Kinky boots on parade

Technically I should be editing my novel Leaving Hope and working on my query letter for Second Chances. Instead I'm writing here. Hey, at least I'm writing.

I was on Facebook earlier (yes, I know, such a huge shock... everyone who knows me can stop laughing hysterically now) and a friend of mine had posted a video from the US Thanksgiving Parade. I'm including a link here...

Kinky Boots at Macy's Parade

I'm giving everyone a chance to watch it.
*taps foot and looks impatiently at computer clock*
... okay, that should be long enough.

Comments are posted in the article about how horrible it was for this song to be played at the parade. One even claimed to make the poster have a little less hope for humanity. Because, you know, people singing about love and being there for each other is such a message of despair. But my favourite comment (which was echoed in the resulting comments on Facebook) was the one that said "Let parents decide when to discuss certain topics with their kids instead of springing it on them in Macy's Parade."

What parent really believes life waits for them to decide when to have these conversations? Really? C'mon, you'd think that ship would have sailed when your toddler wanted to know why Daddy has a penis. At the dinner table. With guests over.

Or am I the only lucky one to have conversations like this?

Let me tell you about how the topic of drag queens came up in my family.

It all started on a lovely summer's trip to the park. I got the kids dressed, slathered them in sunscreen, collected a handful of toys, and set out for the local park. We were almost there when a man approached us. He was tall, at least 6ft, and he looked even taller in his stilettos. Despite it being barely after lunch, he was all dressed up for a night on the town. Make up, styled hair, evening gown... he was ready to go. And, just to make the experience even more interesting, he wanted directions to the local jail so he could visit his boyfriend. I've found that when life hands us an experience, it goes all out.

I assured him that he was on the right road to get to the local jail and it probably wouldn't take him more than ten minutes to get there, then agreed that it must stink to have his boyfriend behind bars. Then we said goodbye and he headed off. The whole time both kids stared up at him wide eyed.

The kids watched him walk away (a lot more gracefully than I would in heels) then daughter turned to me and said, "Mommy, why is that man wearing a dress?" And I looked at her and said, "Because he wants to." Then we went to the park.

That was it. No huge explanation. No confusion. It's honestly not that hard a question.

My son came home this evening right after I watched the video so I dragged him to the computer and made him watch it too, just to get his reaction (he's what's known as a captive audience).

His first reaction was sheer bafflement that the song would be played at a parade. Because floats move a lot faster than that and no one would get the whole message, they'd just hear little bits and pieces. Obviously the Macy parade isn't a tradition in our house. I promptly explained this song was performed at the beginning and had been stationary. Everyone there heard the whole thing.

Oh... well in that case he figured they should play it twice. Once at the beginning and again at the end, because that was something everyone should hear.

Then, just to round out the conversation, I googled drag queens and we looked at faces of men with half their head made up. What else do you do on a Saturday evening? I guess we could play cards (if I knew where the deck was and remembered any games) but the pictures were more interesting.

Now I'm going back to editing Leaving Hope. I'm not going to bother posting the first chapter of Second Chances (like I did with my other novels). All it does is end in a badly formatted wall of text. But I like the first chapter and hopefully some agent out there will too.

The most embarrassing story

Kids can say and do the most embarrassing things. Luckily for me, my most embarrassing kid story happened to my ex-husband. It all started with my daughter, her overactive imagination, and a bullying neighbour.

Back when daughter was preschool aged we had a neighbour with a daughter who was a year older. The girl didn't treat daughter well, she teased her and was often sent back home. But it was a small building and the two ended up playing together regularly. When the girl finally moved T* and I were ready to throw a party to celebrate. We celebrated too soon. Suddenly daughter had an imaginary friend named "Bad Katie".

Lots of kids have imaginary friends who are "bad" and get blamed for mischief. This friend was different. Instead she bullied and picked on daughter, pretty much the same way her previous friend teased her. This left T and I at a loss, trying to convince daughter to stand up for herself to an imaginary playmate.

Weeks went on and nothing seemed to work until one bitterly cold winter's night when T finally snapped. Nothing we said made a difference. Daughter couldn't ignore Bad Katie and telling her to stop and go away made the teasing worse. I sent Bad Katie upstairs for a timeout but she snuck back down. T stomped to the door and opened it. A blast of cold air rushed in.

"Outside now!" he snapped then looked at daughter and asked, "Is she out there?"
Daughter nodded and he slammed the door shut then locked it.
"There," he said with some satisfaction. "She's having a timeout on the patio."
"In the snow?" whispered daughter.
"In the snow," he agreed. "And she's not allowed back in ever again."

