by Sarah Fuller
If the yoga retreat I start in the park by my house really takes off, I’m thinking of having Eleanor set up a lemonade stand. It’ll actually just be a bucket of lemons. We’ll sell the dumbasses lemons, make them juice them, and then Eleanor will stir in some water and sugar, and charge them for the lemonade. We’ll call it the “Lemonade Experience.”
You think this won’t work, but I guarantee if you call it an “experience,” people from LA will pay for it.
Many of the guys I date participate in mud runs. They get a cool bandana and a feeling of pride for competing in the races, but they do it for the “experience.”
My father is a marine who fought in Vietnam. He speaks of spending time in the trenches, covered in mud for days, and running through the shit trying to escape the Cong. Imagine how it sounds to him when he hears that yuppies pay to have this experience.
We obviously have way too much time on our hands.
When George used to try and waste our money on these mud runs and obstacle courses, I’d offer to do it for free.
“I’ll set up some hot coals and an artic enema for you in the backyard,” I told him once. “We just need to have a BBQ first. When we’re all done, I’ll throw the coals on the grass for you to run across, then you can sprint around in circles a dozen times. Meanwhile, I’ll empty the coolers of ice water we used for the drinks into a kiddie pool, and you jump into the freezing water and swim around before doing another few laps.”
“You don’t get it,” he said, rolling his eyes at me. “It’s about the experience.”
“I like experiences,” I said. “I want to have a party and get drunk and watch you be a fool. You’re the one who wants to outsource this event to some fancy mud run organization. I say we keep this in-house. Support local.”
“Sarah, you’re not even being reasonable,” he said with a growl. “Never mind. There’s no talking to you.” As you can see, George is the one who totally gave up on us.
My friends are always trying to recruit me for 5k runs and whatnot.
“You should totally go with us,” my friend Nancy said to me one day, after explaining a run they were doing.
“I might be busy,” I said, trying to come up with plans I didn’t yet have. Maybe I was volunteering at the animal shelter whatever day she said this “Run for Fun” race was happening. No one runs for fun. They do it to survive. Let’s name this properly: “Run for Your Life.”
“It’s next Sunday, and it’s only twenty-five dollars to enter the race,” Nancy informed me.
Oh, good, I didn’t have to lie about the plans I didn’t have. Instead, I scoffed at my friend. “I’m not paying to run. That’s the worst deal ever. I’ll run if you pay me, though.”
She gave me a look that she must have borrowed from George and rolled her eyes. “It’s about the experience. It’s really fun. We dress up, and afterward, there are booths and stuff.”
“Okay, again, I fear that the American education system has failed us,” I said, shaking my head. “You don’t dress up to run; you put on clothes you don’t care about or don’t mind dying in.”
“Well, do you want to come and watch us run?” she asked.
“I would, but I’m volunteering at the animal shelter,” I said quickly.
She gave me a confused look. “On a Sunday? They’re closed.”
Fuck! How does she know that?
“Hey, just because the shelter is closed doesn’t mean the animals get the day off,” I stated. “They are still there, and in need of a bath and love, which I give them for free.”
Next to the park where I hang out with the dog gang, there’s this bright blue truck. It advertises that, for only fifteen dollars, you can wash your own dog inside of it.
Well, hi-de-ho! Again, put my name down. That’s a mighty good deal.
I once had a boyfriend who always wanted to take me for fondue. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about big melting vats of cheese. However, he always wanted to do the meat course, where I had to skewer my protein and put it in oil. We’d have our phones out, timing each piece to ensure it was free of salmonella, but not overcooked by the time we ate it.
“Guess where I’m taking you for your birthday?” Connor said one year while he was in town visiting.
“Please don’t tell me I have to cook my own food,” I whined.
His smiled dropped. “No, I’m taking you to fondue.”
I shook my head at him. “Yeah, that’s what I mean. I’m sort of tired of paying just to cook my own food, which we both know I do badly.”
Here in LA, a ton of Korean BBQ and Asian restaurants have been popping up, where the patrons are expected to grill their own food. I feel like at this point I need to rename the book Everyone In LA Is An Idiot.
One of the most popular Korean places in town is considered extremely pricey. Celebs can be seen sweating over their grills, getting that campfire scent locked into their hair. I’m sorry, I have no words.
But still, one of the best stories of someone being duped comes from my friend Joy. She was telling me about how she and her husband were having problems in the bedroom.
“We’re seeing a therapist,” she admitted one day as we were getting pedicures.
“That’s probably a good idea,” I said. “What do they say?”
“Well, it’s sort of a special therapist,” she stated a bit hesitantly.
“Yeah, they specialize in sex,” I whispered, so the nice Asian lady doing my nails couldn’t hear. She could totally hear, though. Let’s be honest.
“Actually, it’s even more different than that,” Joy stated. “This person teaches us how to have better sex.”
“Sign me up!” I said too loudly.
Joy’s face flushed pink. “Yeah, the way it works is they have sex with us in order to work us through our problems.”
My jaw dropped open. “You realize that you’re a damn idiot, right?”
