In full disclosure, I loves me an internet dustup. For some reason other people’s fucked-up-edness makes me feel calmer about my own fucked-up-ed petty self.

Also, in full disclosure, on the side of people ascribing violence to words, I have my own history that keeps me picking sides. Somewhere in Boston, someone probably gives himself a rousing pat on the back now and again for getting me shitcanned for writing those words. Maybe hearing that I landed softly (I got fucking lemon trees in my yard, and they ain’t even metaphorical), he figures he played a role in helping me on to a new life. But, I will never forget/forgive being sent to see a psychiatrist because of words, you know the creative writing type.

This thing going on in the mommy-land “tweets’ of Twitter is described by THE key player here. Basically, she wrote on Twitter “If I smother my 3 year old…is it really a crime.” In other words, using the newfangled computer machines, she said something about a million twenty mothers of toddlers have wondered, thought, said or silently hummed in some way or another.

But, in another side of the Twitter universe, another mom, or maybe it was really a group of mothers, a posse if you will, got worried. It’s unclear and hard to play detective and sleuth through the disparate threads. I think some comments were deleted, and nothing from the “#storystraight” crowd really elucidates what happened. Mostly, I gather, the person in the middle is not an asshole. Fair enough.

Anyway, one way or another some cops showed up to make sure the mom was not really hell bent on smothering. How much would that suck? Seriously, you can speculate on the worseness of dead babies all you want, but a knock on the door from the po po looking for some answers is a major night dampener. Your average non-crime committing person is going to feel like his/her parade has been peed on majorly.

But, really, it’s not about what did or didn’t happen that has led to the gibberish that I am now writing. Nope. I mean, sure, as someone who was accused of being a “risk” of workplace violence because of a non-actual threat, you know because “risk” isn’t nebulous and shit filled at all, I imagine it’s clear where I might fall in this train wreck. Here’s the brief version, fucking learn how to read and don’t assume other people think like you, people.

So, here’s my point. Reading up on the Twitter controversy prompted me to delve into and read up on various mommy blogs just out of curiosity. There seems to essentially be two types — rainbow, unicorn, love vomiting joy and everybody else.

I don’t know what age I was, but for some reason or another, Pat and I ended up having a conversation about her early days as a mother. In the suburban town of the late ’50s, she sounded from what she said like an interloper, a Margaret Mead among the natives observing. By the time of the conversation, I think each of us, Pat and I, had read some Betty Friedan. I read it, but my mother had lived it. She had stories of neighbors taking diet pills and “mothers little helpers.” Of some woman who came back after some time away and never talked about the electroshock treatments. Fun stuff.

For Pat, her sanity, she said, was knowing that as soon as everyone of us kiddies were in school she’d be jumping back into the workforce. Of course, fate intervened on that little plan, and she was in the workforce sooner rather than later the sole parent and breadwinner and widow. The jury is still out on what that entry into working meant for her sanity.

Pat, as a mom, when I was a kid, as a teacher, when I became aware of her work and involvement at the school where she taught, and as an adult, when I reached a point where she’d talk with me grown-up like, she taught me to distrust any mother or family where everything is too nice. Real families don’t talk like 1950s television.

Erma Bombeck became a household name because of moms like my mom. As did Peg Bracken and her answer to the Joys of Cooking. Foibles and frustrations, right?

So here, literally 50 plus years later, judging by the ages of Pat’s first spawn, the same “fluffy” that Friedan wrote about is getting fueled and hyped and computerized. Now, there is a backlash, I guess, from a younger generation. It’s weirdly retro.

I was/am puzzled by the number of Twitter and ‘blog comments that basically question why a mother would ever say those mean words. There’s a lot of talk about vulgarity and cracks made about how words affect the little munchkins and good parenting and bad language and shock over the implied violence. A lot of clucking and tsk’ing, basically. I just don’t get it.

I don’t understand the mommy blogs that never complain. I don’t understand the grown people with names like Yummykins and Angelhocks and MySweetPatootieSweetie and no sense of ironic detachment. My world of comfort doesn’t start with Ann Geddes. She creeps me out.

Nope. Give me women like Diane Arbus every time.

‘Course, what this all boils down to is it’s probably good and right that I have not bred.

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