Playground Purgatory

May 14, 2015 12:06 PM

ANNA: I’m always so happy when I’m here, and never feel strange or despondent.
SARA: Me, too. So happy. The sound of all the kids laughing and screaming is so joyous, and doesn’t sound anything like nails on a chalkboard.
ANNA: I’ve never cried behind that tree.
SARA: Me neither.
(SLNewYorker)
posted by Metroid Baby (48 comments total)

It is such a relief to know that sandbox suicidal ideation is a shared feeling.
posted by eisbaer at 12:13 PM on May 14, 2015 [7 favorites]

I'd share this with my wife right now, but she's trapped at a playground with 14 five year olds.

...

Oops.
posted by feckless at 12:21 PM on May 14, 2015

My partner pointed out last night that this sounds exactly like me talking to the kids:

ANNA: Tessa! Honey! Share the slide, Honey Bear! We don’t own the slide, OK? We have to share, because if we don’t society will collapse and we’ll become no better than animals, tearing one another limb from limb just to survive. This playground and everything around it will deteriorate into a dystopian war zone, a lawless heap of smoldering ash. And guess what dystopian war zones don’t have? Slides. Share the God-damned slide !
posted by ryanshepard at 12:22 PM on May 14, 2015 [29 favorites]

As an introverted stay-at-home Dad, you won't find me striking up conversations with strangers. However, I will testify that playgrounds can be fertile ground for staring into the abyss.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 12:40 PM on May 14, 2015 [5 favorites]

Furthermore, I'll just leave this here.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 12:45 PM on May 14, 2015 [4 favorites]

I'm a little bothered that this was written by a man to sort of smirk about stay at home moms and how they're insane and addiction crazy and catty to working moms. I don't know. I feel like he's punching down not up here, whereas with his hilarious decorative gourd season piece he was punching sideways at nobody.

Punching? Maybe more like poking. Alas, when did I lose my sense of humor? Playground, maybe.
posted by onlyconnect at 12:47 PM on May 14, 2015 [9 favorites]

Hmm, this struck me as kind of mean spirited...is this like a working person's idea of what SAHMs are like? Especially this part: "Tessa regurgitated on me. But, applesauce or throw-up, what’s the difference, really? They’re both just things that get on your shirt that you lose the will to wipe off after a certain point, because either way you’re going to give yourself a haircut with a kitchen knife, right?"

But if Moms see this as funny and close to their own experience I could just be oversensitive cuz I have 0 shame whatsoever about getting puked on. Nothing makes me happier than finding pieces of food hidden in my clothes because I am ecstatic and fulfilled by being a parent.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:48 PM on May 14, 2015

Yeah, I'm not a stay-at-home mom and never have been, but I found it hilarious as a working mom.
posted by corb at 12:51 PM on May 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

Oh wait this is by that gourd dude? Nevermind, this is just not funny. If it got super eldritch and strange that would be intriguing, but the essay can't even decide whether it's a snarky look at how rich parents act or Manhattan gothic.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:52 PM on May 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

Haha, I sound like Anna pretty much all the time, and I get so tired of listening to myself. Although explaining to my children why the state (in the person of their mother) has a monopoly on force and how hitting your brother back rather than appealing to state authority for punishment will cause us to collapse into a state of nature actually serves the dual purpose of amusing me and making my children stop fighting because it's easier to stop hitting than to listen to mommy explain Leviathan again.

Sometimes I have to be careful, though, because we started telling my three-year-old to "stop acting like Mussolini" (he made the trains run on time!) when he would get infuriated at his older brother for "playing trains wrong" when he was in that dictator-of-the-toys phase, and then I caught him yelling angrily at another kid who was hogging the trains, "DON'T BE MUSSOLINI!" which, while good life advice, kinda cuts down on playdates.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 12:53 PM on May 14, 2015 [75 favorites]

Sometimes I have to be careful, though, because we started telling my three-year-old to "stop acting like Mussolini"

Also, you should not comment that making kindergartners stand in line boy/girl with no talking is "Fascist." Which results in an explanation of fascism. Which then results in a phone call from an angry aunt because your young cousin called Miss Josephine a "fascist pig."

While not a parent, I've caught myself over-rationalizing with my friends' kids, which I always thought as a result of attempting to treat them like small adults. Good to know I'm not the only one.
posted by teleri025 at 1:02 PM on May 14, 2015 [10 favorites]

> But if Moms see this as funny and close to their own experience

Full-time mom, here, endorsing this as "terrifyingly close to my own experience," specifically to when I lived in Queens. And funny. But see also: terrifying.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:17 PM on May 14, 2015 [8 favorites]

Oh wait this is by that gourd dude? Nevermind, this is just not funny. If it got super eldritch and strange that would be intriguing, but the essay can't even decide whether it's a snarky look at how rich parents act or Manhattan gothic.

