I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus is a Sick and Disgusting Song

This morning as I shopped, I found myself singing along to John Mellancamp’s version of I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus on the department store Muzak (or whatever the heck it is these days). It’s kind of creepy listening to Johnny boy’s gravelly voice confessing voyeuristic pleasure over his mother and St. Nick. I wonder how old she is anyway. And does he often walk in on her making out with mythical child idols?

But that got me thinking. “Uh-oh, my friends are undoubtedly saying under their breath. Here comes the rant.” I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus is a pretty disgusting song, if you ask me. We all know what it’s about. A kid sneaks a peak at his mom getting hot and heavy with bearded man in red suit. But what gets me is that the kid thought it was funny. FUNNY!!! He wasn’t alarmed. He wasn’t ashamed!!! He simply found the whole situation to be humorous. This leads me to wonder just how many times the kid walks in on his mom making out with strange men in their home. It’s obviously a common place happening. He thinks nothing about Mom slipping the tongue to someone other than his father. The fact that it’s Santa Claus gives him a chuckle. SICK!!!! Maybe Santa’s real name was John and she was just making some extra cash for the holidays. Maybe Santa’s her dealer…or even her pimp. We don’t know because the song doesn’t tell us. What we CAN safely assume is that Mom slings it around enough that her kid, having witnessed it time and again, is completely desensitized to her actions and even finds her harlotish behavior to be funny…even a little charming. I do have to give her credit for waiting until he's "supposed" to be tucked in his bed fast asleep. But STILL. It's outrageous.

The last verse of the song goes “oh what a laugh it would have been if Daddy had only seen Mommy kissing Santa Claus last night.” Yeah, Kid, it’s always hilarious, just a huge belly laugh when men walk in on their wives committing adultery. That’s the stuff cherished memories are made of. I suppose you wouldn’t be laughing if Dad had walked in with an M-16. The last line of the song would have Santa returning to the North Pole in a body bag.

Or even worse yet, what if Daddy gets into that kind of thing? What if he’s turned on by catching his wife with other men? What if that’s what the kid thought was funny…Mommy having a threesome with Daddy and Santa Claus?

Where is DFACS? Where is CPS when you need them? This child should obviously be removed from the home and sent to live with a Christian foster mother, who only has eyes for her husband…not Santa Claus and possibly the tooth fairy too.

And to think, most people think it’s just a cute little Christmas song. Wake up people!!!! It’s trash!

The Cruelty of CrossFit

I should’ve known better than to listen to Amelia. Because of her my legs no longer work. And I need them to work. Legs are pretty important in the overall scheme of life. Without them I can’t walk and I have nothing to cross. Okay, technically, I still have my legs, but they’re about as useful as a middle aged appendix. And it’s all Amelia’s fault. I would kick her, but since the whole CrossFit debacle of ’11, (two whole days ago) I can’t.

“Who’s Amelia and what’s CrossFit?” my participatory readers ask. (the rest of you have stopped reading by now). Amelia is my self-appointed personal trainer who, the other morning, stalked me out of bed and made me go to a Spanish Inquisition-style torture session called, you guessed it…CrossFit. How I am still alive is purely an act of God, good survival genes and my GNC women’s multi-vitamin.

Just so you don’t get the wrong idea, CrossFit is an excellent workout. It’s all the rage here in Dublin among the “already fit” crowd, marathon runners, iron men, Hercules, the Incredible Hulk, Xena-Princess Warrior and Captain America. I also have a whole band of non-super hero friends who swear by it. The 24-year old instructor, Aaron, has a cheerful military-style of making you “want” to do things that sane people would laugh at…like jumping up onto a 20 inch box 60 times in a row, run long distances carrying a weight the size of a dead boar hog and repeatedly lifting a 50 pound kettle ball above our heads, while holding our breath, sucking in our abs and singing “Baby Got Back.” It’s all great stuff if you like challenges and consider a good workout something more than hanging laundry on the bedroom treadmill once a day. Unfortunately I don’t. I swear as I limped into bed post-workout, I could hear my treadmill snicker.

