I'm a #@&* Genius: Volume II

It occurs to me, in this season of saving daylight time and voting, that humanity could use a dose of #@&* genius. My loyal readers are aware that I am a #@&* Genius, and exactly what that entails. For those of you who are NOT my loyal readers, fix your life. Clicking here will help.

Okay, now that we are all on the same page, behold the second iteration of “I’m a #@&* Genius.”

Idea #1: The Pie Protractor

It has been close to twenty years, but my mother is still taking this empty nest thing pretty badly. I have suggested that she take up a hobby, like gardening or tequila. Instead my parents started doing a thing that is actually real called “kick biking” (click here) which led to her catapulting over the handlebars and breaking her little mommy collarbone. Very sad, poor mommy. 

Point being, we visit them every few months, and while there, I suspect my mother is attempting to inject into my digestive tract the caloric equivalent of every meal she would have prepared for me if I was living there in the interim.To help balance this food-debt in her mind, she serves dessert after lunch. Just, very glibly. As if it were a Totally Normal Healthy Practice. Don’t get me wrong. She is an excellent cook and baker. This does not change the capacity at which my stomach perforates and I have green bean casserole glomming round in my chest cavity. And then, you know, sepsis, fever, coma, death. The whole rigmarole.

So, post-lunch, I’m rolling around on the living room floor, making submarine distress calls, and my mother says, brightly,

“I made your favorite! A cherry pie! What size piece do you want?”

“Mother,” I say with ragged breath, “You make the best cherry pie. I am SUPER FULL, though. So maybe a tiny piece?”

“Okay, sweetie!” she replies, and promptly serves me a quarter of a cherry pie. I eat it, perish, no more bloggily posts, everyone is sad. My final words are, There’s a hull breach, Captain!

BUT.

The Pie Protractor. This is a device that fits over the top of any pie, pizza, quiche, frittata, or even those dipshitty giant cookies. Like the protractors you used in math class, it can be used to demarcate an angle from the center point, to a specific degree. Ergo, you can request a MATHEMATICALLY EXACT volume of pie. In the scene above, I could have simply said, “Mother, please may I have 20 degrees of cherry pie?” and then no one had to go to the hospital.

Idea # 2: Automobile Message Screen

I feel like the world deserves to know my thoughts. Hence the blog. But I can’t write a blog post while I’m driving, nor make sure that the person that cut me off reads it.

But how? How to communicate without sacrificing roadway safety?

Imagine a narrow screen running horizontally around the width of a car: a digital screen that would display the text of whatever information I wish to disseminate (NOT WHAT IT MEANS, PERVS). Inside the car, a microphone on the dashboard with voice-to-text capability. (No naughty typing while driving!) Then, communication is as simple as saying,

Hey Ass-Gnome in the black Jeep! Use your turn signal! or

Stop steering with your vas deferens! And so on.

Although you should research the public profanity laws in your state, unless you have enough time and energy to take your case to the US Supreme Court. Yay freedom of speech!

In addition, if you have children, make sure the device is firmly switched off when not in use. If your car trips are anything like mine, you don’t want to drive around with the conversations that are happening inside of the car scrolling around on the outside. Mine generally consist of my children passionately discoursing on their hatred of where we are going, listing off which genitals each person in the car has, or freestyle rapping about poop.

[I feel like this automobile idea is slightly better than an earlier one, which involved running a catheter from the driver’s seat to the coolant tank, to solve two long-trip problems simultaneously! The world isn’t ready.]

I have more #@&* genius ideas rattling around in the old brain pan, but I don’t want to break your minds. Small doses, dear readers. Small doses.

The Antichrist gives out Helium Balloons

More specifically, if you hand out helium balloons, in an unsolicited fashion, to children that are not yours, YOU are the Antichrist.

Let’s have a traumatizing flashback together, shall we?

Rebecca is super pregnant with the third and final demon-spawn. The husband is studying for a certification that would be beneficial to his career. Rebecca, in her infinite helpfulness and wisdom, offers to “get the kids out of his face” each week by taking the two Already Birthed Ones, plus also the Incubating One (in her guts), to the grocery store for the week’s groceries so he can study in peace. This is a terrible experience each and every time, taking upwards of two hours. Rebecca is at that point in her pregnancy where her legs feel like garbage bags full of sand, and that her soul is being crushed into her spine by her own writhing uterus. The girls are at the point in their lives where they are…well…lively. Nevertheless, being a woman of her word, and determined, she persists.One week, she has barely made it into the grocery store when an entirely wretched human female from the grocery store floral department waltzes up and offers the girls (buckled in the cart seats) a bundle of NO FEWER THAN FIVE LARGE BALLOONS. So for the following two hours, she limps around the grocery store, attempting to purchase foodstuffs, vision completely obstructed by five large, evil balloons. The girls bounce them into her face, innocent bystanders, and delicate food items. They have an amazing time.

I have never forgiven that florist, and I never will.

Only three kinds of people would do this:

1. People who don't have children and authentically think they are making your day better
2. People whose children are adults now, and they either don't remember what parenthood was like, or balloons hadn't been invented yet
3. People who have children, but are weirdly vindictive

What is your problem, Rebecca? you ask. Well.

