpicking back up to speed. I revisited my folk and country roots.

Eventually, I felt inclined to head down the basement stairs and pay my Fender Jaguar a visit. The Old Man was getting good on drums, and fun as it was for him to create gnarly noise with O., he also wanted the challenge of keeping a beat with someone who actually knows more than two chords. So we started to play again, and I started to play with O. again. Roo was such a champion sleeper back in those days, we'd often play while she was asleep, setting up the baby monitor receiver in the basement and keeping an eye out for the telltale red lights.

What I really wanted, though, was to get Roo in on the family rock action. By the time she was a year old, she was fully inculcated into music fandom, frequently requesting that we turn on music by pointing fervently to the stereo and shouting "gyung!", her made-up word for anything that makes sound and entertains her. She liked to dance and was particular about which music she'd accept, nixing anything with an inadequate beat with a "nah nah!" and an adamant head shake. It seemed like it was time to take her down to the basement and see how she liked live music. This experiment would have the additional benefit of allowing the Old Man, O., and me to all play together for the first time in a long time.

There was only one problem: we were too responsible to expose her tender ear drums to the cacaphony of basement rock, but too busy and/or lazy to get on the ball and buy her a pair of baby-sized noise canceling earphones like all the rock stars' kids have. We kept saying "well, we could all go down there, if only Roo had something to protect her ears." But she didn't, so we couldn't.

Finally, as so often happens in our home, I rigged a stop-gap measure. We have plenty of ear plugs in our home, but the problem with them is 1. they're small and babies can choke on them, 2. Roo would undoubtedly rip them right out, and 3. I'm not convinced they would protect her young ear drums sufficiently. But, I decided that if she wore her earflappy winter hat over the ear plugs, as long as we kept the volume low on the amps and the drumming relatively soft, she could come down and watch. The hat would keep the plugs in her ears and out of her mouth, and would provide an extra layer of sound absorbency.

So this has been the look Roo's been rocking when she's down in the basement to partake in the rocking:



And I actually did some research recently and found a pair of noise protection earphones for babies that cost $20 instead of $100 plus. They are ordered and on their way, so soon Roo will be rocking a look more along the lines of:



Except I got her the light blue ones instead of the pink.

What We Dream About When We Dream About Obama

I had my second Obama dream last night.

My first happened back when Barack Obama was a mere presidential hopeful. He didn't even have the nomination yet. He came to my party wearing his iPod, behaved somewhat badly, and ended up being a Flaming Lips fan.

Last night's dream featured President Obama. I was having dinner with him, Michelle Obama, and a few other folks. Although everyone was quite dressed up, it was a casual dinner - a very regular room, with a modest table cloth, and the food just out there on the table, family style. I sat at one end of the table and President Obama sat on the corner, next to me, with his long legs stretched out and his feet propped on the edge of my chair. Somehow this made me feel rather special, like I was just one of the Obama gang.

It was a nice dinner. Everyone was witty and the food was good. The mood was jovial. I have no recollection of the particulars of conversation or cuisine, but I do vividly recall sitting at the table looking from Michelle to Barack to the aide in the sequined white dress thinking "I am so going to write a blog post about this!"

New Directions in Family Rock, Part I

It's been awhile since I've posted about the rock that takes place in the Oral Hygiene household. As old-school readers may know, my Old Man and I both play guitar and are veterans of six or seven bands between us, and though neither of us is currently involved in any vehicle for public rock, we do have amps, a couple of electric guitars, and a bass set up in our humble basement for the purposes of private rocking. The basement rock space also boasts a drum kit, one that began as a kiddie set (bought for O. for his third birthday) and which, as the result of a series of broken cymbals and drum heads and a general desire to have more and better-sounding stuff to bang on, has grown to a full-fledged adult-sized eight piece kit.

