Soapbox Archive

Now they’ve gone and done it. Parents can’t possibly have the time to know about the latest and greatest proper way to serve a child under the age of fourteen a hot dog, so lets repackage them just for the kiddies and put huge warnings on them. Yes, apparently some five to thirteen year olds still require mommy to cut up their hot dog because they couldn’t be bothered to use those things in their mouth called TEETH. Granted, many seven year-olds have huge gaps between their teeth, but I’m sure they can still bite and chew a hot dog.

Doctors seek food labels on choke dangers

Thousands of U.S. children are treated each year — and 100 die — because of choking, and food is the leading cause.

Let’s be clear. That is the heading and subheading of the article. Within the article itself reads, “Of the 141 choking deaths in kids in 2006, 61 were food-related.” That’s 141 choking deaths of kids from birth to 14 years, and 61 in the ENTIRE country were due to food.

Doctors say high-risk foods, including hot dogs, raw carrots, grapes and apples — should be cut into pea-sized pieces for small children to reduce chances of choking. Some say other risky foods, including hard candies, popcorn, peanuts and marshmallows, shouldn’t be given to young children at all.

You mean everything that parents give as healthy snacks are a choking hazards. Wow, got it. Apples are the only thing on the first list that Sophia will even eat. I’ve NEVER cut them into pea-sized pieces, NEVER. I started by cutting them into wedges without the skin, then with the skin, and now she prefers grabbing a whole apple. She won’t eat the whole thing, but that’s how she wants it served. I’ve seen how normal toddlers eat, so I can see why someone would start out with tiny pieces, but that’s the point. If parents are allowed to use just a tiny bit of brainpower, they’ll figure it out. It doesn’t take much.

The second list explains why I would get such dirty looks from mothers my own age, but not from the grandmas at Sophia’s swim class. I *shock* gave her peanuts, cashews, and almonds to snack on after class. They don’t identify what ages qualify as ‘young children’, but I’ll wager that a two-year old is in that general range.

Federal law requires choking warning labels on certain toys including small balls, balloons and games with small parts. There should be a similar mandate for food, the pediatrics academy says.

We want products that make everything easier but have ZERO risk. Now Make it happen! You see, the fundamental difference between balloons and food is that food is supposed to go in the mouth. Food is supposed to be swallowed. And hot dogs *twitch* do in fact qualify as food, even though they smell like rancid ass and are the only meat that plump when they’re cooked. I’m just sayin’.

If The American Academy of Pediatrics gets their way and things like carrots are sold with warnings then you can count on me to march lockstep with them. That’s right I’ll totally back them on this, no joke. I’ll make sure to push my own requirement that all penises are labeled as a potential gagging hazard. I mean really, we don’t want anyone to cause themselves any discomfort. The warning shall read, “May transmit STDs including but not limited to HIV and herpes. Depending on use can be a potential gagging hazard or cause pregnancy.” Of course to be fair the vagina should also have a warning, and then extra warnings just for women concerning pregnancy, “The overall pregnancy-related mortality ratio was 11.8 deaths per 100,000 live births and ranged from 10.3 in 1991 to 13.2 in 1999.” Between 1991 and 1999 there was a range of 3,882,000 to 4,111,000 live births per year in the United States. The average comes out to 3,976,330, divide it by 100,000 and then multiply by 11.8 to get the average number of pregnancy-related mortalities of 469 a year.

Just think of it. If we can really use warnings to keep people away from things hazardous to their health like cigarettes then a warning like that over genitals ought to keep everyone a masturbating virgin until death. We won’t ever have to worry about children choking on another pseudo meat product ever again.

Dear Honda

A couple weeks ago I was doing a lot more driving than I would like, much more than the usual. This translates to exposure of an unusually high amount of stupid drivers, and that makes me rather grumpy. The specific type of driver that I’m thinking about is the one that not only wants to share the road but the specific space I’m occupying at the same time. In order to inform such a driver that this feat is impossible I require a loud horn. You, Honda, have faithfully provided this. However, we need to chat about the location of this horn. In my futile attempt to gain the attention of my fellow driver I merely pounded the living shit out of the airbag.