Weeks went by without a single mention of Bad Katie and we slowly relaxed. Then T headed out on the bus one afternoon with daughter and came home looking rather pale.

"I'm lucky I wasn't lynched," he said once daughter had headed upstairs. "The bus was packed to the point where we had to stand. There wasn't a single seat available. Then daughter started talking in a rather loud voice..."

"Remember that time Bad Katie was sooo bad that you made her have a timeout on our patio in the dark all alone. And it was really cold and you made her stand outside in bare feet in the snow and told her she wasn't allowed to come back inside ever again."

Complete and utter silence. T looked around and everyone was staring at him. No one looked happy.

I'll grant her good timing at least, she finished the story right before our stop so he was able to make a quick getaway.



*not my ex's real initial, just a letter I picked at random in September

Childhood innocence and parental fears

I sat in my work's break room a few days ago. Newspapers were spread across both tables, each one had photos of Tori Stafford plastered across the front page. I commented how horrible it was that Tori's mother was being lambasted for allowing her 8 year old daughter to walk alone from school, the response I got was a shrug and "that's what society's like these days, kids don't walk home alone".

That angers me. We live in a society where obesity rates for children rise yearly. Local parks (in some neighbourhoods) are empty while the children play in daycare or sit inside playing video games. I used to go on a Canadian parenting forum and remember this discussion coming up on one of the boards. Many parents expressed fear of letting their children out of eyesight, gingerly allowing them to walk one or two houses down to play with friends. One mother admitted her twelve year old was not allowed to walk across the street to the neighbourhood store alone despite the fact the store was clearly visible from their kitchen window and the street was quiet.

What are we teaching our children? The world is a dangerous and scary place with criminals waiting on every corner to hurt and kill us. They're not capable of making responsible decisions without their parents right there to supervise. I sometimes wonder how that mother of a 12 year old is managing her child's entry into high school and, likely soon, admission to college or university. Will she insist on holding her daughter's hand right through the admission, like so many parents are doing these days?

Stranger abduction and murder is terrifying but we need to remember that out of all the children who are sexually assaulted and/or murdered, the vast majority happened at the hands of people they knew and trusted (usually relatives). The reason stranger abduction is so memorable is because it's rare.

As I'm writing this, my 14 year old son is outside rollerblading on his own. His only rules are to be careful while crossing the road and to be back before dark. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried. I worry every time he heads out on his own. But that worry is mine. I need to own it. And I think that's the biggest issue. We, as parents, are not owning our fear. Instead we're passing it on to our children.

Instead of clinging to our children, we need to give them the tools they need to thrive and let them go. There are numerous articles and books out there on teaching kids about strangers and dangerous situations. I freely admit I have not read most of them.

I remember smiling at a child and saying "hi" when I was a teenager, only to have that child look fearful and back away. My Mom commented it was probably because I was a stranger and the child was likely taught to be scared of strangers. At that point I realized how idiotic that idea was. Almost everyone in this world is a stranger to most of us, that doesn't make most of them scary or dangerous.

A friend of mine called me up when our children were young. She'd just watched a video on child abductions and it showed how easy it was to lure a child away. Then she asked her son what he'd do if someone said they had Pokemon cards in their car. He replied he'd go with them to get the cards. That was when I started talking with my kids. No adults ever keep cards in their car to give kids. No adults drive around with puppies or kittens in their back seat. Adults don't ask kids for help, they ask other adults for help. They might ask if you've seen a kitten or puppy but they're not going to ask you to look for one. And the biggest one, you never go anywhere without telling Mommy. It doesn't matter who shows up, you come and tell me first.

We talked and I listened. We covered what happens if someone gets lost in a store or a mall. It took one instance of my son thinking a custodian was a police officer to convince me not to tell them to go to a police officer. Instead I taught what a police officer suggested, to go into a store "glue" their hand to the front desk and tell the staff member they were lost. And not to "un-glue" their hand until I showed up or a police officer arrived. If they got lost away from a store, go to someone with kids. And above all else, to trust their instincts.

My son talks to everyone. We went out shopping yesterday in a neighbouring town and two separate people waved to him out of car windows during our 5 minute wait for the bus. We're constantly running into people who know him by name... people I've never met. If I kept him sitting in front of the Wii all day, he wouldn't have those experiences.

Nothing will ever bring back the lives of the handful of children who have died at the hands of strangers. Nothing will ever ease the pain of their families. But raising a generation of children who have never walked to the corner store on their own or talked to an adult neighbour without supervision is not the answer.