What's Going On

Quotes

  • Jennifer Finney Boylan:
    "The world is full of false hopes, most of them dumber than the hope of being transformed by love."
  • Hugh Macleod:
    “Good ideas come with a heavy burden; which is why so few people execute them. Few people can handle it.“


  • Fiona Glennane on meditation:
    “I want you to close your eyes and breathe deep. Picture a peaceful mountain stream. Can you do that? Picture yourself drowning the kidnapper in the stream.”
  • Sarah Haskins:
    "We used to just grow old and be spinsters. Now we have a lot of options: We can be spinsters or cougars."
  • The Doctor:
    "All that attitude, all that lip, 'cos all this time... you think you're not worth it. Shouting at the world 'cos no-one's listening. Well... why should they?"
  • Winter, the guy trying to visit all the Starbucks before they close:
    "Pointless though it might it be, a goal is a goal."
  • Carolyn Hax:
    Carlsbad, N.M.: How do I figure out what to be when I grow up? Carolyn Hax: I dunno, but it's easier if you grow up first, then figure it out. Otherwise you'll just change your mind when you get there.
  • Bobby Singer:
    "Are you under the impression that family is supposed to make you feel GOOD? Bake you an apple pie, maybe? They're SUPPOSED to make you miserable, that's why they're family!"
  • Dan Savage:
    "You want crazy frosting on sane cake."
  • fillyjonk on Susan Boyle:
    "What makes people stop laughing — or at least, what makes you stop caring if they do? The discovery that something about you is utterly remarkable."
  • Gregg Levoy:
    "Chaos is just going to throw on a tie-dye shirt and come to work with no pants on."
  • Carrie Fisher:
    "My mother always said to me, “Don’t be so hard on yourself, dear!” and I wanted to say, “Oh, okay! Then I won’t! I thought that it was a good thing to rough yourself up, but you say it’s not, so I’ll just stop! Thanks for the tip!”
  • deering:
    "Someone who wants to be a doctor or an engineer isn't told right off that bat that they are untalented, or impractical, or can't make it, ever. :P"
  • Jonathan Coulton:
    "This is the thing about the new landscape that drives everyone crazy: you can’t see inside the cow; you can only build one, feed it music, and wait for it to poop."
  • Andrew Ramer:
    "All life wobbles on this planet. Wobbles, or dances. As sometimes, when someone bumps into you on the dance floor, you turn to them with anger in your eyes. And sometimes, you turn to them and love stares back, and the bruise on your thigh was all worth it. So with Earth. It smiles, and rubs its hip. "When you understand fire, you no longer stick your hand in it, you contain it and cook with it. When you understand the wobble, you no longer fear it or hate it, you move with it, use it. And sometimes, when your life is a mess, when you've been in therapy for 57 years and you're still falling in love with the wrong person--stop blaming your parents or yourself. Stop and take a deep breath and say to yourself--I'm living on a world that wobbles on its axis. It has seasons and changes. And sometimes, what seems to be going wrong in my life isn't really a flaw in my nature. It's just that I haven't learned to wobble with the world yet. The Earth laughs at itself. Can you?"
  • Carolyn Hax:
    "Short description of a long process: Figure out the things that make you feel confident/fulfilled/energized; that give you a sense of purpose or accomplishment; that tap into your natural abilities and strengths; and that -don't- put you at the mercy of any one person, and orient your life around those. Often, this requires another step--concurrently or as a precursor--of reducing the role in your life of things that make you feel worthless/empty/exhausted; that require skills that don't come naturally; that feel like a waste of time; or that put you routinely at the mercy of others."
  • Kitty Norville:
    "People are always saying that to me--how can I possibly be a skeptic given what I am? Given how much I know about what's really out there, how can I turn my nose up at any half-baked belief that crosses my desk? Really, it's easy, because so many of them are half-baked. They're formulated by people trying to con other people and make a few bucks. The fact that some of this is real makes it even more important to be on our guard, to be that much more skeptical, so we can separate truth and fiction. Blind faith is still blind, and I try not to be."
  • Kitty Norville:
    "The supernatural world was like an onion. You peel back the layers, only to find more layers, on and on, hopelessly trying to reach the mysterious core. Then you start crying."
  • regicide is good for you:
    "Are ads even trying to sell anything anymore, or just keep us vaguely, constantly aware that there are generally things on sale somewhere nearby? I like this new model. People get paid to delight me, and I walk away still blissfully unaware of products."
  • Hanna Rosin:
    "One fleeting thing—an unearned pile of money, a one-night stand, a tattoo, a suddenly paralyzed teammate—can change your entire life. Accident and coincidence are more powerful than any God-driven holistic narrative."