“How do you feel? Are your legs okay? You’ll feel great after your next class,” chirped Amelia yesterday. Maybe next time you can run six miles with me when class is over. That’s what I usually do and it’s so refreshing. Just stick with me and I’ll have you in shape in no time.”

I really do like Amelia. You can’t not like her. Or at least it’s highly improbably….like progress under Obama. Even though I think Amelia’s great, at that moment I wanted to spit my gum into her hair, but somehow that takes a little energy and slight muscle use. My energy and muscle meters were both on empty. So I said “yeah, cool.” And then collapsed.

I do feel a tiny bit better than I did yesterday. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be able to walk again…even spit my gum on Amelia when she shows up to pick me up for CrossFit.

Do you suffer from Escalophobia, Genophobia or Mycophobia? I fear for you.

To find the phobia that suits you best, visit http://phobialist.com/

The other night I quite accidentally overcame my lifelong fear of down escalators (escalaphobia); and I was almost too engrossed in my new book to notice. That’s actually the reason for my boldness…distraction. Hurrying across the second floor of Barnes and Noble toward the registers to pay for the Zen of Writing, I absentmindedly walked off the solid parkay flooring onto the escalator’s uncertain, descending top step.

No panic attack, no rapid breathing, not even a couple of sweaty palms accompanied my action. I immediately looked around for someone who might be proud of me. Like a three year old who’d finally mastered my tricycle, I expected the guy in the self-help section, the one with the five o’clock shadow to look up at me and say “Good job, Angela. Atta girl!”

I have no idea what originally sprouted my phobia of down escalators. I could ride up them all day long, but going down has always struck me with fear akin to ghosts, rattlesnakes and public nudity. It’d be nice to be able to tell people that as a child I’d been sucked underneath a moving escalator or that I’d toppled from the top of one, breaking both legs, a few ribs and severing a main artery, or perhaps that an ax murderer had held me captive on one. But no, it just hit me one day around age six. From then on I’ve gone out of my way in search of elevators, stairs, a fireman’s pole, whatever, to keep from having to take that dreaded first downward step. Perhaps a good therapist could get to the bottom of it all. Oh, Saaaaaaaaam……..

Once I told a few friends I was shopping with that my fear was the result of lingering vertigo, as if vertigo comes and goes like the pain of an old sports injury. I liked how that sounded…a physical condition altering my balance, one that I couldn’t help. It made me sound more reasonable and sane.

I’m not the only person who’s suffered from an aversion to something illogical. My babysitter, Sydney, fears vacuum cleaners(Hooveraphobia) because as a child her babysitter tried to vacuum the hair off her head. My friend Catherine is afraid of being bitten by a British person with bad teeth. (Anglodentophobia) She’s still in therapy over seeing Austin Powers. My sister, Pamela, suffers from anthophobia, a fear of flowers because when she was a toddler my evil grandmother told her they’d bite her.

According to my friend Julie, and a fruitful (lol) internet search, there’s a contingent of people afraid of bananas. That condition is called uncreatively enough, bananaphobia. What about a banana could possibly be frightening? I admit I don’t like getting a banana string in my teeth, but I don’t cry and run away from them. Perhaps, though there are plenty of banana fearing people who could easily step onto the world’s tallest escalator and not even flinch. I wonder if people afraid of bananas are also afraid of banana trees, banana peppers, banana scented sunscreen and the UC Santa Cruz Banana Slugs.

After reading a few phobia lists, I don’t feel too ridiculous with my escalator fear anymore. Here are some that stand out. Feel free to ridicule. Writing this makes me feel like Lucy in the Peanuts Christmas special trying to diagnose Charlie Brown’s holiday melancholy.

