Bigger kids have bigger issues

Yesterday I subbed as a soccer mom. My friend and her husband were going to an event supporting research working to find a cure for a genetic disease her older child unfortunately has, so I schlepped her three kids and mine to (if I can recall correctly) soccer practice, softball practice, and Cub Scouts. These events all overlapped, though thankfully they were near each other and my friends had already worked out a comprehensive plan for making sure everyone was at the right place in the right outfit with the right accessories at more or less the right time. It took a spreadsheet to communicate all the information to me and even so the children (ages 5, 7, and 9) were my main guides, telling me where to park and whether the turn (though nobody knows right from left) was close or far.

It all went well. I think one of the Cub Scout dads may have tried to talk me up, which I found so confusing that I was inadvertently rude. This experience was an educational look at what may be to come. But I was horrified at the food all the children ate at the events (hot dogs, chips, HFCS sodas, cookies) and the overheard conversations of the teenagers congregating everywhere (I’m not sure why I suddenly despise adolescents). Back at my friend’s house for bedtime, I ran across the 7-year-old’s CosmoGirl magazine which had articles about meth addiction, partnered vs. solo sex, makeup, slutty-looking “famous” people I’d never heard of, tattoos, and so forth, and realized that it is imperative that I shut Baby off from all outside influences immediately so that she might grow up pure of mind and body.

But of course I can’t. She’ll eventually have to join in all of that, or at least know about it, and I guess I’ll just have to put in my two cents on everything and hope some of it balances out. Remembering my own mother’s attempts to bubblefy me, and my reactions to them, does not make me optimistic on this score at all. I want to freeze time.

(Let it be noted that I did, as I always do, really enjoy the bustle of all the children around, as did Baby. I just am not especially interested in manufacturing a host of children, at least not at this juncture, to create such a bustle in my own home).