"You need a license to drive a car. Hell, you need a license to catch a fish. But they'll let any butt-reaming asshole be a father."*

    Sometime in high school, and maybe again in college, a teacher (or four) told me (or the class at large—I can’t remember anything, I’m a goldfish) that I should be aware of starting every paragraph of a paper with the same word. It occurred to me again recently because I’m pretty certain that I tend to start most of my blog posts with the word “I.” I’m a complete and utter narcissist, so okay. I’m aware of it, don’t worry.

"And they say goldfish have no memory, I guess their lives are much like mine."**

    It’s hard to write these blog posts sometimes because they require me to be somewhat more honest than I’d really like to be, and for that reason I don’t always feel like contributing. Honesty in writing is hard but largely necessary if you don’t want to write about the beauty and magic of rainbows and butterflies or bore everyone to death (or both). That’s why writing can sometimes blow as an art form.

    Unlike acting or painting or music, I can’t really pretend that the things I express are anything other than what they are, because I’m not writing fiction, which also kind of blows because my life ain’t all that interesting. (Shut up, Word! I know I’m not supposed to say “ain’t”!) But the following may offend/annoy some people, and for that I'm truly sorry. And for the record, I love (some) kids!

    Anyway.

    I don’t want to shit on parenthood or make it seem like child rearing is an easy job because I know it’s hard and it IS a job. I know firsthand how keeping a toddler alive all day long is the opposite of fun. And I know stay-at-home parents have to want to hit the bottle pretty hard after a day of zero adult conversation. I know it sucks to have a 12-year-old ask about sex or naughty parts or “hair down there.” I know how awful it feels to watch a kid you love get treated like shit by his school friends and how irritating it is to feel like you’ve been turned into someone’s personal maid/chef/bodyguard/chauffeur. All these things I know. (And I did manage to use the word “I” about 47 times in this paragraph. Narcissist.)

    But none of these things change the fact that (some) people with kids tend to be assholes in public. They run their strollers over your feet, take up four times the room a person is supposed to have, refuse to hold doors, and believe that somehow their adorable little assholes are goddamn royalty.

    In short, many parents of young children seem to feel entitled.

    In the past week or so I’ve witnessed the following:

1.     A young, Beverly Hills mom pushed her $8000 stroller and her $10,000 ass directly in front of my line of vision as I shopped at Trader Joe’s. (I would’ve received worse treatment from a mom at Whole Foods, but still.) I gave her one of my classic, huge, passive aggressive sighs as a thank you.

2.     A man in the Pacific Palisades crossed the street in front of my car with his two sons. It wasn’t a cross walk or a stop sign and these were not toddlers on bicycles. He just put his hand up, gesturing for me to stop and walked as slowly as possible in front of my car and across the street.

3.     I held the door for a harried looking mom with two kids, one in a stroller, at the Coffee Bean. She acted like that was my job. No “thank you,” no acknowledgement of any kind.

4.     At Toppings, one of those self-serve frozen yogurt places, a woman’s kid was throwing the tantrum of a lifetime. This little asshole was screaming her head off and the mother’s friend or sister tried to calm the kid down but she did those crazy, writhing, full-body kicks that make it impossible to hold them. So the friend/sister looked at the mom like, “Are you gonna handle this or what?” But the mom just acted like it wasn’t happening. “Not my kid!” Great. The rest of us will just sit here and enjoy our yogurt while your kid shrieks like the little shit she obviously is. She must’ve inherited her bitchiness from you.

    I’m not trying to be a jerk, here. I know it’s hard. I KNOW.

    I remember when my friend Regan’s son, Jimmy, was a baby the three of us went for a ride somewhere and the kid was just screaming his head off. Of course…he was a BABY. But what I most remember is Regan’s*** sense of resignation. She turned to me calmly and said, “It’s times like these when I want to drive my car into a brick wall.” And while I laughed, I felt sorry for her, too. So I try to be patient, I really do.

    But it’s not the kids that drive me nuts. It’s the parents who act like they’re so much better than me because they have a kid. They get on the airplane in front of me**** and they get inoculations I want but have to wait for. They get to take up entire aisles of eating establishments and they get crayons at their tables. I’m pretty sure they get tax breaks, too.

    That’s fine.  Have your babies because I know it’s rewarding in many ways and it’s romantic to have a baby with someone you love and it’s cool to get to invent a name for somebody. But do you have to be so rude about it? (Disclaimer: I’m not talking about ALL parents, just a huge chunk of them. None of my friends has ever been an Entitled Parent in front of me.)

    Just say "thank you" when I hold a door for you. Try not to run over my feet with your stroller, because I don’t do that to you with my shopping cart, so I know it’s avoidable. (When my family was at Disneyland in March, my sister Elizabeth was nailed by no fewer than 3 strollers and only one parent said he was sorry, and it wasn’t even very sincere.) If your kid is screaming, slap him or her in the face and say, “Never again! You got me, jerk?” Just kidding.

