With my unique personality blend of arrogance and unorthodoxy, I have never been a fan of parenting magazines. All too often they are aimed exclusively at the elite upper middle-class and filled with advice and hippie-parenting programs for which the rest of the (real) world could afford neither the time nor the money. I guess poverty has made Marianne and I a little cynical, but as I unfortunately learned long ago, cynicism is closer to realism than optimism. Nevertheless, as parents, and as just people, we have more positivity, laughter, and love than most (truly cynical but entirely pretentious) parents we know.
Recently while listening to Marianne storm through one of her characteristic parenting-polemics, I was struck with an idea for a magazine in response to the ubiquitous local periodical,
Island Parent Magazine which we decided to call
Candid Parent Magazine. We thought a great idea for a weekly column would be one in which we feature submissions from equally irreverent parents entitled WTF!? Below is our debut entry. While I have created a make-believe framework for the following fictitious interview, most of my, and all of Marianne's hilarious statements are quoted verbatim from our otherwise quite candid conversation.
MJ: Boys mature later than girls. That's why Rory has only just started to lie in the same belligerent way Megan does.
CPM: I find it interesting that the word 'maturing' is used to describe a new-found propensity for lying.
MJ: Well that's what it is! They're maturing into teens and that is teen behaviour!
CPM: I know, I just think its ironic. I might choose the word 'developing' into teenagers rather than 'maturing' in the context of lying.
MJ: It's incredible. As parents you suffer through all of these awkward and irritating changes, forced to observe and participate the whole time! It's a fucking nightmare!
CPM: Wow! Mother of the year award does NOT go to Marianne Christopher! That is a bold and revealing statement - spoken like a woman who truly hates mothering.
MJ: No, no! I love the kids. I just hate them sometimes.
CPM: Ahhh, the contradictory enigma that is you.
MJ: You know that Father's Day stuff on your desk? Camille made that stuff herself, you know. She's actually good at stuff like that when she puts her mind to it. She can actually do stuff, like, . . . make coffee, . . . and that other thing she does.
MJ: Again, astonishingly negligent and dismissive. Your inattentiveness is unparallelled. I'm truly amazed.
MJ: Oh, hush. You know what I mean. And Aiden got that cool dancing bursary. When he's medicated he can actually accomplish things too without you wanting to strangle him.
CPM: You know, you're evil.
MJ: I'm not evil. I just have a lot of kids and no time for sugar-coated, half-assed, liberal parenting.
CPM: You're partly evil - like, . . . 80%.
MJ: What!?
See you in hell,
Shakes.