I understand that for safety, many people like airbags and a very convenient place for that item is the center of the steering wheel. If it is impossible for the horn to be in the center with the airbag behind or to the sides, I contend that your loyal customers should be given a choice. Either an air bag for the occasion that one might get into an accident or a horn in the center of the steering wheel in order to avoid an accident. I would happily take the latter as that scenario happens with more frequency than the first for me.

Thank you,

Loyal Honda Driver

The last few days I’ve had ‘to do’ lists three miles long and much driving to get things accomplished. Sophia has been quite the little trooper and has done really well. I actually think the more I need to do the less tantrums I get from her. Either way I get worn out. I never really win.

With the vast amount of driving around I had to do I have a few things to tell the drivers around me.

• To the person on the freeway: I am an only child. I don’t share. There are white lines dividing YOUR side and MY side. Respect the fucking lines and stay in your own lane while I’m using the space right next to you. I don’t care that you used your fucking blinker. You need to look beside you before you move because I was *right there* the entire time. Blind dumb ass.
• To the person at the intersection wanting to go straight: When you sit at an intersection through four light cycles because the cross bars for the train are down but no train is coming, it’s time to assume that the lights and cross bars for the train are fucked up and choose a different fucking route already. That happens A LOT at this crossing. You should be familiar with other routes, if not get a fucking GPS, because this isn’t the first time I’ve been stuck behind YOU for the same reason. I’ve seen you before, it’s hard to miss that piece of shit pick-up you drive. So don’t get your panties all in a wad because I drove up on the left side of you in the left-hand turn lane, turned RIGHT, and crossed right in front of you. It’s called taking initiative. The long line of idiots behind you should maybe take some notes on the tactic so they can move as well. I gave you a chance. I gave you three chances. I have shit to do, so either move or I’ll go around. Fuckin’ breathing roadblock.
• To the lady on the side of the road next to a van holding a sign: I know that times are tough and that people are loosing their jobs or have been jobless for many months. I understand that money is tight for a lot of people even if they have jobs, but when you’re prepared enough to carry cardboard and a marker to create a sign I just don’t believe that running out of gas was an accident. I’m guessing you do this A LOT. Maybe you should figure out how much income you have and budget better for gas. I know I’m a cold heartless bitch, but it’s people like you that cause me to not give any money to beggars. I give food and clothing to places that help people in need, but I will never give you money. Fuckin’ career beggar.

December was a hard month to keep any sort of schedule. We went to Hawaii (yeah I know poor me) then had a week off, then Michigan for Christmas, and then home again. We didn’t do swimming the whole month because, what is the point? We were gone half the month, and in the last week none of Sophia’s other classes were in session. So just for some diversion I took Sophia to the play area of a nearby mall. I’m not a shopper. As far as Sophia knows the mall is just a bunch of hallways with a play area at one end. Oh, and they have some pseudo Chinese food there too.

The last three or four times I went to the mall there was this odd guy. He doesn’t look odd. He acts odd. Every time I see him he’s holding balloons filled with helium and carrying on a conversation with various kiosk employees while standing five feet away and slightly bent at the waist as if he’s just about to bow.

I use the words “carrying on a conversation” rather loosely. The last couple of times I came across him he was actually giving the weather forecast while his captive audience stood uncomfortably wondering what to do. I know he sounds a little creepy but he seems harmless. I don’t mean that I’ll have him baby sit my kid, harmless, but if I were stuck sitting by him on a bus I would be ok. I wouldn’t sit in perpetual defense, on guard for inappropriate behavior of a sexual nature.

The poor kiosk employees. It’s funny to watch them react to him. I’m sure they’re all used to him on their own level. I’m sure some of them even welcome the diversion from begging stay-at-home moms to try their product.

I little tip to the kiosk employees…if a woman walks past you zone wearing a men’s sweater, clearly doesn’t wear makeup E-V-E-R, and pushes a $17 umbrella stroller she’s not a big spender. She won’t even consider your product because she knows it serves no purpose. Her house is not one filled with knick-knacks. Try approaching the woman that wears so much perfume you can still smell her ten minutes after she has passed. The one wearing all the labels that the previously described woman wouldn’t even recognize. The woman who, if she’s pushing a stroller it would be the one weighted down with bags of newly purchased items even in a down economy. If her child were a girl, she would be covered in Pepto-Bismol pink as well as all the child’s accessories including the stroller. That’s your target. Your other target might be the man that has is eyebrows plucked.