Because the Fighting

Even if you, the Antichrist, had the sense to give each child the same number, color, size, and quality of balloons (but you didn’t, did you?) you didn’t know that you just handed children #1 & 2 their favorite color, but child #3 her LEAST FAVORITE COLOR ON THE PLANET. Or, maybe, just for kicks, one of them is going to let go of his or her ribbon and release the balloons into the ionosphere. What now? What’s your contingency plan, you ass noodle? You got nothing. Point being, if you do not have the delicacy and perception of a hostage negotiator, and an apocalypse-grade child-soothing bug-out bag, you should not be giving children things. None things. Just stop.

Balloons are Terminally-Ill Kittens

Balloons are the bestest thing in the effing universe. They really are. They are shiny, they float, for the love of all that is holy. They dance whimsically at the end of a ribbon, enticing the senses, inspiring the imagination. My children yearn for them. They treasure them.

In this way, balloons are a cruel joke. Balloons have the life-span of an ice cube. Children go to sleep with their treasured toy hovering sweetly in the corner of their room, but wake to wonder why it has deflated, and is now draped sadly over the back of the chair like the testicles of a multicolored elephant. They react as though there has been a Death in the Family. You have to explain things you never wanted to have to explain, like the circle of life, and the laws of physics. You find yourself reading Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart aloud to them, as though that would somehow clarify things.

Balloons are Some Bullshit

Balloons are unfair. When one of you soulless douchebags meanders up to some innocent parent with a bunch of balloons, you have taken away that parent’s ability to choose. Would you like a balloon? you ask. They are in public. The children have seen the balloons. At this point, they must accept the balloon. Not only that, but they are socially obligated to manufacture the pretense of gratitude. When every part of them is crying out Stab! Stab that fuckwit! Staaaaaaaaab! they must instead say, between gritted teeth,

“Oh, thank you so much! How nice! Isn’t that nice, children? Say thank you!”

But they don’t mean it. They hate you. I hate you. We all hate you. Please. Just take the balloons in the back and euthanize them with your car keys. It is the right thing to do.

Parenting is basically a Health Spa

Shut the hell up for a second and hear me out.  I am totally willing to give myself and fellow parents props for all of our sacrifices; however, let’s not pretend like being a parent doesn’t have its advantages. People pay many rubles for things we take for granted in our everyday lives.

Tell me more, Rebecca. Okay.

Living with children is essentially a constant probiotic infusion. While you hipster DINKS pay five dollars a bottle for chia-brewed kombucha, I ingest literally ounces per day of my childrens’ bacteria-riddled saliva, snot, and skin cells (partially in my food and usually alcoholic beverages, partially just from having my mouth open at the wrong time). Also, Fecal Microbiota Transplant. Look it up. People pay thousands actual of dollars to have fecal matter transplanted from a donor into their own rumps. You know, to replenish their healthy bacteria. Hey, I’m all about gut health. But seriously folks, just come to my house and let my kids touch you. They say they wash their hands after they use the restroom, those little jerks are MADE OF LIES!! It’s all just Pooptown frolics.

Don’t even get me started on intermittent fasting. Want to jumpstart your metabolism? Try not eating for like an entire day because every time you try to, a kid hurts himself, breaks something, poops (see above) or PHYSICALLY SNATCHES THE FOOD OUT OF YOUR MOUTH. Then, when they are finally asleep, and you can eat, the only thing left in the house is tomato sauce, vodka, and fucking pickles. That’s keto-tastic, bitches!

My children restore my dermal biome every time they sneeze in my face, or scratch their disgusting crevices and then stick their fingers into my nose. My skin is like a cherub’s. Plus I never get to bathe, so I’m dewy AF.

Why go all the way to Sweden to be violently massaged when I can simply wait for the middle child to complete her nocturnal journey to my bed, then proceed to flail me with her scrawny and yet mighty arms and legs? Thank you, night terrors. The incoherent babbling only adds to the experience.

Finally, a good-old-fashioned cleanse. Look no further. If you really want to purify the old digestive tract, simply watch a child eat an ice cream cone. I challenge you to not vomit. There is nothing more nauseating on God’s Green Earth than a child eating an ice cream cone. The ropes of saliva mingling with the horribly disintegrating dairy abomination. The chocolate goatees. Whisking it into repellently foamy “ice cream soup” like a deranged celebrity chef and then slurping it down. I have watched a child balance an ice cream cone carefully on a table, and, hands folded properly in his lap, purse his lips and suckle the ice cream like a hungry baby goat. (I am honestly gagging as I type this, I hope you are too. Otherwise, why are we doing this?) I have watched children mouth-carve the ice cream into disturbingly phallic shapes and then use these shapes to apply “ice cream lipstick”. So save some money on that herbal cleanse packet you have been looking at on the interwebs. Just buy your kid some soft serve and let nature take its course.

That’s all I have for tonight, folks. Never stop not quitting, parents! Someone has to do it, and you were the one who couldn’t keep it in your pants.