Fayophobia – fear of elves
Alliumphobia – fear of garlic
Arachibutyrophobia- Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth
Aulophobia – fear of flutes
Chronometrophobia – fear of clocks
Defecaloesiophobia – fear of painful bowel movements
Dutchphobia – fear of Dutch people and culture
Ephibinophobia – fear of teenagers
Geniophobia – fear of chins
Genuphobia – fear of knees
Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia- Fear of long words
Levophobia – fear of being left handed
Metrophobia – is the fear of poetry
Mycophobia – the fear of mushrooms
Papaphobia – fear of the Pope
Thaaophobia – fear of sitting down
Walloonaphobia – fear of Walloons (what the heck is a Walloon? Is that a typo? If I know what one is, will I fear it?)
Xanthophobia – fear of the color yellow

What’s your fear? I’m not afraid to find out.

The Fine Art of Embalming....and other food for thought

Although details and names have been changed, this really did happen...Honest.

“Now, when you’re working on a body, it’s vitally important to use a water-based embalming solution, rather than a chemical solution. The hydration keeps the skin looking more natural, less….well…less dead.”

I have to laugh at the way Jul, uh Jeremiah keeps using the term “you,” as if I’m his mortician’s apprentice, as if embalming dead bodies is something I do with the frequency of making dinner and weeding my garden.

There are certain conversations I know with certainty that I’ll have everyday: baseball scores and highlights with my son Andrew, philosophy and apologetics with my son Jack, and “Angela, what on earth are you doing with your time and company credit card,” with my boss. But honestly, a primer in the art of human body preservation was nowhere near today’s to-do list. In fact, all I did to initiate this half hour lecture was ask “so, how’s it been going.” I have to remember to ask Jeremiah that question only when I have time for a response that should come with college credits.

In case you’re wondering who Jeremiah is, he’s a barista at a local coffee shop. He’s the clean cut, quiet one, the only one who doesn’t sport the same My Chemical Romance t-shirt five days a week. Jeremiah doesn’t offer much in the way of conversation or reassurance that he’s not a serial killer…although he says he’s not. Yes, I asked. But honestly, I wonder how many serial killers, when posed that question would playfully smack their brow and say “wow, you’re good. Was it the blood under my fingernails?”

I didn’t learn about Jeremiah’s passion for human taxidermy right away. It was after about a year of ordering the same vanilla latte (well, not the same one exactly, If I had to go back and order the same one everyday, I think I’d have given up after a few times) But I digress….he was handing my change back to me and I asked “so, are you the manager here at Juice Bird?”

“No,” he assured a little too readily. “It’s just a job to pay the bills. My real passion is embalming.” He said it like I would surely be impressed to the point of asking for his autograph. But all I could muster was “you wear gloves, right?” Then I began to think of that day when my latte had a slight formaldehyde scent to it.

It’s not that I’m not interested in embalming. It’s just that there are many other hobbies I’d like to learn before bringing home my first roadkill to mannequinize; which leads to a question. Why aren’t more morticians also taxidermists? It seems like they sort of do the same thing, doesn’t it? Not that I’d want Uncle Elmer mounted above the fireplace, but it’d be nice to have the option.

I think I’ll go ask….Be right back.

“Hi Jul, uh Jeremiah, since you’re so passionate about embalming humans, why don’t you also work on animals? Seems like it’d diversify your business and provide marketable growth potential,” I say, clearly having watched too much CNBC lately.

“Work on animals? It’s not my art form. Would you ask a sculptor why he doesn’t paint? I think not. But you find it suitable to assume that I should embalm any old dead thing that I can dig up. I don’t really mean dig up…bad choice of words. You wouldn't ask your hair dresser if she'd groom your dog, would you? Would I work on animals.....honestly!”

“I get it. Okay. Thanks,” I say to Jeremiah, who is now perspiring and so rattled from our exchange that he spills the crème brulee latte he’s whipping up.

The other day Jeremiah told me that he‘d recently won an award for his work on recapitating a headless body so that the victim, whose head was once lying across a four lane highway, now reunited with his cranium, appeared to be sleeping.

“What if his head had rolled down into a ravine and you couldn’t retrieve it? Could you use another head and make it look natural? I ask, seriously curious.”

