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Archives from 2002-2006

A while ago, I gave both boys a container of Silly Putty. Riley was only briefly interested in what I remember as being the sole entertaining aspect of Silly Putty — pressing it into the comics page so you have a rubberized Garfield that you can stretch into nightmarish Videodrome proportions — but Dylan was super fascinated with his glow-in-the-dark putty-egg and quickly squirreled it away into his bedroom.

Within a day, he had:

• Smashed the putty into every part of his bed, including his pillows, blankets, and sheets, leaving behind swaths of neon green plastic residue that has thus far resisted my every attempt at removal
• Stuck it on his wall, where it slowly oozed downward until it took on the appearance of a hawked loogie
• Plastered it on the bathroom mirror at a height which implied he’d had to climb onto the counter just to find the most inconvenient placement
• Crushed it into a chair cushion in the living room

And for his grand finale before he received a lifelong Putty Ban:

• Smoothed it over a hot lightbulb and cheerfully observed it bubbling and hissing before his brother thankfully ratted him out

This is the kind of poor decision-making that can prompt you to search your child’s head for skull fractures, right? I’m not saying I’m going to cash in the college fund immediately, I’m just saying the package says ages 3 and up.

I’d been been lightly teasing him about his Reign of Dimethyl Siloxane Terror, until I did the following, all in one afternoon:

• Bit the inside of my cheek while eating an apple
• Bit the same painful spot again while doggedly finishing off the same apple
• Over-enthusiastically tasted a spoonful of broth that had been simmering on the stove for nearly eight hours
• While casting about for something to soothe the pain, I grabbed an ice cube and pressed it to my tongue
• Where it immediately stuck, Christmas Story style
• So I panicked and ripped it free with a horrifying Velcro noise
• Leaving me with a swollen cheek-bite; a raw and bleeding tongue; and a fabulouth lisp

Well. I’ve experienced this time and time again, but apparently I needed a very bad mouth day to be reminded there’s no age limit to bringing forth a comedy of errors with your own damnfool choices.

I’ve been seeing this sponsored video over and over on Instagram — it’s for some sort of meal-planning service, let’s call it sheMeals. In the clip, a stay-at-home-mom-type is texting with her husband. He writes, “What’s for dinner tonight?” And she starts writing back, “I have no idea.” That right there seems like a perfectly normal response to me, perhaps slightly more pleasant than other variations that also seem fully appropriate (“WHAT AM I, A TAKEOUT MENU? PS: YOUR SON TOOK A DUMP BEHIND THE SOFA AGAIN”), but she pauses, then deletes her message. She then types, “Something delicious that you and the kids will love.”

Mom-Lady then goes through the process of showing how the app works, which I guess involves picking a recipe and then getting a customized shopping list, then we cut to her writing him another message: “All taken care of!” At which point he responds, “My hero!”

How many barfs do I have for this ad? All the barfs. The entire depiction of this woman’s lot in life, down to the condescending head-pat at the end.

I finally decided to click through to the comments, in order to complain mightily into the void, and that’s where I saw person after person writing things like “Hey, this looks really cool!” Or “I need this!” A bunch of people who weren’t, like me, getting butthurt over whether or not their (admittedly inconsistent) views on sexism were being represented by a marketing team, but instead were responding to the features and benefits the app purported to offer.

This is when I probably should have quietly exited, chose the “stop showing me this ad” option, and moved on to other important topics, like perhaps delving into why it is the “My hero!” line specifically made me want to put that fictional guy into a Ronda-Rousey armbar submission, but I did leave a message, something along the lines of “Maybe I’ll evaluate your app when your ad isn’t so demeaning to women, GOSH,” and then my kids were like “What’s for dinner?” and I was like goddammit.

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