  • B.J. Love (what a name, eh?):
    “People may think art is a waste of time because it’s not ‘goods’ that can be bought, sold and taxed, but down the road art is all we got. The only historical documents I've read from the 1860s are the Gettysburg address, a poetic speech, and Leaves of Grass and THAT is how I understand those times, and I think years from now, poetry will still be how we understand times, these time included.”
  • Seymour, "Burn Notice":
    "Don't argue with destiny. It will kick your ass."
  • NoStyleHere:
    "So I'm 48, good god man, and my experience is that every time you think life is finally starting to be less weird, it busts loose with a whole new *kind* of weird. Life ebbs and flows and changes and much of the joy of it is in its utter unpredictability."
  • Patricia Briggs:
    "As an author, I sometimes feel like the wicked witch. My job is to find someone happily minding their own business, and mess up their happy little lives until they're upset enough to get off their rump and go change something."
  • Elliot Bangs:
    "What the hell was I doing? I asked myself, more than once. But haven't you ever needed to follow a mystery past all the limits of common sense? Have you ever found yourself in a whole awful prison of a world in which every last familiar and sensible thing has finally come up hollow and pointless? Have you ever been left with nothing on which to stake all your hopes of transcendence, save one good leap into the abyss? It also suffices to say that the story would have ended here if it hadn't been for alcohol."
  • Elsa:
    For me it’s like being a horse… a thoroughbred. That "horse is born to run… pretty much that is why it is here. It can rest but the basic life is getting ready to run, running and then recovering from running. If you take a horse like that or a person like me and you tie them down, you are killing that horse. You are perverting nature. That horse is not going to thrive and God or the universe is going to be very pissed at you. He or it will also be pissed at the horse because what’s it doing standing there when it knows damned well it’s supposed to run?"
  • Carrie Fisher:
    "Now, keeping yourself impervious to mockery is a full time occupation. I’ve been working at it ever since I can remember."
  • Murdoc Niccals, The Gorillaz
    "Always be wary of people who use quotes." I don't know who said that."
  • flipside:
    "Following your heart through life is like following your feet across a piano."
  • The Doctor:
    "You want weapons? We're in a library. Books! Best weapons in the world. This room's the greatest arsenal we could have. Arm yourself."
  • Jessica Lovejoy:
    "You know what would be great? This totally impossible thing!"
  • D. Brian Burghart:
    "I’d like to be in love—if not with a person, then with a consuming new idea or project that will move me from the waiting for the next phase of my life to the real deal."
  • Anonymous:
    "If a cannibal can find someone to volunteer to be killed and eaten, surely our problems of finding the appropriate relationships to suit us are considerably more minimal."
  • Joss Whedon:
    "Honestly, it really is that little chaos factor. It's when the thing starts talking back to you. When you come up with something that is a little bit more than just a good reproduction of what was in the book, and somehow reflects you in a way that you didn't understand yourself: that's art."
  • Rasputin:
    "This is what has always bothered me about relationships. It’s never just you and your partner who get into one: It’s always you, your partner, and society. And that’s not a three-way I’m comfortable with."
  • Anonymous:
    It's funny how quickly your plans change from "changing the world and chasing your dreams" to "getting really fucking drunk."
  • Keith Olbermann:
    "You are asked now, by your country, and perhaps by your creator, to stand on one side or another. You are asked now to stand, not on a question of politics, not on a question of religion, not on a question of gay or straight. You are asked now to stand, on a question of...love. All you need do is stand, and let the tiny ember of love meet its own fate. You don’t have to help it, you don’t have it applaud it, you don’t have to fight for it. Just don’t put it out. Just don’t extinguish it. Because while it may at first look like that love is between two people you don’t know and you don’t understand and maybe you don’t even want to know...It is, in fact, the ember of your love, for your fellow **person… Just because this is the only world we have. And the other guy counts, too."
  • Lafayette from True Blood:
    "Ain't no freak gonna tell no other freak how to live."
  • Mitch Hedberg:
    "I'm tired of following my dreams. I'm just going to figure out where they're going, and hook up with them later."
  • Cathal Morrow:
    "Two truths I didn’t realise until just now: 1. I’ve always had the sense that my life is moving towards some sort higher truth 2. It’s not going particularly well"

« Awww. | Main | I want these SO BAD. »

June 09, 2006

"This is not my kid- this is HER kid."