This is what I do when we have no classes to go to and it’s crappy outside. I watch other people. I’m not sure this stay-at-home stuff is for me.

At the airport I didn’t have to open Sophia’s sippy cups going through security like I did before. They have a new electronic device to examine liquids now. “Hey that’s pretty cool.” I told the TSA officer. I was happy that I didn’t have to open the cup while he held it and I juggled a wiggly toddler like I did last year.
“Yeah,” he said, “It can smell things just as well as a dog.”
“Really?” I asked, “It actually smells things?”
“Yes,” he said, “when it works.”

I bit my tongue and tried to hide my smirk. It’s an impossible task for me, my smirk has a mind of it’s own. I don’t know if they’ve hired all new TSA people in the last couple years or if the atmosphere has calmed down a bit. They seem to actually retain some human qualities now. I remember going through security shortly after 9-11 and Kurt being yelled at for not pulling all the change out of his pocket fast enough. He tried to explain that there wasn’t a change tray available and was yelled and even more.

On another trip months after the whole shoe bomber incident I had the audacity to ask, “oh, we all have to take our shoes off?” I had previously flown threw where only people with heavy boots had to take their footwear off. I was scoffed at and made to feel like an idiot, “yeah of course, where have you been?” As if everyone that flies does so on a very regular basis.

It’s getting a lot better. They’re now polite, respectful and even helpful for those of us with kids, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking the rules are any less arbitrary or ridiculous, especially when the TSA officer himself admits the equipment isn’t always reliable.

Our flight with a toddler went well. I mean for a two year old she did great sitting in an tin tube for six hours. I think it helped a lot that she was sitting in her car seat and that I brought her favorite foods with us. I’ll now publicly thank the guy in front of Sophia for not killing her for kicking the back of his seat THE ENTIRE FLIGHT. He never said a word or even gave a glance. He just put on his headphones and leaned forward. Kurt decided that on the way back we would have a rear-facing child so she’ll only have her own seat to kick.

We brought some of her books to entertain her. Those quickly became projectile objects which I had to retrieve from the crevice between her seat and the window. After a while she indicated that she wanted us to sing “The Wheels on the Bus” repeatedly by moving her hands in the rolling wheels motion.

When we go to swimming she rarely does any of the motions to that song. She smiles and clearly enjoys it, but the only active participation for that song is that motion and splashing the water for a horn beep. In her new preschool/playgroup she learned the motions done while out of water but not only doesn’t she participate in circle time during the class but she stands on the fringe of the circle and acts as if it’s a dull spectator sport. On the plane with her parents acting like idiots for her amusement she did all the motions and even helped Kurt with which verse comes next. She actually said “beep, beep, beep” for the bus horn sound. That’s right, she said a new word on the airplane. It was also freakishly cute to hear her do the, “sh sh sh” with her finger to her lips for the part about the mommies calming the babies.

We tried to schedule the flight in a way that Sophia would sleep through at least part of it. I even had her skip her nap the day before we left, but that stubborn-won’t-sleep-in-public-places child didn’t drift off until we started our descent into Honolulu, and then I had to wake her up. We landed at eleven at night, Seattle time. It was another two hours before we actually checked into our hotel and got her to bed.

Yep, Sophia had to take her polar bear to Hawaii. I think she has watched too many episodes of LOST.

This year my parents hosted Thanksgiving. It was just them and us, not a big family gathering. I made my now traditional apple cranberry dressing and this year I made my very first pumpkin pie and pie crust.

My parents indicated that dinner would be ready at five or five thirty. Because I’m bringing stuffing I told them we would be there between four and four thirty. I mean it’s nice to eat things when they’re still warm. Stuffing doesn’t have to be piping hot, but it stays toasty for quite a while in the cast iron Dutch oven I use, usually without drying it out too much.

We arrived at four thirty. Sophia became very clingy. “Oh Sophia you’ve been here before.” My mother says. She gets close to Sophia, in her face close. Sophia begins to cry while hanging onto me. “Oh you’ve been here before, aye, don’t cry.” My mother says as if that’s going to change the way Sophia feels. I sat on the couch with Sophia for a couple minutes and again my mother gets in her face. “Oh Sophia do you want me to get out the toys? Do you? Do you want me to get the toys?” She asks. Sophia says nothing of course, and tries to turn her face away from my mother. She finally retreats and then tells me, “She should be getting to the age where she remembers things.” Sophia has a great memory. Her response has nothing to do with memory. None. My mom goes on to say, “You were never like this as a child.” I raised my eyebrow and gave her a what-the-fuck-are-you-talking-about look. Seriously, her forgetting I was ever a shy child, or more accurately, rewriting my history is like pretending Auschwitz was just a Jewy summer camp.