I found this through one of my mom groups, and the reaction there was positive; to me it felt like laughing with and not laughing at. I'm a middle-class working mom, though my kid's not yet playground age, and a lot of it resonated with me. I can see how it can be interpreted as mean-spirited, though, especially some of the weight-related jokes.

Funnily enough, the non-strangeness was exactly what I liked about it: it hinted at something dark and bizarre without going into Night Vale/Too Many Cooks territory.

I didn't realize this was the author of Decorative Gourd Season; I had a feeling I'd read his stuff before, but didn't make that connection. I'd never found Decorative Gourd Season particularly funny, but I enjoyed this. Go figure.
posted by Metroid Baby at 1:49 PM on May 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

I find the concept of taboo useful. "Don't put your knife in your mouth, darling. Even though it's perfectly useful for what you're trying to eat, it's taboo in our culture. That just means it's something we don't do."
posted by alasdair at 2:04 PM on May 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

I feel like part of this is a callback, sort of, to a New York Times Style piece about, like, moms gone wild, talking about Brooklyn moms drinking and smoking pot. Does anyone remember that? My googling has failed.

Also, as a stay-at-home mom, I'm always the only non-nanny at the playground, so I've never had this exact conversation. But I laughed.
posted by purpleclover at 2:11 PM on May 14, 2015

Tessa? Tess, honey! It’s time for lunch, O.K.? Let’s take a break and have something to eat now, because Mommy’s hungry, too, and Mommy can’t eat her lunch until you’ve eaten yours, because, as you know, Mommy’s lunch is just the remnants of your lunch—your toast crusts, your milk backwash, and, with any luck, a frantic lick of your half-eaten yogurt container. O.K., Sugarplum? Come eat your God-damned lunch !

So, far from perfect, but there are clearly bits that resonate with some of us, and this was it for me. I finally decided to stop eating my children's leftovers last year, and I felt really good about that, more a person again and not a "mom." But, you know often I haven't eaten yet and it just seems wasteful when they leave behind 1/2 hotdog and apple slices and...well, at least I lasted a year.
posted by dawg-proud at 2:19 PM on May 14, 2015 [7 favorites]

Yes! I also stopped eating toddler leftovers for lunch last year! I did not think I would ever type that sentence!
posted by purpleclover at 2:22 PM on May 14, 2015 [8 favorites]

As a working mom, I discovered that rejected toddler food makes fantastic leftovers for breakfast. Already cut into bite-size pieces and everything.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 2:27 PM on May 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

.... but sometimes Mama is still hungry after dinner and those toddler leftovers haven't even been TOUCHED!

(or, maybe just slightly tasted or licked before deemed unworthy of eating. But I DEFINITELY do NOT eat any of the half-chewed stuff. On purpose, anyway.)
posted by jillithd at 2:28 PM on May 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I'd like to think I've developed higher standards when it comes to choosing what leftover food I will eat, but I'm not sure how much it looks like deranged behavior for me to be correcting my children on how they eat their food. "Honey, honey, could you only eat from one side of the meatloaf! Thanks, yes, that's better."
posted by dawg-proud at 2:37 PM on May 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

finally decided to stop eating my children's leftovers last year, and I felt really good about that, more a person again and not a "mom."

I am the father of two small children, and their leavings now constitute something like 1/5 of my diet. I grew up in the punk scene, where dumpster diving was encouraged - it has proved to be good preparation for parenting.
posted by ryanshepard at 2:41 PM on May 14, 2015 [9 favorites]

Leftovers hell, I just make extra of what she wants which means we eat a lot of balled up turkey and cheese together
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:49 PM on May 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

I haven't smoked weed in quite a long time now, but ever since I acquired children I can't help but think that getting baked would make childcare a lot easier to cope with. Like you know how taking care of kids is both exhausting and mind-numbingly boring? And watching them at a playground is like being trapped in a hellscape of bright colors and ennui? If memory serves, marijuana seems like an IDEAL ACCESSORY to this kind of daily immolation of selfhood. Anna and Sara know what time it is!
posted by little mouth at 2:55 PM on May 14, 2015 [13 favorites]

I think the problem with your plan is the sheer amount of concentration it takes to keep them from falling off things or murdering each other. It's like the airport: for ages nothing happens and you're bored out of your mind, then suddenly everything needs to happen at once.
posted by Omnomnom at 3:10 PM on May 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

