We are taking our family vacation next week and this time we are taking our babysitter with us. This brought up a conversation this morning about the difference between things that you say and do with just your family versus things that you say and do with people outside of your family. The sub-topics of this conversation included fart sounds (real or not) talking about or showing your private parts and saying really gross things, whether or not they have actually happened in our house.
Frankly, one of the things I was thinking of least when considering the ultimate compatibility of my partner and I as co-parents, was our level of tolerance for grossness and rudeness. Certainly there was the obvious; who will be changing the diapers, and will they retch each and every time they do so? Do either parties sneer at spit up, have difficulty with blood or gag at mucus? We’ve worked it out pretty well over the years, and generally I have less of a problem with grossness in general and when a garbage can needs to be washed, a puke blanket soaked or a diarrhea pillow scraped, I am usually the woman for the job.
Funny then, that I am generally the more uptight of the two of us. So when it comes to belching at the table or making fart noises for fun, I rarely join in.
My partner, as seems the natural order of things, is my polar opposite on such things. While I like a well-decorated home that smells like you just baked apple cinnamon muffins, she has a more realistic and some might say “childlike” attitude when it comes to family living. This is probably because of three basic things: 1. She grew up in a home with few rules about these things. 2. She has three brothers and she is kind of boyish. 3. She has two little boys and a tomboyish girl who all think it’s hysterical. Add these together, mix with a mother who is “the fun one” and wallows in this stuff and sometimes we have a simply disgusting state of chaos at the dinner table.
So, I tried to draw some lines in the sand about our upcoming trip. In the car ride this morning, I went over the nudity rules, the inappropriate sounds, the weird killing threats, the Fergie lyrics, the obsession with boobs, and bodily functions. And this time I told them I thought it was their other mom’s fault just as much as theirs. She was encouraging them, and I’d have to get her to stop if I expected us to have a pleasant and polite vacation.
You should have heard them.
“But that’s what makes her who she is! That’s what makes her so much fun!” they wailed. Faced with three distraught children who thought they were going to be robbed of their partner in crime, I caved, admitted that indeed, that was what made her “ so much fun.” And after all, it would be no fun to have two mothers who were just the same, especially two like me, even if I do get to be “the love one”.
Which leads me to resolve myself to the fact that during a our trip I will probably be asked to judge a belching contest at the dinner table and comment on the size of the boobs on the woman who is running the ride at the amusement park. And I will be smiling.
And so, years from now, when our children bring home prospective mates, and these mates are subjected to a jaw-rattling round of rude noises and doggy-snort imitations in sentimental memory of our experiences together, it’ll be a good proving ground. Let them learn a lesson from us. Get this issue on the table first, or you never know what will be happening at your table twenty years from now.
K
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