I used to hide under my bed our family would come over. I would hide under there for hours (it may have only been minutes – I was a kid, the time exchange rate is different for kids), and I didn’t come out until it was almost time for them to go. I don’t know how old I was, but I imagine somewhere between three and five. “Oh you didn’t do that.” My mom said, “you used to go play in your grandpa’s camper with *cousin’s name*.” It’s true, that did happen. I remember we hit a switch in there by the sink as one of us climbed up into the bunk and we didn’t know what it was but it was making an odd noise. That was only one instance where either I didn’t hide or I came out early enough to play with my cousins before they left. My grandpa only had his camper there for a week or so and then left again. He never stuck around anywhere for very long. I don’t remember everything, but I do have a host of incredibly detailed memories.

My mom finally brought out the toys she kept mentioning to Sophia. As soon as Sophia saw them she slid down my lap to go play with them across the room. She allowed my mom to give her a hug, but then my mom tried to pick her up or give her kisses and Sophia started to push her away. Kurt and I both sat on the couch watching them. I finally spoke up when Sophia began arching her back, “I think she’s done for now.” My mom began to stand up, “oh no, she wants me to pick her up.”

“No, she wants down.” Kurt and I both said calmly. My mom put her down. Sophia went to play with the toys, and my mom went to the kitchen to continue cooking.

“The ham said three hundred and twenty-five degrees for ten minutes for every pound. I didn’t know the ham would take so long, so I just now put it in the oven.” My mom told me. That figures.

“Do you want some blueberries,” my mom asked Sophia, “I heard they’re your favorite.” I don’t know where she heard that but she was definitely miss informed. She cut up some apple for another dish she was making and gave some slices to Sophia along with some blueberries. It bothered me that she didn’t consider that Sophia might not eat after a snack, but I didn’t say anything. It’s apple, it’s not like she handed her cake or something. The blueberries went untouched of course.

Dinner was served at six thirty…thirty minutes after Sophia’s apple snack. The spread was very nice. Ham, sliced yams with apple and pineapple, mashed potatoes, gravy, peas with pearl onions, cranberry sauce, Pillsbury biscuits, and dressing. I put a little dab of everything on Sophia’s plate except for a biscuit. Sophia wouldn’t come to the table. She was too busy playing with the toys.

My mom came to the table after finding serving utensils for every dish. She served herself a little of everything. Kurt lured Sophia to the table where she stuck her finger in the little bit of mashed potatoes I gave her, quivered, and then left for the toys again. My mom grabbed a biscuit and held it up for Sophia to see, “Here Sophia come have a biscuit.”

“Please don’t give her a biscuit,” I said, “If she gets one that’s all she will want to eat.” I was completely ignored. I can see if I made the request without any explanation that someone would just blow me off thinking I’m just one of those micro-managing moms, but I specifically gave a concise background for my request. I hoped that at worst I would have to talk in-depth about Sophia finicky eating habits.

“Oh it’s ok she can have a biscuit,” my mother informs me. Really? Odd, I thought I was the mother of this one. I have rather vivid memories of squeezing her out of my who-ha. She acts as if I’m not accepting the biscuit for my child because I don’t want to bother the host. She just can’t accept the simple request that my child eat something else first. “Come here Sophia, look.” She said.

“Please don’t give her a biscuit; just don’t give it to her.” I said getting frustrated. Sophia came to the table and sat in her chair.

“See,” my mother says to me triumphantly, “she came to the table.” I said nothing. My mother waits a minute, still holding the biscuit up. I know it’s coming, her meekly uttered statements that she tries to pass off as a polite suggestion. As if it’s a change in demeanor fixes the fact that she won’t respect my one simple request, “oh Ed-EE-kah (my name said with a Mexican accent) she can have…”

I cut her off, and without any thought at all I snapped at her, “Don’t tell me how to parent MY child!!” Everything went silent for a moment. My mother understandably recoiled, but acted, as she always does, like my anger came from absolutely nowhere. The only time she ever hears me is when I snap at her.