She shook her head. “No, this is legitimate.”
“You’re paying someone to have sex with you,” I explained. “However you color that experience, it’s considered prostitution.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
We Don’t Teach Science Until They Know Their Pagan Holidays
One of the best reasons to live where I do is that the schools are amazing. When trying to make a decision between the options in the area, I had to choose between a full Spanish immersion school, a hippie institution, or a regular academic one. Can you guess which one I put Eleanor into?
I’m all about my child being bilingual. But this full immersion shit was never going to fly in my household. First of all, I knew that if Eleanor was learning Spanish, then that meant I was going to have to as well. I was born in raised in Texas and took years of Spanish. Presently, I fumble to ask where the bathrooms are in Mexico. The last time I was there, I relied on my friends from Montana to negotiate the bill. That’s just sad.
I blame my high school Spanish teacher for my inability to retain the language. She was a witch who used to write the tests based on the students in class. I’m fucking clever and totally figured it out. The quizzes went something like this:
Question 23: Translate the phrase below:
“Sarah speaks too much in class.”
Question 57: Translate the phrase below:
“Was that Sarah at the café when school was in session?”
Question 68: Translate the phrase below:
“Sarah stole the jacket from the classroom.”
Yes, that bitch is why I can’t speak Spanish. I blame her. And I didn’t steal Sabrina’s dumb rhinestone jacket. I had my very own letter jacket from being on the debate club, thank you very much.
Anyway, I want Eleanor to speak Spanish, but there was no way I was going to take a crash course in order to ensure she was fluent one day.
And then there’s the hippie school. It seems to have no “real” education until close to fifth grade. They don’t want to pressure the kids and make them afraid to learn wit
h all the demands of numbers and letters. No, we wouldn’t want to force Little Billy to do anything besides play with clay. Otherwise, we might crush his creative spirit. The first few grades are just learning table etiquette. That’s funny, since most of the hippies I’ve dined with put their elbows on the table and chewed with their mouths open.
Most of the parents at this school don’t allow television or video games. All the babies the parents are toting around in the schoolyard are wearing cloth diapers and have amber-teething necklaces around their neck.
And the parents are not allowed to send any waste products to school in the kid’s lunch. Yes, they might have unwrapped crackers from plastic for Little Billy’s lunch, but that trash can’t go into the school’s garbage. See no evil, and those hippies can still get into vegan heaven—which, by the way, is the quietest place in the universe since none of them have anything to talk about. What’s the use in speaking when everyone there already knows you’re a vegan?
I was at the park with a bunch of kids from the hippie school, and my friend had handed her phone to a group of them.
“They like listening to rap,” she explained to me when I gave her a curious look.
“That makes sense,” I stated. “They are six years old and from upper-class families in the suburbs.”
“Hey, help me find a Lil Wayne song?” one of the shaggy kids said, not even saying ‘please.’
My friend looked at the phone and said, “It’s right here.” Then her face softened. “That’s right, they don’t teach you how to read at school.”
That same kid better be glad I was taught not to hit others. He sat at the table between my friend and me, saying things that only frustratingly spoiled LA children say.
“I want to go back to your house,” he said to my friend.
“We can’t,” Sandra explained. “I have other kids at the park who I’m watching.”
“Why don’t you call your husband to come and take over,” he pretty much demanded.
Sandra, who has way too much patience, shook her head. “My husband works.”
He scoffed. “That’s weird.”
“Hey, that’s rude, you little jerk,” I cut in, having had about enough of this white boy, wannabe rapper.
He scowled at me. “I’m expressing myself. Don’t suppress me.”
He had no idea how close I was to suppressing him.
Eleanor goes to the academic school because I teach her discipline. The ship I run is real, and she knows her place as a crewmember. I’m the fucking captain; one look from me, and the kid will march to timeout without even a question. These hippie kids don’t know what timeout is because that’s “abandonment punishment.”
It might be. But guess what? I’m not raising a little psychopath who is going to ruin people’s dining experiences in every restaurant they frequent, or be a drain on society. Or worse yet, have a fucking handlebar mustache or wear dreadlocks.
One time, Eleanor asked for something in front of one of my hippie friends from the other school.
“What do we say, Elle?” I asked.
“Please,” she added.
The mother looked horrified. “Oh, no. You don’t have to force pleasantries on your child for me. We don’t make them be polite.”
Wow, that seems to be working out well for you. Your little hellions might not be going off to save the world with their bad attitude and inability to conform to the social order, but at least he can sit at a vegan restaurant and order properly. Thank the fucking gods.
Eleanor will say please and thank you. She’ll have manners and be pleasant to be around because, at the end of the day, I’m trying to raise someone who can contribute to society by getting along with others and making them feel good about the interactions they have with her. I didn’t say she had to conform. I didn’t say she had to do math when she grows up. But she better fucking know how to do it.
I was raised in an academic institution that suppressed creativity and encouraged football, and look at me: I’m a science fiction author. Don’t ever tell me that teaching manners and discipline suppresses a child. If that were the case, I’d never have left the town where I was born. I’d be working at the bowling alley and shopping at the flea market every weekend.
