Zombies Surround the Toys R Us and Other Dreams About Bad Parenting
This post was originally a part of the now defunct Somnaplegic blog.
Warning. This post contains descriptions of imaginary children in peril. You might want to skip the parts in italics if you don’t like that sort of thing.
When my son was just a few weeks old. My mom called to talk on the phone about her impending visit. At one point she said, “I had finally let go. I stopped worrying about you, you know. You’re an adult and you can handle stuff. But now Pod, Jr. [1] is here and I’m just worried all the time.”
I remember this well, because it was the first time I got to deploy my newly minted “mom voice.”
“You don’t have to worry about him. That’s MY job.”
Oh yeah, no one messes with mommy. You come at my spawn and I will eat your face off. I was ready and rarin’ to go. BEST. MOM. EVAR.
Here is a list of just a few of the bad parenting decisions I’ve made [4].
Taking my 8 year old to see the Hunger Games and staying through the whole thing. “I guess that was kind of scary,” I said as we walked to the car. He held his hand up Fran Drescher-style and said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
That time he fell down the front steps and instead of dropping my bike and rushing to his side, I took the time to lower the kickstand and make sure the paint wouldn’t get damaged.
That time I stuck my pinky up his nose so far it started bleeding [5]. The nose not the pinky.
Letting him play Dead Body Storage with his Legos
Letting him live off of pop tarts and pizza rolls
Getting him a smart phone
He would say that my worst parenting was when I ran him over with my bicycle. I say that if he didn’t want to get run over he shouldn’t have flopped down on ground right in front of me. If I’d meant to do it, as he claims, I wouldn’t have stopped after the first wheel went over.
Here’s my son’s list of my best parenting decisions.
Letting him play Dead Body Storage with his Legos
Letting him live off of pop tarts and pizza rolls
Getting him a smart phone
But, if you think I’m a bad parent in real life, Dream Me is an Olympic Medal grade bad parent.
***
We were in Pompeii, running up the volcano to escape the explosion. As you do. I come to the rational conclusion that there’s no way I’m going to get to my destination in time while holding my infant spawn. The mountain is just too craggy and I can’t climb with junior under my arm. So, I do the logical thing and drop the baby on the side of the mountain. Sorry kid, but I’m not dying with you.
I scurry to safety at the top of the mountain [6]. My husband turns and says, “Hey, where’s spawn?”
“Um, I left him on the mountain side.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
So at this point I’m thinking, hey maybe leaving my baby to die on the side of the mountain wasn’t the best choice. I start running down the mountain, trip, and like Arthur Dent in Life the Universe and Everything, manage to miss the ground. I soar off into the sky and think, “Well, crap. Why couldn’t I have done that earlier?”
I manage to wake up during the desperate search for the baby having neither found him on the mountain side nor had a chance to enjoy all the flying.
Stupid dream brain [7]
***
Remember when the Fellowship of the Ring tried the crest the Misty Mountains to get to Mordor to destroy the One Ring? Yeah, so that, but with less snow and more of a caravan of wagons and van-style RVs. After a journey of weeks, hardships untold, and a lot of chaffing from wearing leather armor without reinforced underwear we’re nearly at the top. We’ve got to abandon the wagons and RVs for the last push into the mountains. Once there we will join the rebels and, as one, sweep down on the enemies and crush the Empire, or Sauron, or Prince Humperdink. I dunno, it was someone bad.
I’m conferring with our scout when he explains that all the children in the caravan will need to be decapitated for this next part of the trek.
Um, no, let’s not do that.
He explains that this is just temporary decapitation. We’ll put all their heads back on when we get to our destination. “The kids won’t make it through the snow and the climbing. If we pop their heads off their bodies will go into stasis and we can just carry them up to the hideout,” he says in the exasperated tone of children everywhere trying to explain the latest cool thing to the olds.
My spawn nods along. “Duh, everyone knows that kids heads can survive some light decapitation, mom.” The scout proceeds to demonstrate by twisting my spawn’s head off and handing it to me. Spawn smiles up and says, “See, it’s fine.” I’m looking at his now stiff body and flip his head over to check out the neck stump. It looks like a perfectly clean break, as though he’d been frozen and snapped off.
It was a lot like when they take Data the androids head off in Star Trek the next generation.
I remain unconvinced. I mean, you can’t just reattach nerves and stuff. Like, he’s going to be stuck as a bodiless head for ever. I start freaking out trying to put his head back on. I figure the odds are best if you try right away.
