More About Rob and his Awesome Parenting Skills

So we are sitting around our dinner table tonight, and I ignite some conversation about what was the best and worst part of everyone's day, and the conversation moves on to crushes, and Leila's face is turning beet red, and I ask Rob the same question she asked me a week or so ago, "How many crushes did you have in the fourth grade?" Most of Rob's childhood has been completely wiped clean from his memory, replaced by useless facts about sports no doubt, so he rubs his temples, searching for an answer, and comes up empty. Seems girls were a ways off when he was in fourth grade. I think he's almost ready for puberty though, so moody!

Anyway, conversation goes on and I start making fun of him for something that I will tell you about in a future blog post because its so goddam funny, and he starts telling Leila how when I was in fourth grade I made out with a tree. Now, this is completely untrue, and how you all know its untrue is that if I had made out with a tree in the fourth or any grade, I would totally tell you about it and I would be hilarious in the process. I vehemently denied making out with a tree, mostly because it impugned my candor, but I did tell Leila about how I made out with the back of my hand.

Did you ever do that? I would either make out with my own hand, alone, for practice, or, when my friends and I were playing Grease or Love Boat or something, and I would inevitably have to play the part of the man because my mom made me have the infernal short Dorthy Hamill haircut, we would put our palms together and kiss the back of our own hands instead of actually kissing each other, which would have been grody.

I also told Leila that my barbies kissed all the time. I didn't tell her that they got knocked up, just that they kissed, and Leila's all, "Well, what else would you do with Barbies?!" At this point my mind goes back to the Barbie Sex youtube videos, and I have to silently remind myself that Leila has no Barbies in her toy chest right now. Phew.

Being the amazing parent that I am, I see this as an opportunity. One of Oprah's teaching moments. So I say, "You can do a lot more with a Barbie than pretend she's making out with Justin Bieber, you know. You can pretend that she's a veterinarian, or that she's curing cancer, or that she's an artist, or is writing books..." at which time Rob says, "Or that she's working at Rite Aid."

Me: "You know, I try to use these little opportunities, and you just manage to flush them down the shitter." No disrespect to the fine employees of Rite Aid intended. "At least you could have said Barbie could be a pharmacist."

Leila thought this was the funniest thing she'd ever heard in her whole life, and threw herself on the floor laughing.

For another example of this type of Rob's parenting prowess, click here.