I showed up to the park one day, which I also call my second office. I looked at Sandra and rolled my eyes. “Seriously, you brought little Satan with you again.” I pointed to the rude boy with long hair who I called Little Billy.
The jerk likes to correct me every-fucking-time. “My name is Echo!” he yelled at me because he wanted to test my patience.
I usually just shook my head. The parents who named their kids Blaze, Essence, Spirit, Lyric or Moon were only asking for me to make fun of their poor decision-making. If that offends you, that’s fine. I’m actually offended by your offense.
I named Eleanor something classy. An actual name and not a fucking noun or verb. And you can spell it, unlike that kid Patchouli, who goes to the hippie school.
Sidebar: I knew from the beginning that I wanted to name my child Eleanor. However, one of my grandmother’s name was Eleanor. Real sweet woman, but she sort of forgot to include me in the Christmas letter a few times. Joanie and Jenny-Lynne, the cousins, got put in the thirty-five-page letter for making the honor roll. Marylou got put in there for getting a job at the frozen yogurt shop. That same year, I earned my Master of Management. Thanks, Grandma. So not that I was holding grudges, but I told my mother that I was naming my child Eleanor, but to make sure the family knew it was her name, and not one she was being given because of someone else. Apparently, that made me a gigantic asshole, slapping the matriarch of the family straight in the face. To be honest, I believe in giving a child their own name, not naming them after another person. I realize that makes me an asshole and I’ve offended a fair amount of people with that statement. We’ve all got our opinions. Mine just makes me a jerk. Not sorry.
I’m not sure why anyone is still surprised that I do these jerk things.
Little Billy always likes to eat all my snacks and then complain that the packaging isn’t biodegradable.
“You’re biodegradable,” I told him once.
He didn’t get the joke because, at his hippie school, they don’t teach them science until eighth grade, and only after they’ve covered all the pagan holidays.
Sandra, who must have whiskey in her bulletproof coffee, smiled at the little jerk as he demanded more food.
“Do you want some organic popcorn or a plum?” she asked him.
Her daughter picked up one of the plums and took a bite. Sandra noticed that the produce sticker was still on it.
“Let me get that for you,” she said to her daughter, taking the plum and removing the sticker. Her face went slack. “Oh no, I must have gotten the conventional ones. These aren’t organic.”
Her daughter spat out the fruit like she’d just been told she’d ingested poison. “Am I going to be okay? What will happen to me?”
I wanted to tell her she was going to hippie hell, but I decided not to scare the child. In hippie hell, every place is air-conditioned, and showering daily is required. Self-expression is banned as well, and the only book is on tax codes. Oh, and everything has preservatives. Everything!
Sandra smiled at her daughter, although I could see the panic below her expression. “You’ll be fine,” she told her.
“I don’t want organic popcorn!” Little Billy yelled. “I want hummus and flaxseed chips!”
Oh man, I hoped this kid wouldn’t grow up and breed. However, he’d probably end up with some woman named Paisley, and they’d birth their children in the river.
Sandra shook her head at Little Billy. “No, I don’t have any of that. I have fruit though. Do you want that?”
He simply scowled at her in response.
She smiled back, undeterred. “You look nice today, Echo. Did you brush your hair for picture day? It looks nice,” she asked, combing her fingers through the back of his hai
r.
The boy grunted, like the tribal child he was.
“Seriously, how do you put up with that little shit?” I asked when the sociopath was gone.
She shrugged. “I’m used to it by now.”
I, conversely, have a low tolerance for asswipes who have an entitled attitude.
Eleanor goes to a regular school with a regular curriculum, where they are expected to add and read by the first grade. I know. I’m such an asshole mom with my high expectations.
However, I will admit that the school isn’t all normal; the drop-off is full of the Who’s-Who of the area. It’s like a red-carpet event without the expensive evening dresses and press coverage. We all know I’m not cool enough for elementary school, or even its drop-off or pick-up. That’s why I always pretend like I’m on an important call when I have to congregate with the other parents at pick up time.
Many of the first conversations with these parents start with, “Where do you live?” Then they want to know what your house model is because that will tell them what income bracket you fall into.
I don’t think twice about telling people I live in the townhouses at the top of the hill. Apparently, I need to.
“Tony’s mom says we live in apartments,” Eleanor told me from the backseat.
I whipped around. “What? We don’t either. There’s a specific difference between apartments and townhouses, not that it should matter.”
She shrugged. “She just told Tony that he probably couldn’t play at my house because there wouldn’t be enough room since we lived in apartments.”
My fingers tightened on the steering wheel. Tony’s mom is a nice person, so I’m guessing her intentions were in the right place. However, it sort of burned me up that my daughter was being disqualified from playdates because we didn’t have a rolling backyard and a gardener. I’ve had a gardener before. They aren’t all that great.
Because I’m trying to vicariously live through my daughter, I enrolled her in a fancy gymnastics school. I didn’t make it into the Olympics, but she can if she sucks it up and gets her damn cartwheel right.
