Kids these days....

I had an interesting encounter on Twitter yesterday. It all started when Tracy said she didn't think Britney Spears should be a judge on X-factor (or something, I don't know), and got called a bad name by some teen Britney fan. Well, I thought that was funny, and I like to make fun of people like that, so I butted in with something snarky and got this in return

Wow! This will be such fun! I love fucking with people like this; angry, pointless and not very smart. So I gleefully responded with something or other, and we went back and forth for a while. This was, without question, the best one:

But as we went on, she started to get smarter; my first clue was her proper use of "you're a cunt," instead of "your a cunt," which is what I would have expected. Her grammar improved; her spelling improved; she literally questioned my "logic." Okay, you can fake being stupid, but you can't fake being smart, and this girl (she's 17) was obviously smart.

Sadly, once I figured that out, it all stopped being fun for me. I like mocking stupid people, but not smart people pretending to be stupid. But I wondered... why would an obviously smart girl pretend to be dumb? Is she playing a role? Does she get some sort of advantage for being dumb? She was pretty, assuming her avatar was actually her; does she think she needs to be stupid in order to get guys? In order to get ahead? In order to get... anything?

I actually felt quite sad about it. Is this what society teaches girls? Is this what parents teach girls? Was this true when I was 17? (I don't remember, it was so fucking long ago....)

As a parent, I consider it my moral responsibility to raise my kids to be nice people, and honest, and true to themselves. But since I have boys it is also my intention, as a feminist, to make sure that they know that it is their moral responsibility to treat women with respect.

How are the girls of today being raised? Are they being raised to own their strength, and to respect themselves? Based on my twitter encounter yesterday, I'm afraid that this isn't the case. Then again, I don't know what the real case is. I'm sure that anybody who is raising girls and who is reading this will tell me that they're raising their girls in that way, but even so, what about the rest of the world?

Anyway, I signed off by telling her that it was awesome to be smart and that she should own that; smart women can rule the world! She thought I was just a crazy old person (she was right). I'm sure she will mature as she gets older; she will (hopefully) go off to college and realize that there are so many more options for her than to play the role of dumb, angry girl on Twitter. I'm sure she'll figure that out. I hope she figures that out.

(Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think the pitbull eating my legs thing was just a joke, in which case: good job! If that was a joke, it was a good one. I'd even say she won that round....)

What do you guys think?

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Meet the newest member of our family

Not quite what you were expecting, huh?

Lately the boys have been really into watching YouTube videos of other people making videos about Mario characters, and then when they're stalling at bedtime, they run around and re-enact those videos. I'll tell ya, it's really hard to make them stop playing and go to bed when we can hear Child 1 yelling "let's pretend this is Toad!"

In an effort to foster Child 1's new interest in playing and pretending, Hubs went to Fry's and brought home a stuffed Mario and a Yoshi. Mario was snatched up by Child 1, who immediately demanded that we go back to the store and get him a Luigi, too, and Yoshi was given to Child 2.

Unfortunately, at least as much as we know, the pretend play was not, in fact, bolstered by the appearance of both Mario and Luigi (yes. Of course I went right out the next day and got it). However, Child 2 immediately developed a somewhat unnatural attachment to his Yoshi doll and, seriously? The damn thing hasn't been out of his clutches ever since. I think he might be in love with it. He sleeps with it, he brushes his teeth with it, he has Yoshi brush his teeth, he sits him next to his plate at the dinner table and has the damn thing "eat" his food. With a fork.

The day after Hubs brought Yoshi home, Child 2 insisted on taking Yoshi to school with him, only I wouldn't let him actually take it into his class. So, he made me walk all the way to his classroom door so that he could "say goodbye" at the last possible second, but only with the promise that I would bring Yoshi back with me when I picked them up. Which I did, of course, and as I stood there on the yard waiting for his class to come out, I was chatting with a fellow parent and explaining why I was holding this stuffed animal thingy, and I said "I bet he forgot all about it, anyway" and she suggested I pretend that I forgot it to see what happened. So, I hid it behind my back and when he came out of the building, he spotted me with my hands behind my back, and you wouldn't believe the look on his face. It was just sheer bliss. And he came up to me and grabbed the Yoshi from behind my back, and I said "I was hiding it, how did you know I had it with me?" And he said "if you had forgotten it, you wouldn't have had your hands behind your back."

Touché.

On Saturday we went to the store and Yoshi (I said "can I call you Yosh?") had to "smell" every piece of fruit in the place. Then "he" picked out some apples to buy and later when Child 2 wouldn't eat the apple I gave him? He explained to me that he likes his apples a lighter shade of red than the one he had. I said "WTF? YOU picked it out!" and he says... "No I didn't; Yoshi did."

On Sunday he had a birthday party to go to, and I had to drag his ass there. He didn't want to go, he says, because "I just want to be with Yoshi all day." He went, eventually, of course..... but only because Yoshi was waiting in the car in the parking lot the whole time.

Sigh.

Welcome to the family, Yoshi. I guess. Just don't expect me to feed you or anything....

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