I am sort of bothered by the fact that it's considered wrong for a MAN to write something like this. Or that it's wrong for a white person to write a black character. Or for a heterosexual person to write a homosexual character. Oh and it's also wrong to NOT write a black character or a female character or a homosexual character. Poor writers.
posted by Hazelsmrf at 3:18 PM on May 14, 2015 [4 favorites]

This makes me think he has been reading MetaFilter threads about Kanye. Hello, Colin!
posted by onlyconnect at 3:21 PM on May 14, 2015

Oh, wow, another entry in the "It's not misogynist if it's about MOMS!" internet writing contest.
posted by palliser at 3:56 PM on May 14, 2015

I am sort of bothered by the fact that it's considered wrong for a MAN to write something like this. Or that it's wrong for a white person to write a black character. Or for a heterosexual person to write a homosexual character. Oh and it's also wrong to NOT write a black character or a female character or a homosexual character. Poor writers.

Just do everything right and nothing wrong and don't ever try anything new unless it's the sort of new thing you should be doing without having to be told.

It's not that complicated. (sips latte)
posted by Sebmojo at 4:08 PM on May 14, 2015 [9 favorites]

Never doubt this is a true and honest particular flavour of child rearing in these modern times.
posted by clvrmnky at 4:24 PM on May 14, 2015

> I am sort of bothered by the fact that it's considered wrong for a MAN to write something like this

Then you can go ahead and consider that it's not wrong for a MAN to write something like this. It's just opinions.
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:33 PM on May 14, 2015

I am tempted neither by Hot Dads at the park nor by covert heroin use, but apart from that, every word out of Anna's mouth could have come out of mine.
posted by KathrynT at 4:34 PM on May 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yes! I also stopped eating toddler leftovers for lunch last year!

I stopped eating toddler leftovers years ago because my children stopped being toddlers. These days I eat 8-and-10-year-old-son leftovers. Does that make me a mom? Because I was pretty sure I was a dad, but I'm flexible. Are you going to finish those fries?
posted by The Bellman at 4:51 PM on May 14, 2015 [8 favorites]

Sometimes I have to be careful, though, because we started telling my three-year-old to "stop acting like Mussolini" (he made the trains run on time!) when he would get infuriated at his older brother for "playing trains wrong" when he was in that dictator-of-the-toys phase, and then I caught him yelling angrily at another kid who was hogging the trains, "DON'T BE MUSSOLINI!" which, while good life advice, kinda cuts down on playdates.

I am immagining doing this here in Rome, the subsequent parent-teacher conference at Peanut #1's preschool and parental ire at the neighborhood playgrounds and it would be glorious.

Thank you Eyebrows McGee. My girl crush on you has deepened and I am giggle snorting into a pillow trying not to wake up the kids.
posted by romakimmy at 5:28 PM on May 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

I don't really care that this was written by a guy, it definitely resonated enough for me to immediately send it to the women from that time period of my life with whom I'm still close friends.

We never considered heroin (openly, anyhow) but we definitely considered little cans of Sofia sparkling wine to be no different than juice boxes, if you squinted a bit.

Having babies and toddlers was super fun, but also really weird and dark and isolating and competitive in a way I didn't want to engage with but sometimes got stuck engaging with because it was the price of socializing, and I'm glad I met my Sara and my Anna, even if we probably also had to introduce ourselves to one another fourteen times before it stuck.

If I still had little ones I'd definitely agree that this is laughing with, and from the vantage point of a decade removed from that period of parenthood, it's laughing at in a way I probably didn't think I'd be laughing when I was In The Shit, which is therapeutic as hell.
posted by padraigin at 5:35 PM on May 14, 2015 [7 favorites]

Here is NYT Op Ed by the same author on a similar subject but about both moms and dads.
posted by onlyconnect at 5:51 PM on May 14, 2015

Then you can go ahead and consider that it's not wrong for a MAN to write something like this. It's just opinions.

Well of course it's just opinions, but it seems that this particular opinion is everywhere these days. My husband is a video game writer on big AAA titles at a big company. He works on high profile games, you should see the kind of shit he gets accused of. He's a homophobe bigot misogynist racist etc etc, it doesn't matter what the character is, there's always something someone finds offensive about it, posts it to some big internet site and then there's a ton of people picking the story apart. If you write a black character, then people are angry because you're not black so how can you write authentic black characters? If you write a white character people are angry because where's the racial diversity? If you write a woman and you're NOT a woman then wow it's so misogynist or sexist. If you don't write a woman then you're fucked too. There does not seem to be much that writers can do right these days without it being a controversy. I mean oh no this writer wrote about moms and he's NOT A MOM. That is what writers DO.
posted by Hazelsmrf at 6:01 PM on May 14, 2015

There does not seem to be much that writers can do right these days without it being a controversy. I mean oh no this writer wrote about moms and he's NOT A MOM. That is what writers DO.