So what's been going on in the past year and a bit with the family rock? When I got pregnant with Roo, my Old Man and I worried that having a baby would cramp our rock style in much the same way that babies inevitably seem to temporarily thwart a couple's sex life. (Or are we the only ones that happens to?) O. was more optimistic, offering an enthusiastic prediction that the baby would simply join the band, on keyboards. Eventually, perhaps. But we weren't sure how the three-piece family rock outfit that had begun to take shape would fare while Roo was an infant.

Another circumstance entirely was fated to throw a temporary wrench into the family rock. Three months after Roo was born, we bought O. the new tom drum he'd been requesting for his birthday. And, for reasons that are still mysterious to us, O. promptly went on an extended rock strike. At first it just seemed to be an odd lack of enthusiasm on O's part to try out the new drum he'd been begging us to get him for his birthday. We'd say "O.! Go try out your new drum," and he'd demur. Finally he went down and banged it a few times, seemingly merely to satisfy us. It quickly became clear that he'd developed a weird reluctance to play his drums.

For awhile, it bugged the shit out of us. For one thing, we'd spent hundreds of dollars on this drum kit that was going unplayed. For another, we (or at least I) had been cherishing this fantasy of our son as a drummer, of the family band with O. behind the skins. I began bugging him to play, bribing him to play. Needless to say, none of it worked. You can't force a kid to play drums, and it feels more than a little uncomfortable to try. I was acting like the worst nightmare of Suzuki-obsessed music-pushing parent. Finally, I just gave up. He's young, I thought, He'll pick up the sticks again on his own. Or take up another instrument. Or he won't, and that won't be the end of the world.

But the rock didn't stop altogether. With the drum kit sitting lonely, my Old Man started picking up the sticks sometimes when he was downstairs putting in a load of laundry. He looked a little funny, perched behind a full-sized kit whose only kiddie remnant was the miniature drum stool that made sitting rather precarious. But he sounded great (and impressed the hell out of me, who's never been able even play a basic 4-4 beat). After awhile, he was playing so often and getting so good that I bought him a full-sized drum stool for his birthday. Eventually O. began joining him downstairs and picking out some notes or strumming a noisy open chord on one of the electric guitars. The Old Man would encourage O. to get on the drums, of course, and occasionally he'd agree, but that always seemed to end in frustration, with O. fooling around rather than really playing, or giving up after a minute or two. He was much more into the guitar, and after a friend's older brother got a kid-sized electric guitar, O. began asking for one of his own.

So when O's early-January birthday rolled around, we decided a little Fender Squier Mini was in order, along with a little practice amp. O. was thrilled with his present, and he began playing his guitar on a regular basis. I was happy. OK, maybe he's not going to be a drummer, but at least he's not, like, uninterested in rocking.



The strangest thing about all this is that, just a few days after receiving his electric guitar, O. voluntarily got back on the drum kit and started playing for real. His beats hadn't suffered from his drum strike, which ended almost exactly a year after it began. Now he and the Old Man are rocking regularly, trading off on guitar and drums. And I've even begun heading back down to the basement to plug in every so often. And baby Roo is getting in on the rock action, in her own way. A keyboard prodigy? Well, no. At least not yet. But that's a story for another day...

Absentee Mom at the Dentist

Yesterday I took my teenage cousin JD to the dentist. Ever since his mom, my aunt Kay, died twelve years ago, this has been one way I help out my other aunts in the impossible task of trying to fill the gaping hole in JD's life left by Kay's death. Taking JD to the dentist is always a trial for me, because his oral hygiene is terrible, and no matter how many times I lecture him, no matter how many times Dr. Diamond upbraids him, he just doesn't brush his teeth regularly or well. Or floss. Ever. And in addition to inheriting my whole family's cavity-prone gene, he has cerebral palsy, which makes his teeth even more vulnerable to decay and his gums more vulnerable to periodontal disease. So his mouth is a mess and every visit to Dr. Diamond is an exercise in frustration and dismay. I gnash my fastidiously flossed teeth and try to remember to take deep breaths.