    You don’t have to be like the mom I saw at the movie theatre yesterday buying $50 worth of concessions while her kid waited over in a corner, and then when the kid tried to ask a question the rotund (I’m being generous here) mother yelled, “Shut up!” and proceeded to order three more boxes of nachos...presumably for herself. But seriously, take the damn kid outside of the eating establishment until he quiets down. And maybe just be courteous. Parenthood hasn’t given you a free pass. Some of us have gone years intentionally NOT having children so that our lives might be a little simpler, quieter and less “rewarding.”

Rick Moranis and Harley Kozak represent one of the many ways to f**k up a kid in Parenthood.

*This is the second time I've quoted Keanu's character in Parenthood (Ron Howard, 1989). I've loved this movie since Gabe introduced me to it in high school. And, of course, it's no reflection of my feelings for my own father who is a dynamite parent and errs on the side of excessive politeness. 

**Ani DiFranco's "Little Plastic Castle."

***Link to Regan's blog.

****I can't stand that families with small children get to board before the rest of the airplane passengers. Why? Just because they've intentionally made their lives a huge pain in the ass doesn't mean I should have to suffer. Old people and the handicapped I get: they aren't slow and feeble on purpose (except for fat people who ride in wheelchairs because they don't feel like walking because their knees hurt because they're fat: unfair). But just because I didn't have four kids in the last 5 years I'm expected to wait behind The Brady Bunch? I paid good money for this ticket and I got in line BEFORE YOU!

"Some of the girls were making fun of her because of her hair. She does look kind of stupid. I don't know what we were thinking!"*

      Well, I cut my own bangs the other night. It’s a mistake I’ve made in the past but after a college career full of numerous haircuts from friends and roommates, I promised myself only professional haircuts from there on out. But Thursday night I thought, “Hey, I can do this! They’re so long I’ll just bunch them all together and cut off the bottoms! Easy!” (And eerily reminiscent of the time when I was 15 and I put my hair in a ponytail and then cut the ponytail off. It doesn’t work the way you want it to—unless you wanted Marcia Brady’s hair that came to a point in the back like an arrow showing the way to her butt.)

        There’s clearly a reason you have to have a license to cut hair. It’s not easy at all. And you need special scissors, not nail scissors. And even if you are a licensed, talented hair stylist, you probably don’t cut your own hair but instead have someone else do it (also a professional).

        But I cut my own bangs and I went to bed feeling pretty satisfied with myself.

        When I woke up in the morning, my hair was greasy and matted and looked confusingly wrong. I thought maybe I just needed to comb it, but that didn’t solve the problem. I looked like a little kid that got tired of having bangs and so decided to cut them off up to the hairline. I didn’t have much to work with, but I had to try to even them out at least, so it would look somewhat intentional.

        I got the kitchen scissors and attempted a straight line angling up from my right temple to my mid-forehead on the left. It still didn’t look right so I got my razor out of the shower. I stared at it for a minute and then put it away. No way that was going to work, and even I’m smart enough not to razor my own head.

        I quit for a while and later on last evening, I went out to Fatburger because I was craving some red meat. While I was waiting in the drive thru, I noticed a Sally Beauty Supply in the parking lot. It seemed like some sort of sign. So after I got my food, I went into Sally’s and looked for professional grade hair scissors. And you know what? Those things are frickin’ expensive! No way was I going to buy $65 scissors—I could have gotten a professional haircut for that much (which I may still have to do).

        So I went home and ate my hamburger and then stared at myself in the mirror for a while. It was clear that if I continued cutting my bangs I was going to wind up looking like one of the Barbie’s whose hair I cut in childhood. One of our Barbies (Stewardess Barbie) had a full, voluptuous 80’s perm to go with her smart navy blue work uniform and either my sister Elizabeth or I gave her a hairstyle much like that of model Amber Rose. Except for not at all attractive. 

Amber Rose. Much prettier than Stewardess Barbie post-haircut.

        And finally inspiration struck. I dug around until I found this weird razor I bought from an infomercial years ago that was supposed to be for easily giving your bikini line a dry shave (shudder). I don’t think I ever ended up using it, or if I did it must not have worked. I found it in my bedroom at my folks’ house over Christmas and thought it might be handy for use on my face or nose hairs (and it is!). It’s called Bikini Touch and it looks like this:

Bikini Touch. A multifunctional tool.

        I found a battery for the Bikini Touch and started cleverly shaving off the bottom part of my bangs so they had more of a blunt edge (a term I learned from my incredibly talented friend, Erin, who is an ACTUAL hair stylist). In the process, I started to shave off a little bit of my left eyebrow, which sucks, but otherwise it looks kind of good. The rest of my hair is another story. And I think my eyebrow will grow back. Of course, I already have an inexplicable bald spot in my right eyebrow, so nothing’s definite.

        But seriously, starting now until the end of time or until I get married and let myself go, I will never cut my own hair again. That’s a promise.

        And here's a bad picture of my bad haircut, which I'm oddly proud of (the bangs, not the picture--the picture is awful). 

I am damn sexy. And naturally blurry.

*Keanu Reeves as Todd in Parenthood. One of his and Ron Howard's finest films. (Ron Howard, 1989).