Jeremiah rolls his eyes, “I ain’t Jeffrey Dahmer. We’re not a body part storehouse.”

I didn’t know there were awards for embalming. How do you submit an entry? Or is it like the Pillsbury Bake-Off where contestants are shown to individual work stations topped with old newspapers, fresh cadavers and embalming gadgets?

Jeremiah says that’s exactly what it’s like. Participants get credit for entering the body through only one point, as opposed to three points (the things you learn). They’re also judged on whether or not fluid leaks from the body. “This one dude’s corpse was lying in a puddle of fluid and we were all like ‘amateur.’”

Well I’m convinced. Anyone who wins the Pillsbury Bake-Off of embalming is good enough to get my business. If I get hit by a bus anytime soon, just drop my body off at Juice Bird. Jeremiah will know what to do.

Scenes from a Living Room on a Monday Night

My husband sits across the living room from me, concentrating on his phone, as I stare intently at my laptop. I get a notification that he’s just played his turn at Words with Friends. 57 points, a triple word and triple letter score. He’s beating me again. I take my turn, My vocabulary and letter choices are never enough to win.

Back in the old days, before our smart phones and social networking games we used to talk to each other…using our mouths and voices. Now it’s just “brrrring” another notification that it’s my turn. We often don’t even look up at each other to say “nice move” or “how dare you.”

Maybe later, in the bedroom, if we’re in the mood, we’ll do some sexting. Funny how today's technology can bring those who are thousands of miles apart into the same room...and make those of us in the same room feel thousands of miles apart. Isn't it ironic. Yes, I think.

Yet Another Stupid Thing to Argue About

I’m sitting in the parking lot of Garry’s Grocery waiting on Frances. I wonder why Garry’s parents chose to put two R’s in his name. Perhaps they had an extra one left over from their other son Lary’s name. Frances is a caregiver who I’m going to introduce to Mr. and Mrs. Taylor. I’ll go back to the office while she stays, cleans their house and tends to any other needs that may arise.

I work for a senior caregiver agency. If nothing else, the job has convinced me that I no longer want to live to be 105. My neighbor Caroline and I decided to shoot each other simultaneously when we turn 80….hopefully before dementia and adult diapers are part of daily life. It hasn’t occurred to me until now that Caroline is about five years older than me. What now? My plot is foiled. (Note to self, must find someone my own age with whom to go out with a bang)

I told my boss Billy (two L’s) about mine and Caroline’s plan. He pondered it a moment and then asked “are you going to shoot on ‘one’ or ‘zero?” The count down! Yet another question I hadn’t thought of. Planning simultaneous suicide can be so logistically challenging.

“I thought you drove a blue Suzuki!” announces Frances, overzealously tapping on my window glass and startling me from my typing. “Close… it’s a Saturn,” I say.

“Well, Jessica back at the office told me you drove a Suzuki. She sure did. So I’ve been looking for a Suzuki.”

“It’s a Saturn,” I laugh sort of nervously, wondering why we’re still on this topic.

“Well, I’ve been looking for a Suzuki because that’s what I thought you drove,” she says slightly accusingly, as if I’ve secretly traded my Suzuki for a Saturn just to annoy her.

“Yep, uhm, I’ve never driven a Suzuki before. I’m sure they’re nice, but I don’t have one,” I respond, trying to bring closure to the matter and wondering if I’m going to have to explain to the Taylors that Frances and I are late because we were arguing about the make of my car.

“And all this time I’ve been looking for a Suzuki. People can be so incompetent,” Frances sighs, shaking her head as if this misunderstanding ranks in tragedy with the starving children in …..well, wherever they’re starving right now.

I’m starting to feel apologetic, like if I’d only visited the Suzuki dealership five years ago, this unfortunate circumstance might’ve been averted.

Frances seems like the type who blames natural disasters, climate change and shifting tectonic plates on unsuspecting family members.

“Alright then. We’ve wasted enough time. Might as well go on to the Taylors’ house in whatever that is you drive,” she declares.

