Bonus points for being a RBM to somebody else's kid!

The other day, I was sitting at my desk. It was one of those days when everything's completely quiet until I'm silly enough to actually sit down and try to concentrate on some work. And then the yelling started.

Not my kid. He was playing quietly in his room. No, it was our neighbor's daughter, who really is a perfectly nice girl. But her mom was either out of earshot or ignoring her on purpose. So the daughter did that thing that even the best kids do sometimes. She called, "Mommy!" And then, when that elicited no answer, she called again, in exactly the same tone (and volume, and tempo, and everything else), "Mommy!"

I'm not completely evil. (Really.) But the thing is, because of the way our apartment is situated, we get a lot of noise from this family, and they get very little of ours. And as it happens, my white-noise machine had just died. So had my clock radio's CD player. So I had none of my usual defenses.

I can tune out a fair amount. But she just kept saying it. "Mommy!" Pause. Pause. "Mommy!" Pause. Pause. Not just a couple of times. My computer's clock logged in five minutes of this, while I gritted my teeth and tried to work.

I don't know which was worse: that the mother was just letting this go on and on and on (if I can hear it in another building, I have a hard time believing that the mother in question could be genuinely oblivious), or that the little girl's mental logic was apparently along the lines of, "Hey! This didn't work the first four thousand times! Instead of moving closer to the person to whom I'm speaking, changing my wording in any way, or just getting on with my life, I'm going to say the same thing again! And again!"

After five minutes of "Mommy!" "Mommy!" "Mommy!" had elapsed, I knew that this wasn't the real world. I'd died without noticing it and been sent to a very personalized Hell.

I couldn't take it any more. My window was wide open. I used to be an improvisational street actress, and I have some training in projecting my voice.

The next time the little girl said, "Mommy!" I belted out, "ANSWER HER!"

There was a stunned silence.

And then I heard the little girl saying, almost to herself, "What the...?"

The worst part, so far as my RBM status is concerned, is that a minute later I had to go down the hall to get something. As I passed my son's room, he gave me a look that told me just what he thinks of people who set a good example to their tender young offspring by bellowing out windows.

"Um, did you hear that?" I asked, a little sheepishly.

He cupped his hand to his ear, as if he'd been stricken deaf by my shouting. "WHAT?" he asked.

A RBM to admire from a safe distance!

One of the best bad mommies I know is someone I've never met, but read about on a loop. A virtual friend of a friend. This woman's daughter would sometimes get very surly and uncooperative when she and her mother went grocery shopping. The mom was always completely cheerful. She'd just give her a big smile, take a deep breath, and start belting out "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt" at the top of her lungs. Actually, her daughter almost never gave her a hard time on these trips any more, because her mom was completely shameless. She'd keep it up loud and proud until her daughter was silently begging for sweet death to release her (the daughter, although possibly the mom, too) from this torture.

I love this so much. A kid's got nothing on you if you pull this. She can't do the "Help, my mommy's being mean to me!" thing. She can't call Amnesty International. She can't even complain, really. She's just got a happy, happy mommy who wants to share her cheer with the whole wide world.

And to everybody who's going to write in saying how evil it is that I would laugh at this: Look, I know it's a drag to be a kid and have to go on boring errands. But really? It's fun for us grownups?

Well, it is now. Now that we know how to make it fun.

...or maybe she just has a really memorable speaking voice? (Nah, you're right. It's the screaming.)

Here's my Real Bad Mommy story:

We live on an acre+ in the woods, and we don't really socialize with our neighbors. When the leaves are on the trees, you can't see any other homes from our property. We love the privacy.

Nearly two years ago, a loose dog came through our front yard. I walked across the street to see if he belonged to the people who had just built a new house. He did not, but the neighbor and I had a nice 20-minute chat about our quiet little street. That was the entire extent of our relationship.

A few weeks ago, I was speaking at a community event when a gentleman suddenly asked "Hey, aren't you my neighbor? I recognize your voice!"

Yes, I'm a Real Bad Mommy who apparently yells at her kids way too loudly!

Also, while I was writing this, my toddler spilled half a bottle of French vanilla coffee creamer IN my couch. I'm guessing everyone within a 5 mile radius already knows that.

Wait -- didn't the president just condemn this kind of behavior?

My son was being very sarcastic and rude, and I was annoyed. So when he went to take a drink, I kept making goofy faces and weird noises so he would splutter every time he tried to so much as sip. I must have tortured him for a solid five minutes before we arrived at an agreement that both of us would act like civilized human beings for the rest of the evening, at least.

