In my teens, I thought that everything my mother said and did was an affront to my fragile self esteem. I thought that every time we were out in public she should adhere to my strict rules and not speak or look at anyone and sometimes not even move, because the woman brought nothing but utter humiliation to me. Now that I’m older I realize that I was such a brat. I had a super sharp tongue and a wall of insecurity. I took lessons from the Darlene Conner School of Smart Allecks. Even though there are very specific instances where my mother embarrassed me, like when her slip fell down around her ankles on the steps of my high school surrounded by hundreds of people on the night of my graduation, I know now that she wasn’t trying to embarrass me and more often than not, I was just a terrible, defensive ingrate. My dad, on the other hand, went out of his way to save his most embarrassing moments for my friends and worse, my boyfriends. In retrospect, he was a novelty, a real one of a kind. But back then, as a self-conscious teenager who just wanted to appear normal, he was my kryptonite. Dad laughed the loudest at his own jokes, which most of my friends didn’t get, and he always sang ridiculous songs at the top of his lungs and told the most absurd stories to my friends. They politely appreciated his wackiness while I died a little inside.
Now that I have a child of my own, I realize that anything my parents intentionally or unintentionally did to humiliate me as a teenager was just payback for all the things I did as a kid that probably heaped humiliation upon them.
Kids are embarrassing.
I’ve told you enough stories of the public meltdowns for which my son is notorious, but I’m finding out every day that there are deeper depths to this kind of embarrassment. My son has been sick lately with a cold and congestion that probably started from seasonal allergies. As a result of this, he discovered the joy of picking his nose. It started out as an occasional finger in the nose to clear out some of the crusty blockage from his cold but now he’s just camping out up there. His finger is always in his nose. He used to pull on his ear as a measure of comfort when he was sleepy, or when he was acting shy or put on the spot. Now anytime all eyes are on him the finger goes up, you guessed it, straight to the nose. One time in front of my girlfriends when I asked him to spell “water” he raised his finger to his nose in slow motion. As they all laughed, he realized that not only did he enjoy a finger in his nose but others must enjoy seeing it there. That positive reinforcement was all it took for him to cultivate this gross habit. He’s gotten pretty good at pushing it up there as far as it will go and has even given himself a nosebleed. It was cute at first, I’ll admit. I laughed along with my friends when he first started doing it, gently correcting him as I smiled. But now, well, it’s another thing that pushes the limits of my grossness tolerance. His habit has evolved, as nose picking does, from finger, to nose, to mouth. And repeat. The kid has boogers. Big ones. He loves them. It’s like winning the ultimate jackpot when he pulls out a big, fat, round booger, or boogie, as well call it. It thrills him to no end. It’s like a little golden nugget, which I guess is where the term “diggin’ for gold” came from. His precious boogies are carefully scrutinized, as he inspects them, rubs them delicately between his finger and thumb and smells them. They are monstrous things. Who knew a little kid could have such huge boogies? He’s proud of them, much like he is with his toots. “Look mama! My boogie!” he says anytime he pulls one out. And while I scramble to find a tissue to dispose of the nasty thing, sometimes I make it in time and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes it’s gone by the time I turn around. I try not to think of where it went.
I was in Sears with my mom not long ago when my son decided to indulge in his new pastime. As I was nearing the checkout line, I heard my mom say to my son, “Now,” which is how she starts a lot of her sentences when she is displeased, “Now then, don’t do that.” I looked around and saw half of his finger up his nose. “No buddy, don’t do that,” I echoed. “Don’t do that,” he laughed, mimicking us. To be fair, it is funny to an almost three-year-old to have two grown women tell you in stereo to stop picking your nose. But then, it stopped being funny. Out came a boogie. A huge boogie on the tip of his finger; a golden nugget he was so proud of that he had to announce, “Look grandma, a boogie!” My mom pulled him aside and dug in her pockets, then asked me for a tissue. “I don’t have one!” I said as I searched my bag. I went to the next best thing, a wet wipe, but by that time my mom had already convinced him to shove the boogie in his pocket. She’s very resourceful. He did shove his hand into his pocket but when he pulled it back out, so too came the rubber cement like boogie, stuck to his finger. “Look grandma! My boogie!” he said again with all the joy of finding it the first time. As much as we tried, we couldn’t get him to “shhh” or “be quiet.” He was getting the best of us and he knew it. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, he’s smart. Finally, I grabbed his hand and wiped his boogie and threw the wet wipe in my bag. He cried and pointed to my bag, “My boogie! Give my boogie back!” Then he told on me to my mom, “Grandma, Mama took my boogie!” To which the woman responded, “Ahh, poor baby. It’s okay.” United front my you-know-what, she actually sympathized with the little booger, pardon the expression. That’s when my genius son did a little deducing of his own and came up with an ingenious plan. “That’s okay,” he said after some crying. “I’ll get another boogie!”
And so it was.
I’m sure I did embarrassing things like this when I was a kid. I’m absolutely sure that my siblings have. I’ve heard my family tell the story of how my sister asked for prayer in Sunday school for our mom because “my dad threw a coffee table at her.” That didn’t happen. My dad never threw a coffee table at my mom. My siblings were terrible children and always getting into trouble. The best story I’ve ever heard is about the time my siblings caught a bunch of baby frogs on a float trip down in St. James, Missouri and stuffed as many as they could into plastic ice cream buckets. They then put those buckets in the back window of the car and halfway home, when my dad had to slam on the breaks, down came the buckets and out came the hundreds of baby frogs. They hopped everywhere. While my siblings died laughing, I screamed and cried because I was still quite young and the frogs freaked me out. My dad screamed and cursed and ultimately had to pull over on the side of the highway to exit the car and drop his drawers as tiny frogs leapt out of them. Standing on the side of the highway shaking frogs off of you with your pants around your ankles in broad daylight pretty much beats any humiliation that I’ve had to endure so far. So you win, dad.
Payback comes in all forms. I suppose one day the opportunity will present itself for me to utterly humiliate my son, whether I intend to or not. I know me, and most likely I will intend to. One day something I wear around his friends, or say, or sing, or interpretive dance will be viewed through his eyes as “humiliating.” Will I take pleasure out of it? Will I go out of my way to pay back my son for all the fits in the middle of stores, all the times I’ve had to carry him in public kicking and screaming, all the “Eurekas!” of picked boogies? I mean, what am I working towards here if not payback? That son of mine had better watch out for, in the words of Indigo Montoya, “Humliations galore!” (Oh yeah, that will be part of the humiliation. I will randomly quote ‘80’s movies and listen to ‘80’s music around his friends because by that time, the ‘80’s will not be cool anymore. They will be like what the ‘50’s are now.) Better yet, if my wildest dreams come true, he will be in a bookstore holding a copy of “Confessions of a Stay at Home Mom” and someone will say to him, “Did you know this woman’s son used to pick his boogies and eat them?”
He has no idea what’s in store for him. After all, I learned from the best.
