Plucky Letters to US soldiers in Iraq

Sunday, October 3, 2004


Dear Charlie,

Hello! I got your new APO from your mother. Thought you might like to know what’s going on here in exotic Illinois.

Well, I’ve been staring at the screen thinking it over for several minutes now and it seems there is nothing going on here in exotic Illinois. As those cheese-eating-surrender-monkeys in France like to say: the more things change; the more they stay the same.
Or, as we beef-eating Americans like to say: Same shit, different day.

I’m still working part time as a school lunch-lady, although there are certain threats to my comfy routine. There are ominous rumblings on the horizon forewarning the possibility I might run out of excuses and be required to get a real job any year now. Dylan, my 12 year-old, is becoming much too independent for my taste. Now that he’s in middle school he keeps doing things on his own. Without ME! He’s been sneaking around doing his homework behind my back, the little traitor. At first I thought my best defense against this disloyalty was to ignore it. I figured once his first set of grades was reported he’d coming running back to the fold, just begging for more of my brilliant tutoring.
But no, he’s somehow managing to get straight A’s. He’s probably cheating on me with another mother during study hall or some such academic treachery.

This “growing up” phase of his might not be so bad if it were just the homework thing. But he’s acting like he doesn’t need me for anything;
I might as well be a potted plant for all he cares! He’s even got the audacity to exclude me from the bathroom while he’s taking his morning shower these days. I guess my bonding ritual of standing on the toilet in a fog of steam shouting smart hygiene suggestions over the top of the shower curtain is a thing of the past. Last week, when I innocently came in to pick his underwear up off the floor, he grabbed it away from me, shoved it into the hamper, and stalked out with a towel clamped to his groin and a steely glare on his spotty little face. And that’s after I had waited until the shower wasn’t even running anymore!

Speaking of spotty faces, that’s a whole new, and obviously touchy, life event in which I am not welcome to participate. Just try running a Stridex pad over Dylan’s chin and you risk getting your hand bitten off. (You’d think I had tried to pick his nose or wipe his butt.) He doesn’t even want me to make him a healthy breakfast anymore. He insists on eating cereal almost every day, and won’t even let me slice a banana onto it for him. He claims he is perfectly capable of pouring his own juice and taking his own Ritalin tablet. (Seems to me people who need Ritalin ought not be getting all huffy about “excessive supervision.” Come to think of it, twelve-year-olds who use phrases like, “excessive supervision” ought not have needed Ritalin in the first place! Score one for me! Or…well. Never mind.)

The upshot of all this is that Dylan is getting awfully big for his britches these days and it’s putting my low-level job security at risk. What happens when I get laid off from a full-time mom/part-time lunch lady? Do I get unemployment compensation? HA! Instead I will be rewarded for my years of devoted service by being kicked out of the kitchen and into one of those career-type jobs like I used to have where a person is expected to do all kinds of business-y stuff and care about it. I don’t think I can face it, Charlie!

I know what I’m talking about here. I spent seven of the best years of my life working my way up the corporate ladder to become a District Sales Manager for a national bookstore chain. I am here to tell you that being a lunch lady is a much better job, despite the massive pay cut and lack of 401(k). I love being a lunch lady. I work only during school hours, have the summers off, and I am allowed to yell at the customers.
What’s not to love?

The very idea of returning to a “career” career makes my skin crawl with that clammy sensation of wearing pantyhose on a daily basis. Do you have any idea what it means when your employer gives you a laptop computer and a company car? Well, I do! It means you have to spend many precious hours driving around thinking up new and better ways to explain why your recalcitrant customers didn’t buy as much stuff as the company president wanted them to, and why your underpaid employees didn’t get as much stuff done as the company president expected. Also, you have to analyze data and shit. (If business gets really bad, you analyze data. And shit. Ha ha.)

Stupid me, I went around telling everyone (like my financially over-strapped husband) that I would return to a “real job” once Dylan was well on his way to overcoming his learning disabilities and successfully settled into junior high.

How was I to know that would actually happen?

I’m hoping I can get away with faking like my kid still needs me for awhile. If I’m lucky, Dylan will develop some sort of teen crisis that requires constant parental vigilance. I’m trying to be optimistic. Who knows? Maybe I can get him to experiment with drugs or join a gang.

Much Love,

--An Army Mom