Yesterday, however, my usual consternated focus on the usual bad report from the hygienist and the dentist was distracted by an instance of the worst parenting I've ever seen. Or, more accurately, the most egregious example of absentee parenting I personally have witnessed.

When JD and I were checking in at the front desk, a woman who'd just checked her young daughter in was negotiating with the child over whether she could handle being on her own for her appointment with Dr. Diamond. The girl was ten, at the oldest. She did not want to be left alone. The girl's brother was there, a boy of twelve or so. The mom said "Buck will stay with you, okay?" No, the girl insisted, she wanted her mom to stay. "Buck you stay with your sister. Be nice, okay?" And with that, she left, as one of the hygienists brought the long-faced girl and her somewhat sullen-looking brother back to the examination room.

This whole thing didn't strike me as all that terrible at first. I mean, I wouldn't leave my kid alone at the dentist with her not-much-older sibling when she was explicitly asking me not to, but I also try not to judge other people's parenting decisions, especially when I don't know them or their situation, and especially not using the "how I'd do it" model.

But then, as JD was getting his fluoride treatment, I saw Dr. Diamond and his assistant setting up to treat this girl, who was a couple of chairs down from JD, and I realized that they were getting ready to pull a tooth. They had numbed her up, and now they were fitting one of her molars with a stainless steel gripping tool. She was whimpering. Brother Buck was sitting on the nearby bench playing his Game Boy. As Dr. Diamond proceeded to wiggle her tooth out from the root, the girl cried and screamed. It only took about ninety seconds, but it was hard to watch. Harder to watch was the girl sitting and crying afterward as she bit down on a bloody wad of cotton, with no one to give her a hug or stroke her hair. Buck was useless as a comforter, completely ignoring her (no big shock, given that his role model of nurturance was this mom who took off, leaving her kid to get a tooth yanked solo). I had a strong urge to go up and put my arm around her myself, but wasn't sure comfort from an utter stranger would be helpful to the child, and I worried it might freak her out instead. Maybe I should have tried it anyway.

After we collected JD's new toothbrush and yet another flosser that will go unused, we gathered our coats to leave. Buck and his tear-stained sister were sitting in the waiting room as we left, and I wondered how long it would be 'til their mom reappeared.

Where was she during all of this? The family looked well-off. It didn't seem likely that it was a situation where keeping or losing a job was at stake. The woman didn't say where she was going, didn't make any speeches like "You know I can't leave Grandma alone at home, and she was too raving with dementia to get in the minivan, so this is how it has to be!" or "If your father wasn't in the intensive care unit, I would stay, honey!" I don't know. She must have had her reasons. I hope they were good. In any case, I feel for the kid.

I should have given her a hug.

The Ohs or the Aughts?

It's finally seeming normal to me that it's 2009. And the fact that it's 2009 makes me realize this here decade we're living in is coming to an end before long. Things are going to get futuristic again for a time. Remember when "Two-Thousand-One" still sounded kind of space-aged? Or the most futuristic-sounding year ever, The Year Two Thousand? (Cue Richie "La Bamba" Rosenberg's falsetto and imagine Conan O'Brien with a flashlight under his chin.) But by now, "Two-Thousand-Nine" just sounds normal. "Twenty-ten," though. That's the future, man.

Anyway, what will this decade be called, when it's over and we're looking back on our skinny jeans and skinny lattes and crazy schitzophrenic relationship with carbs? When we're debating whether Justin actually brought Sexy back, or if it ever left at all? (Wasn't Prince just keeping it storage at Paisley Park?) Will we call these years the Ohs? Or the Oh-Ohs? I kind of hope they're the Aughts. I try my best to get everyone I know to refer to last year as aught-eight, but it's an uphill battle.

What's your prediction? (And, while you're weighing in, comment on the locale and lasting power - or lack thereof - of Sexy in recent years.)