She’s like a toddler constantly testing my tensile strength. She must have also forgotten how stubborn I was as a child. I don’t give up, not even on an issue as stupidly retarded as giving my toddler a biscuit. I know if I give in she’ll just keep chipping away at me. She has no clue where the boundaries lay and seems to presume by imagined powers vested in grandparents that she has, at minimum, equal parenting authority over Sophia. That is not the case, and it NEVER will be.

Kurt calmly explained, “We noticed that if Sophia has bread first that’s all she will eat.” My dad agreed that it’s better for her to have a variety of food and my mom finally put down the fucking biscuit. She’ll listen to Kurt, but not me. My voice is insignificant to her – that hurts like hell.

After dinner we cleared all the plates and Sophia came to the table to take her untouched plate (aside from the poked mashed potatoes) to the counter too. My mom brought out some SD disks of photos she transferred from slides to digital format and watched them on the TV. We got in a couple other minor arguments over some other incredibly stupid things. Pumpkin pie was served and then Kurt and my dad disappeared to the garage to look at my dad’s motorcycle. Sophia wanted to follow but was too slow. She came back upstairs, grabbed my mom’s hand, and led her down so she could open the door for her.

At eight o’clock Kurt, Sophia, and I got ready to go. Sophia didn’t put up any fuss getting her shoes and coat on. After she was ready she went to the door and carried Kurt’s shoes up the stairs to him. He put his shoes on and then she grabbed both of us by one finger and led us to the door.

Mid September I began taking water aerobics classes, and these are not the kind of classes you see all the little ol’ blue hairs talking in order to catch up on the latest gossip. These are real cardio workouts; though after the first class I was a little worried it wasn’t going to be the right speed for me. That was just the new season warm-up. I may actually be in a little over my head.

I’ve been taking Sophia to swim lessons consistently since she was about ten months and I’ve gotten used to the whole changing-clothes-with-a-toddler locker-room routine. In those locker-room moments everyone is chatting and it’s accepted that everyone is looking around while changing, mostly because we’re simultaneously corralling children while putting are bras and panties back on. Locker-room time after my aerobics class is completely different.

It’s been a while since I’ve been in a locker-room without a child. I guess I’ve forgotten the unspoken rules. When I dress at home I tend to look straight ahead because I’ve been dressing myself for a while now and I don’t really need to look at my legs going into my pants. That gets me some odd looks in a locker-room, even if my eyes are glossed over with a 30-yard stare and were fixated on a coat hooks beside someone. Whatever, I can adapt.

Not that I’ve ever been in a men’s bathroom but I get the feeling that the appropriate behavior for women dressing in a locker-room is similar to men at a urinal. Look at the floor. Look at the floor. Look at the floor. It’s a little silly considering after seeing them in a swimsuit the only secrets left are, how tight do they shave that bikini line and how big are their areolae. Neither are burning questions to me of anyone in my class. Really.

After my third class I was dressing in the appropriately coy manner with my towel wrapped around me. My chin was down to hold the towel up, which forces me to look at the lovely floor. Wouldn’t it be funny if the floor was a mirror? No? Posters on the floor would be nice. General reading material, I would even accept advertisements.

Anyway I overheard a conversation by three women in my class. It was a mother, her teenage or early twenty-something daughter, and aunt. I didn’t know they were related prior to the conversation but to facilitate my storytelling I’m letting you know ahead of time. Oh and I’ve changed the names not to protect anyone, but because I forgot them.

Girl to her mother: Aunt Faye says I should go to the doctor.
Mother: What for?
Girl: For the bumps with the bumps around it.
Mother: I told you to see a doctor about that a long time ago. Maybe you’ll listen to your aunt.

I’m not a nurse or a doctor, but for a place and time in which no one is supposed to look up at each other doesn’t this sound like it could be potentially embarrassing? Just for your information, none of this was whispered. It was said in normal speaking voices about three feet from me in a large echo-y locker-room, and I wasn’t hiding in a locker nor was I the only other person in the room.

The girl walked around a bank of lockers towards the exit but was still in the same room and if I looked up would probably be in my line of sight. I could hear talking but wasn’t paying attention to the words, then out of no where…

Mother loudly to the aunt: Are you telling her to use that wart remover?