You're acting like it's impossible for there to be qualitative, experiential differences in how, for example, one white writer writes black characters vs another white writer. That's ridiculous.

Your Nigel isn't automatically writing well or sensitively just because he "is a writer". People who categorically blow off the idea that there could be valid criticisms of how outgroup members write people who are not like them, especially if that categorical denial references Tumblr in any way, are in my experience exactly the kind of people who fuck it up and should be criticized, usually harshly, and who would benefit immensely from "stick to what you know, kid".
posted by The Master and Margarita Mix at 6:15 PM on May 14, 2015 [6 favorites]

I'll tell you what, I think it definitely mattered that Tom Perotta was a man when he wrote "Little Children", a book that sold like crazy and got great reviews and that was about pretty much what this silly little FPP was about, only so clearly man-gazeriffic as to make me throw it across the room, as I read it whilst nursing a newborn and having a toddler at my feet.

This, this is to me more of a pastiche of something anyone with some mom friends could bang together, done in a way that tickled MY funnybone at least, and touched a couple spots that are still tender all these years later, and I'm not sure the gender of the writer really mattered, but the ability to tease out the things about playground drama that are actually funny and also kind of pathetic and sad. I know a few guys who are good at this kind of thing who could have done it, too, without having been In The aforementioned Shit themselves.
posted by padraigin at 6:35 PM on May 14, 2015

I mean oh no this writer wrote about moms and he's NOT A MOM.

Literally one person said they were "kind of bothered" by a guy having written this, so I think in the context of this thread this is a little out of proportion. And writers writing characters outside their gender or race are usually not criticized solely for doing this, but doing it badly, usually by relying on tired stereotypes.

But really, any writer hoping they can work without someone being angry at what they've done is delusional.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 7:02 PM on May 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

Mod note: Couple comments removed, please let the side argument about NOT A MOM drop at this point.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:06 PM on May 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

Any writer hoping they can work writing is probably delusional.
posted by Neale at 7:07 PM on May 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

I am tempted neither by Hot Dads at the park nor by covert heroin use, but apart from that, every word out of Anna's mouth could have come out of mine.

I notice you're not objecting to the coke.
posted by Omnomnom at 11:40 PM on May 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

I liked it for the Waiting for Godot vibe. LikE the momnesia moments. It made playground blues a lot more surreal and interesting! They sound more catty than the moms I talk to, though.
posted by Omnomnom at 11:44 PM on May 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Haha, I sound like Anna pretty much all the time, and I get so tired of listening to myself. Although explaining to my children why the state (in the person of their mother) has a monopoly on force and how hitting your brother back rather than appealing to state authority for punishment will cause us to collapse into a state of nature actually serves the dual purpose of amusing me and making my children stop fighting because it's easier to stop hitting than to listen to mommy explain Leviathan again.

Be careful for when they realise they can use the Power of The Lecture to distract you and you wind up missing their bed time by an hour because you were "discussing" In Praise of Idleness and lost track of time.

I stopped eating toddler leftovers years ago because my children stopped being toddlers. These days I eat 8-and-10-year-old-son leftovers. Does that make me a mom? Because I was pretty sure I was a dad, but I'm flexible. Are you going to finish those fries?

"Dad, you're basically a recycle bin aren't you."
posted by fullerine at 5:23 AM on May 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Be careful for when they realise they can use the Power of The Lecture to distract you and you wind up missing their bed time by an hour because you were "discussing" In Praise of Idleness and lost track of time.

Fortunately, the familial panel discussion on tradition, inconsistency and conformity that ensued after the question, "Why can't I have a pepperoni pizza on Good Friday?" began several hours before going to the restaurant. It still ended with plates being swapped around and the statement, "I would have rather had a pepperoni pizza."
posted by frimble at 5:51 AM on May 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

I've definitely had the experience, when my kids were this age, of getting halfway through a conversation with someone I thought was a new parent at the park/daycare/playground, and suddenly realizing that I'd already had the exact same conversation with that same person (recently, usually) and had completely forgotten it.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 9:00 AM on May 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

I notice you're not objecting to the coke.

I've been sleep deprived for nine years.
posted by KathrynT at 9:28 AM on May 15, 2015 [5 favorites]

My doctor made a point of commenting to me about the temptation to graze on the kiddo's leavings and he was dead-on right. It's diet advice that belongs right next to the smaller plate & don't snack straight out of the chips bag stuff.
posted by phearlez at 9:41 AM on May 15, 2015