“Not my hoard, not my problem.” Anthony Cumia/Melissa Stetten LFTC
First off, if you are one of the 3 people on the internet who has not seen Drinking outta cups. Go here now and watch. I’ll wait. Seriously watch. I know it seems stupid but just watch the fucking thing. You’ll be laughing by the end. Ok at least stay til 1 minute 52. “Not my chair, not my problem that’s what I say.” Now the title of this thing will make sense. Also if you don’t watch Live from the Compound with Anthony Cumia and Melissa Stetten, go to iTunes and check it out. They drink, they take calls, and they watch reality tv. The kind of reality tv that makes you lose faith in all of humanity, Intervention, Toddlers and Tiaras, and my personal favorite Hoarders, we will come back to that in a second.
I think we can all agree the mothers on Toddlers and Tiaras are despicable, as MomsForOpie so wonderfully said in the previous blog post “Podcasts and A New Year!” I swear we didn’t plan this out in advance. Great minds think alike I guess. No one wants to be that parent: the overbearing, pressuring, pain-in-the-ass parent. When you first learn you are going to become a parent, you think about what kind of parent you do want to be. In your quest to raise a “normal” kid, you begin to examine how you were brought up. The ways your own parents fucked you up and the ways your own parents raised you well. You remember all the good times and the bad times. The moments that made you who you are today and the moments where you were scarred for life. All this thinking always leads you to “Holy Jesus I hope I don’t end up like my mother.” Take my mother for instance. My mother is a hoarder. Not a disgusting dead cat, shitty diaper hoarder, but a hoarder none the less. She still owns every piece of clothing, newspaper, and any item bought for children since about 1975. No joke. My sister and I found a tote in a closet filled with newspapers from my senior year of high school. I hated high school. I don’t need memontos from my time there. Don’t get me wrong, I love my mother. I named my daughter after her for God’s sake. But she can’t.throw.a.damn.thing.away. She asked 3 people before she threw out a Cubs pennat from 1984. NO ONE WANTS IT! THROW IT AWAY! But I digress. We all take the little quirks we (and our parents have) and do our best not to pass them on to our kids. I, for instance, refuse to keep stuff around the house I don’t need. For example, you will never see anything like this in my house.
No way, no way. The second I see a broken crayon it gets thrown in the trash. I don’t need to keep 4000 broken crayons just so I can be crafty. Ugh. The lesson in this is that I want to make sure my girls know we don’t need to keep every single thing they have ever owned. We keep the important (and well done) artwork and the toys they really enjoy and actually play with. I fence sell their old toys and clothes on a Facebook rummage sale site. When my daughter asks “why,” which she does incessantly btw, I tell her she has enough toys or she has outgrown a toy/outfit and someone else who needs it can use it now. Then I remind her that not everyone is as fortunate to have so many toys, blah, blah, blah and make it some noble thing about giving to others when it’s really about getting all this shit outta my house. I am hoping this leads to young ladies who treasure the sentimental things and have the empathy to give to others when they have more than enough. What quirk are you desperate not to pass on to your kids? What values/morals do you hope your kids learn from you?