Utterly unreasonable...

When I tell my kids that I'm going to make a cup of coffee, or read to myself all by myself for a little while, or something equally demanding and absurd, I add in a very serious, wide-eyed way, "Is that all right with you?" Of course it drives them insane every time. But it does get the job done.

Double bad mommy -- loses arguments with her kid, plus she's going to Hell.

My son spends ninety percent of his time at the park running around like a loon, because that's his job. I spend my time there sitting in my little portable chair, because that's mine. We only run into trouble when he decides every once in a while that he wants to sit down, and I point to the ground and invite him to pull up a patch of grass.

He inspected my chair ruefully on a day like this. "That's a captain's chair," he said. "I want to become a captain, because then I could sit in the chair."

"No, you couldn't," I said territorially. "If you become a captain, I'll become a colonel, and I'll outrank you, so I get the chair."

We had a brief discussion of ranks -- he's too young to know much about them, plus we're pacifists. "If you become a colonel," he said at last, "I'll be a general."

"Fine," I said. "I'll be the king."

He knew what to do with that, having read a lot of Calvin and Hobbes (the comic, not the philosophers). "Then I'll become emperor," he said.

"Then I'll become God," I said. (We're irreverent pacifists.) I sat triumphantly. I never win an argument with him, and I had to win this one. Even he couldn't figure out a way to outrank God.

He was stumped for a minute. He had to sit there and think about it. Then he smiled. "If you become God," he said, "I'll become God's mom."

Well, what do you know? He won that one, too.

Okay, "But the white chemical powder keeps baby quiet and happy" sounds wrong even to ME...

The littlest one was colicky and screamed and screamed, never napped,  
and only slept through the night in two- or three-hour bursts. When  
she could finally move around under her own power, the noise blissfully  
stopped. Apparently it was the confinement making her miserable. We  
set her down and let her go.  Enjoying our first bit of quiet in many  
many months, we suddenly realized it was too quiet and ran through the  
house calling her. She came crawling out of the bathroom with a big  
smile and a little white ring around her nose and mouth from where she  
had picked up the Comet for a sniff.

Real Bad Mommies LOVE those double standards!

My kids were always yelling to me from wherever they were in the house.  I got tired of it, so I came up with what I thought was a good policy.  "I'm in the kitchen if you want to talk to me," I told them.

This worked great, until they started telling me, "I'm in the backyard if you want to talk to me."  I had to explain that it really doesn't go both ways.  I still don't think they get it.

The Return of the Real Bad Mommies!

Okay, it's been way too long. I have stories saved up -- some of my own, some from friends, some from total strangers -- and it's time to start posting again. I promise to start posting regularly. In fact, after this public service announcement, I'll post something actually funny. But will you please, if you think about it, send in some Real Bad stories of your own? It gets so lonely without you! If you're a Real Bad Daddy, please send in your horror stories. We do have a men's auxiliary group, and we'll laugh just as cruelly at your horrifying lack of parenting skills, no matter what you have going on under your belt. --The Baddest of the Bad

The Gift of the Real Bad Mommy

So, wanting to be a good, dutiful parent rearing a sweet and culturally literate child, in honor of the season I just read my nine-year-old son "The Gift of the Magi," by O. Henry. We got to the end of the story, and my voice cracked just a little on those last sentences about how the idiots who sold their best stuff to buy presents for each other were wiser than the wise men who brought presents to baby Jesus. I smiled at my son and shut the book. "So, what do you think?"

He looked absolutely traumatized. "I HATE that story!" he screamed.

"Honey, come on. What's the matter? You mean, because they don't get to use their presents, because, well, they won't work?"

He nodded. "Think about it this way," I said. "I'll bet that those two carry those presents around with them every day, and every time they look at them, they think about how much they love each other. And that's the greatest present of all."

He wasn't buying it. "Sweetie," I tried again. "Her hair will grow back and she'll be able to wear those combs pretty soon. And they'll get rich and he can buy his watch back."

"How?"

"From the pawn broker. I'll bet that's where he sold it."

A demand for more information here, ending with, "But it would take so long to get enough money, he wouldn't be able to get his watch back."

"Well, then, he could get a really good watch just like his."

"But it wouldn't be the same!"

"Well, not exactly, but -- "

"It wouldn't be as good! It wouldn't be as old! It wouldn't be the same!" And then, just to make sure that I understood the real issue here, "I HATE this story!"

So, since I hadn't been a bad enough mommy yet, I let him stay up late and watch a video so he wouldn't go to bed all depressed, with that story the last thing he experienced right before bed.