Possibly the most horribly amusing Cary Tennis letter in awhile. (Salon) I can't stop snickering. I'm bolding the most amusing lines.

"I have a hard question for you. At what point do you give up on a child?

 

I had my son when I was 19 (something I would never advise to anyone else). After he was born, my mother told me it would be easier to live with her (even though she is a hideous slob and I'm a neat freak), and because of her schedule (she's a teacher), she could watch him for me in the evenings while I worked and went to college.

That seemed fine. After my son was 2, I moved out but continued to let her watch him on weekends while I worked as a waitress. Then I found out that she was teaching him to lie to me behind my back ("Don't tell Mommy I got this for you -- it'll make her mad. Just pretend you've had it all along"), taking him to movies I didn't want him to see (I'm sorry, a 4-year-old does not need to see "Jurassic Park" -- the nightmares he had were proof), and telling him, "Wouldn't it be fun if you lived with me all the time?"

Fast-forward 10 years. The entire time I've been working hard (even dropping out of college for a time so he wouldn't grow up the way I did -- poor with kids making fun of his clothes), attending school functions, and basically just trying to be as good a mom as I knew how. I know I'm far from perfect, but I did try. When he was 12, we moved to the coast so I could attend law school in another city (a city far, far away from the hick town I grew up in). My husband is trying very hard to be a good stepfather, but my son wants none of it. After about a year, I let him go to my mother's for the summer. When he comes back, his grades drop from A's and B's to F's. Turns out he's been doing his homework (under our supervision), then taking it to school and throwing it away. Then he starts acting out, starting fights, running away (only a couple of blocks away), etc. We try counseling, medication, nothing works. Finally he tells us that he's going to be as bad as he has to be until he's sent to live with his grandmother.

I was in the middle of finals at my first year of law school and at my wits' end, so I sent him back. I thought I was doing him a favor, taking him away from my backwoods hillbilly beginnings (my mother thinks evolution is a trick from the devil), getting him into a more culturally diverse area. I figured it would be temporary. Guess what? He doesn't want to come back. He is now "saved" and makes constant excuses not to come visit. What's more, I can only talk to him by calling my mother and she rarely answers her phone and "loses" any mail I send him. (Seriously, I called three times a day for eight weeks straight and got nothing.) But he's making good grades, even though he's abandoned all the activities he was doing out here (violin, art, etc.).


No one else in my family will have anything to do with my mother. She was abusive when my siblings and I were young, then "found Jesus" and became such a nut about it that none of her kids speak to her. Every time I call and get no answer, I get angry and get headaches. I'm angry at both of them, and if I had known this was how things would turn out, I would have put him up for adoption with a nice, normal, middle-class couple in a city. Now he's going to turn into an uneducated, mullet-sporting Jesus freak, and quite frankly, I'm ready to wash my hands of the entire situation."

(I need to interject here. The kid is choosing to become an uneducated, mullet-sporting Jesus freak. He apparently likes it. Even if you ride him roughshod now, he can still choose to become an uneducated, mullet-sporting Jesus freak when he hits 18 anyway. Unfortunate, yes, but I guess he took after Grandma in the gene pool.)

"He clearly doesn't want to be here with me. He makes no effort to contact me. Neither of them answer the phone when it rings. Quite frankly, I don't think trying to be his mother is worth all the anger and heartache anymore. I tried to reach them for three weeks about booking his ticket to come visit for the summer, but never got a response. Finally I just booked the ticket. Two days before he was to come out for the entire summer, he calls and says he only wants to stay a month because he wants to stay with his grandmother and go to church camp (which I remember from my own youth -- it's where you get the real good drugs)."

(I cannot stop laughing at "church camp- it's where you get the REAL GOOD DRUGS!" Bwahahahah!)

"Can I cut him off? I seriously spend half my day just wishing my mother would die. It would solve a few problems.

At what point do I say, "This is not my kid anymore -- this is her kid"? Please help."

Cary's answer can be summed up as, "No, you're stuck."

Posted on June 09, 2006 at 09:02 AM in Weird, Wild Stuff |

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