Seriously, I don’t know how I didn’t just burst into laughter right there. I finished dressing and got all my stuff together to leave. Moving forward towards the door I put the straps of my bag on my shoulder and fished in my pocket for my keys. I looked up to scope out the exit route and passed right by the girl. Her left arm was raised and her right hand was lifting her left boob for her aunt to look underneath and both of them looked at me as if they just realized all this took place in public. Idiots.

I’m guessing the girl was titty-fucked and got an STD. What do you think?

I hate laundry day. It’s not that we have huge piles of clothes all over the place to collect since I’m a stay-at-home mom I can keep on top of that stuff now, maintaining the laundry at a dull laundry roar. I did often fell behind when I was working. On one occasion it got so bad that after Kurt told me he needed sock or underwear or something he went and stacked all the laundry in such a way that it was literally up to the ceiling. Yes, in the time it took him to achieve that he could have put a load in the washer himself, but this is Kurt and it’s more important to Kurt to be an ass.

It’s also not that I have to haul our clothing from the top floor where the bedrooms reside to the bottom floor of our tri-level home or that there aren’t any handrails on said stairs because Kurt never put them back in even while I was pregnant with Sophia, nope it’s not that. Nor does it have to do with the stealthy moves I’m required to choreograph in order to get Sophia’s favorite crunchy blanket and formerly white polar bear away from her to have them incinerated washed and dried by naptime.

Sometimes I can feel my knees and back aging years while doing laundry, but that isn’t my problem with laundry day either. The issue is Kurt’s motorcycle t-shirts. He has a friend that travels all over to see motorcycle races and Kurt always gives him a little cash for a new T as if he doesn’t have enough. He has so many motorcycle T-shirts that one time that he had to dress up for a meeting at work and everyone thought he bought the clothes special for that day. Since every shirt comes from some special place and is some edition only available at that particular race and some of them have been signed I have the special task of trying to keep ever shirt in pristine condition.

I wash all of our laundry in cold so no worries there, but the drier tends to ruin things and so I hang dry the special T’s, all of them. There isn’t any room for sweaters of mine, which actually have tags that specify, “Lay flat to dry”. T-shirts don’t have that. At all. Ever.

After several trips up and down the stairs hauling dirty laundry down and clean laundry back up and then folding it all I leave Kurt’s things stacked neatly on the bed. When he gets home, or more specifically, just before he crawls into bed for the night, he will remove the piles from the bed and place them on his dresser. I do all that work and he just puts them ON the dresser! His dresser has a small TV on it so as he stacks clothes up the side of the TV to the top, he then adds a pile to the top of the TV that straddles to the other pile in support. He doesn’t do this all the time mind you, just often enough that it pisses me off-fa-fah.

I would put them away myself but his clothes organization system is much too complex and rather arbitrary considering he’s an engineer. He has a three pile sorting system just for T-shirts, one pile for new and pristine shirts, one for ‘older’ shirts and a third for ‘almost out the door but will actually never make it to the trash shirts’. I could help them find their way into the trash but that would illicit similar reactions as separating Sophia from her blanket or polar bear but on a grander scale.

On the upside Sophia’s blanket has had all the crunchiness removed and her polar bear no longer has spiked fur and is back to being white. She missed him so much that when she saw him appear in the rocking chair in her room she grabbed him, brought him down to the living room, climbed into the recliner, and shared milk from her sippy cup with him. She would take a sip and then offer it up.

On Thursday Al Franken announced the Senate Confirmation of Sotomayor for associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and Chief Justice John Roberts swore Sotomayor in on Saturday. They actually work on Saturdays? I think they should have called in Al Franken to do the swearing in. He’s used to working Saturdays. I know it’s not normal procedure, but it would have given him a chance to swear her in as Stewart Smalley, “cause she’s good enough, she’s smart enough, and doggone it, people like her.”

Normally when a friend sends me a link to a news article it’s done knowing full well what side of the given news issue I will fall on and generally they just want to see me go stark raving mad into a rant complete with foaming at the mouth. On Friday I got an email request to blog about a certain news article and at the bottom it said, “I don’t care which side you take. I just want to see you tackle this.”

“If you don’t care what side I take, why do you want to see me blog about it?”

“Really, because I’m curious to see your reaction to it. Now dance, Monkey!”

