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Friday, February 20, 2004
The mirror has two Mummies...
Is it Friday already?
Okay. If you're like me (and I'm sure you are, only a little bit taller) you've been waiting breathlessly all week to see if America's Worst Mother™ has finally snapped. Last week, you remember, Meghan was attempting to lure her children Peltandra, Sharona, Assiago, and Nit into The Bath of Swirly Pretty Waters of No Return when she was suddenly struck by the fact that what was pushing her over the edge wasn't her children (not that they're helping matters much) or her estranged husband, but the neighbors. Particularly that bitch, Capable Mother with her fancy-schmancy hamburger & noodle casseroles and her working toilets. At that point Meghan began cleaning her 223-caliber semiautomatic John Muhammad Signature Model™ Bushmaster rifle with big plans for making the neighborhood into a quieter more Meghan-friendly environment.
Well, sometime between last Friday and today Meghan's personality split into two very distinct halves represented by a hectoring devil on one shoulder and a slatternly but overachieving mother on the other:
"You implied it. Let me refresh your memory: 'The tyranny of birthday parties, like Soviet totalitarianism, has its origins in utopian happy-think. The road to Chuck E. Cheese is paved with good intentions.'"
"Well, it is. Dreadful place."
"So you admit it! Given your assertion that birthday parties are akin to Stalinism, or to hell, or both, I hope you will agree that logic dictates that such an enlightened person as yourself obviously would never throw a large, lavish birthday party for your ? what's that sound?"
"Nothing."
"Is that -- is someone singing?"
"I don't think so."
[There is a pause, in which small background voices can be clearly heard belting out "Happy Birthday to You."]
"Oh, that singing."
"Just as I thought. You're just as soppy and spineless as the next mother. You complain about other people throwing extravagant parties for their birthday boys and girls, but when it comes to precious little -- which precious is it this time?"
(With competing personalities arguing in her head and with a very specific mention of "the precious" I suppose I should make an obligatory mention of Gollum from Lord of the Rings...but I'm not going to because I never read the books, okay? So let's just try and stay on topic please....)
Anyway, Meghan has gone all Sybil on us and now the children of the neighborhood are at risk:
"You said eighteen children before."
"Four of them are mine."
" -- Fourteen families, then. And they bought presents, and wrapped them, and they drove through heavy traffic, and circled the block looking for a place to park, and handed their treasured three- and four-year-old cargo to you and what do you do? You whip their children into a frenzy with all this freeze-dancing, pass-the-parcel birthday nonsense, you fill them with sugar ? "
"I haven't!"
" -- practically sending them into diabetic shock ? "
So this is her plan. In a fit of life imitating art Meghan will deny the neighbors their children leaving them like the families of Sam Dent in The Sweet Hereafter only she won't kill the kids in a bus crash. Oh no, that would be too quick. Meghan wants it to be slow. Unfortunately Meghan underestimates the modern American child's capacity to consume massive amounts of sugar with no ill effect other than vibrating at speeds that would make a hummingbird woozy, and her plan goes awry and the children go berserk:
"The thing is, Molly wants to start her own business making cakes. She's done up a little stack of hand-lettered business cards, and everything, and I thought that for the greater entrepreneurial good of Molly and Shelly, for the greater convenience of me, and for the greater birthday fun of Violet, who is after all a social person, that we could have a one-time blowout, invite her whole class, and -- "
[There is another pause. In the background, children can be heard shrieking in a rhythmic fashion reminiscent of the fatal scenes in Lord of the Flies.]
At this point the long absent Mr. Gurdon makes, what turns out to be, an ultimately tragic appearance, stumbling in from another night of cheap booze and even cheaper women. Led by Assiago, the embittered Gurdon children and their diminutive guests assault the philandering boozehound:
"Uh-oh, I think they've got my husband! Yes, there's his face -- hello darling -- oops, now it's gone. He's -- he's submerged under a seething wave of nursery-school children, like Gulliver -- "
Oh, the humanity! Meghan Gurdon in her desire to inflict pain on the neighborhood has instead set in motion what can only be described as a Tiny Tots Theater production of Suddeny, Last Summer in her living room, with her husband in the role of Sebastian Venable.
Next week: Morphine for Daddy and Antipsychotics for Mummy.
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