Not willing to leave well enough alone, I stop abruptly and gawk ‘Wait a minute! Is that your Camry? I could’ve sworn on my life that you drove an Accord!”

Ridiculous Warning Labels for the Moronic and Law Suit Happy

I’m always curious about the assumed IQ’s of those who consume certain products. If the producers thought they were dealing with a target audience that had more common sense than say….Amelia Bedelia then they wouldn’t print such ludicrous instructions on packaging.

I just opened a container of Bonta Emilliane cheese gnocchi, flipped it over to find the cooking directions and laughed out loud reading “remove from package before consuming.” Really? I shouldn’t just aggressively sink my incisors into the thick plastic that encases the dumplings? Was this an actual problem in test markets? I can imagine the dialog.

“The product seems to be well received…so well in fact, that test groups are eating it… package and all. I guess we’d better address that in the instructions so the pygmy brains won’t sue us.”

A few years ago, when James and I flew back to Georgia from California I saw a large hand-written sign above a water fountain inside Enterprise Rent-A-Car. It read “turn water lever and THEN lean into stream of water.” I wonder if people were complaining to management that they weren’t getting any water at first so they had to place instructions reminding them to turn on the water before expecting to be refreshed. Details!!!

One of my favorite idiotic instructions was on a globe I bought for my son Andrew when he first became interested in geography. In small letters floating in the middle of the Indian Ocean read “not to be used as a navigational device.” Seeing that warning made me want to pretend I was lost and take the globe into a gas station somewhere along the interstate and ask the attendant to show me how to get to I-95. But he or she probably wouldn’t get it (as with most of my humor) and explain to me in a deadpan, bored voice that you can’t use a globe as a navigational device. “See it says that right here below Sri Lanka.”

I always love it when buying a new pair of shoes or a purse, to find those miniscule packets of silica gel. I’m not sure what silica gel is, but I’m almost positive that it has nothing to do with silk or ca. But in bold letters on both sides of the packet, read the words “SILICA GEL…DO NOT EAT.” Like I’m in the habit of eating mysterious foreign objects. “Hey what’s this? I’m not sure, but I think I’ll eat it and find out.”

The only people I know who put things in their mouths to learn about them are babies (and those with oral fetishes.)

Here are a few other absurd and comical warnings/instructions I found on rinkworks.com.

- This product not intended for use as a dental drill (on an electric rotary drill). A warning for those who don’t have dental insurance, but no lack of that good old DIY spirit that American was founded on.

- Do not drive with sun shield in place. (on a cardboard windshield shade). “Why can’t I see the road?”

- Do not feed to fish. (on a bottle of dog shampoo). Why just fish? Does that mean it’s okay to feed to wombats, terrapins, guinea pigs and falcons?

- Not intended for highway use. (on a wheelbarrow). I can understand this warning on a riding lawnmower or a golf cart, but who gets the gumption to push a wheelbarrow down I-5?

- Do not eat toner. (on a toner cartridge for a laser printer) I’ve been hungry before, but never THAT hungry. Is it okay to drink it? I don’t see a warning label telling me not to.

- May irritate eyes. (on a can of pepper spray) YA THINK??!?

- Warning….may contain nuts. (on a package of peanuts) It MAY Contain nuts? Are these people sure about anything?

- Do not use orally. (on a toilet bowl brush) Just stick with your toothbrush from now on.

- For use by trained personnel only. (on can of air freshener). And just what is the training program like to become a certified air freshener sprayer? Is it difficult? Can I get in?

- Caution! Remove infant before folding for storage. (On a portable stroller) That is…unless you want to fold your infant and store him in the closet with the stroller. Sounds quite convenient.

- Warning! This product moves when used. (on a Razor Scooter)

- May cause drowsiness. (on Nytol sleeping pills) Can someone really sue for being drowsy?

To laugh at more absolutely ridiculous warning and instruction labels, visit http://www.rinkworks.com/said/warnings.shtml or http://www.forbes.com/2011/02/23/dumbest-warning-labels-entrepreneurs-sales-marketing-warning-labels_slide.html.