I looked at the title and my eyes rolled into the back of my head, “Breast-Feeding Doll Too Real for Comfort?” I read the whole article from end to end. I have no strong feelings about a doll for children that simulates breast-feeding either way. It was the controversy about ‘over-sexualizing’ young girls that made my ass twitch.

However, a viral video demonstration on YouTube has been met with remarks that the doll is over-sexualizing young girls, or forcing girls to grow up too quickly, or teaching young girls about a natural part of motherhood.

Yes, breast-feeding requires breasts. In our Puritanical culture those evil things, which shall not be mentioned, are generally viewed as naughty pillows. They should be covered at all times for all reasons least the men folk go stir crazy at the sight and send young children screaming with blood streaming from the eyes. But breasts are also used by women to feed infants and though stimulating the milk to flow can have a very similar bodily response there is nothing sexual about it. Nothing! It would be like saying a job interview is the same as sex because your heart rate goes up and you sweat a little during both. Unless you’re a porn star or regularly date people seeking a sugar-daddy/sugar-mamma, sex and job interviews are not on the same playing field. And I hope you’re not sweating that much during interviews. By overreacting to anything remotely connected to sexual things in their twisted adult head these stupid dolts are just making sex a more forbidden fruit in the future and a much more enticing one at that.

“I heard people talking about it but, honestly, I thought it was a joke,” said Ilina Ewen, a writer for the Deep South Moms and her own blog Dirt and Noise.

“There are just things that I think kids are too little to understand,” she said.

Ewen worried that if her two boys, ages 4 and 6, saw the toy, they would be confused because neither had been breast-fed.

Yet Ewen admits she has seen many young girls mimic the behavior after watching their mothers nurse their infant siblings.

“They don’t understand they just see other moms doing that. Let kids use their imagination and play with a doll and not deal with what it can do,” Ewen said. “There’s no need to turn it into something that’s anatomically correct. Not at this age.”

The doll itself is as anatomically correct as any other on the market. This doll only works when the girl puts on a shirt that has flowers where her nipples are located. Unlike other dolls that girls pretending to breast-feed might actually put under their own shirt, this method is hardly anatomically correct. I have never in my live met a woman with flower nipples. Nor have I ever heard of a woman successfully breast-feeding a baby with flowers over her nipples.

I doubt it matters if children were breast-fed themselves or not. I stopped breast-feeding Sophia completely at about sixteen months. I seriously doubt she’ll remember if she was bottle-fed or breast-fed when she’s playing with dolls as a four to six year-old and to say a child doesn’t understand is a cop-out for ones own sensitivities to anything perceived as loosely connected to sex. Children do understand. They know A LOT, and trying to protect innocents really doesn’t serve the child well. It creates a category of information the child will learn never to ask questions about in order to not upset the ‘innocent child’ view of their stupidly sensitive parent.

Psychologist Jay Reeve, CEO of the Apalachee Center in Tallahassee, Fla., said Bebe Gloton’s realism goes too far.

Of course, children have played ‘parent’ with dolls for centuries, but this new twist seems to focus not on what babies are like as much as jumpstarting a focus on breast-feeding,” Reeve said. “I’m always a little disturbed by toys, games, or products that have the impact of accelerating childhood identification with being a full-blown adult.”

Is this a child psychologist? How can he not see the irony in his own response? That is exactly what role playing is all about! It’s moving into adulthood. Dumb-ass. I think giving an actual infant to a little girl and expecting her to give 100% of the care that would be accelerating adulthood to being a full-blown adult. It’s the perceived sex-thing about the doll isn’t it? I wonder what Freud would say about this?

Though I don’t care about the breast-feeding non-issue I still wouldn’t buy this doll for Sophia. I agree with the professor at the end of the article.

…toy expert, professor and author Diane Levin, said the problem with Bebe Gloton isn’t the breast-feeding. Levin has a problem with any toy that limits the play to a single activity.

“It’s not good for children to have everything structured for them,” said Levin…

… “As kids get used to instructive toys, they need more structured toys,” Levin said. “We take the creativity away.”

This is one of the reasons why I limit the battery operated toys Sophia has. The other reason is that I don’t want to have to buy millions of batteries, and third and most importantly I think any doll with any mechanical movements are fuckin’ creepy! Think Chucky.