Everyone looks at me like I’m crazy and shakes their heads. Turns out you have to wait a couple of days before reattaching their heads. There’s some sort of cool down period.
I’m imagining spawns future as just a head. No sports. No trampolines. No sex. What kind of life will this be for my little head-boy?
But everyone is busy popping off child heads and piling the stiff little bodies into hand carts preparing for the slog into the mountains. I have no choice but to follow. I slog up the path, boy-head tucked under my arm. He keeps up a running commentary about the changing landscape. Meanwhile I try to keep a lid on my growing panic and sense that this just is not right.
We get to the hideout and join the rebels. Who, disconcertingly, agree with me. Taking off children’s heads is not something we do. My group is unphased. Spawn comments approvingly on the hideout. He asks me to hold him up so he can see the panoramic downslope view. I move to do this, and a series of comedic drop, half grab, fumble maneuvers manage to hurl his little head right off the cliff. He rolls down the side of the mountain like a lumpy bowling ball, shouting, “WEEEEEE.”
Shit.
No one wants to take credit for this image
My husband is very confused when I wake him up at 2am frantically asking, “Is everyone’s head on?”
***
The boy and I decided that a trip to Toys R Us was in order. We drove our beat up black Jeep Cherokee Country over to the shopping mall and went inside to purchase a toy guitar, Street Sharks action figures, and about 17 of those giant swirl lollipops.
As we approach the exit I see that the once sunny day has gone dark and the parking lot is full of shambling zombies. The apocalypse has arrived. OK. I shout over my shoulder at the 20-something clerk. “Hey, there’s a zombie army outside,” but the clerks, there a moment ago, are all gone, and the store is looking pretty shabby.
I decide that holing up in the Toys R Us is not viable. Too many windows on the front of the store and too much open space inside. So, I ditch the toys and the lollipops, which the boy is NOT pleased about, fish my keys out of my pocket and tuck my 3 year old under my arm.
“This is how it’s going to go kiddo. These zombies look pretty slow. The passenger door is closest. I’m going to run there, unlock the door (no keyless entry for us), and we’ll climb in together. Try not to wiggle too much while I run. Got it?”
He nods affirmatively from under my death grip.
Same here
I push open the door and take off, dodging zombies and shopping carts. Why did I park all the way at the end of the lot when there were like only 3 cars at the front? Sure enough, the zombies are not too fast or perceptive and I get clear fairly easily. I stick the key in the lock, ready to shove the kid in ahead of me, but he’s not there. How could I have not noticed dropping him?
I whirl around and look behind me, the number of zombies have increased. I do not see him. None of them seem to be frenzying around a small child though. Mostly, they’re turning my way. Where the hell is he?
I climb in and vault over the center console to the drivers’ seat. I unlock all the doors, prepared to roll by and grab the kid when I find him. I keep the speed to about 10mph gently ramming zombies along the way, pivoting my head side to side scanning for the boys blue jumper. Zombies start throwing themselves at the car and exploding like over-ripe pimples or that guy in RoboCop. Pretty soon the car is so covered in zombie goo that I can hardly see out, but I keep running them over until none are left.
The boy is nowhere to be seen.
Strangely, I wasn’t nearly as upset in this dream as I was during the others. It was more like, “I swear, I just had my keys right here a minute ago. Oh well, I guess they’ll show up as soon as I mop up all this zombie gunk.”
~~~~
[1] Once, years ago, I called my mom and got her voice mail. I left the following message, “Mothership. Mothership come in. This is Larval Pod. The “package” has arrived [2]. Repeat, the “package” has arrived. Larval Pod out.” Since that time she’s been Mothership and I’ve been Pod. When my son was born he was designated, “Pod, Jr” also, “Spawn” and “The Boy [3]”
[2] It was a box of beanie babies.
[3] This is best said in a sneer like how Seinfeld would say, “Hello, Newman.”
[4] The ones I’m willing to admit to.
[5] Like you’ve never stuck your finger up your kids nose.
[6] I don’t know why the top of the erupting volcano is safe, it just is.
[7] If you’re a person who likes to analyze things you’re thinking, “clearly the baby symbolizes the authors feelings of being trapped and her ability to fly after letting go of this burden is a part of her desire to feel young and unencumbered again, yet she can never truly be free from society’s expectations about selfless womanhood and must therefore forego her freedom and retether herself to home and family.” Yeah, don’t think too deep about any of this, it’s just my asshole brain’s version of masochistic schadenfreude.
*This post was originally a part of the now defunct Somnaplegic blog.
