Keeping her off the Pole

I was walking down the main street of my very Mayberry-like town with my four year old Love Monster when she grabbed a skinny light pole and spun around on it yelling with pure ecstasy, “I love poles! They are so fun!” 

 Now there was nothing Singing in the Rain about this. This was definitely Marisa Tomei in The Wrestler. The three women having coffee at a nearby table stared. I tried to laugh it off, but no one else was.

 “Was that good mama?!” Love Monster screamed starting to mount up once again.

 “Whoa whoa whoa there, Courtney Love,” I said pulling her off. 

 “But that was fun!” She pouted all the way home. “You never let me do what I want!” I imagined she was twenty years old and I was pulling her half-naked out of a club. I shuddered at the thought.

 By the way, fun fact: Anna Nicole Smith died the day Love Monster was born. I’m not going to lie. For a moment I was scared that marred up soul had found it’s way into my Love Monster’s body. 

 That evening Love Monster ran for floor lamp after bath time nude as Elizabeth Berkley in Show Girls. 

 “Papa look!” 

 No way. She repeated her now mastered spin and perfect dismount. My husband looked at me horrified. There was nothing I could say. Where did we go wrong? Are we not hugging her enough? Did it totally screw her up letting her watch Family Guy? And she’s pretty and she’s tall and she has perfect skin and hair and pouty lips. My God, she going to change her name to Love Monster Delicious isn’t she? Am I going to have to visit her on the job and pay her twenty bucks to hang out with me? Is that even the going rate? How expensive is this going to be?

 I can’t get that day out of my mind and my concerns have escalated. I’m used to hearing the comment, “Oh man, you are going to be in so much in trouble in ten years,” in reference to my daughters. I used to take this as a compliment and not think much of it. Now it gives me the shakes. I didn’t think I’d be worried about this aspect of having daughters for years. So I do what I do best and overanalyze.

1. See above. She thinks poles are super fun to spin around.

2. She has an obsession with licking things. 

 “ Are you licking that?” I ask her.

 “It’s an ice cream cone, mama.”

  “No it’s not. What is that?”

  “It’s a door knob.”  She answers giving it one final lick.

  “Yeah baby it’s a door knob. Take a nap.”

1. She loves to run into the bathroom while I’m taking a shower, whip open the curtain and yell “You have a great body mama!” (That’s weird. But I’m taking any compliment I can get even though I’m pretty sure she’d say that to a 300 pound circus fat lady).

2. She couldn’t wait to put on her pajamas when my friend Brice (who is incredibly good looking) came over so she could model them for him.

3. If she kisses anyone, it’s inappropriately long and she holds the person’s face. I think she saw this in a Disney movie. (But on a positive note if she sees anyone kissing, she says “They love each other don’t they mama?”)

4. She told me this one morning: “I had a dream last night that I was wearing a shirt that had holes cut where my boobs are. I want a shirt like that.”

 I’m in trouble, aren’t I?

 I know I deserve every bit of this by the way. 

 I was seven. My little brother, Ryan, was taking a nap so I had the playroom all to myself. I began to play with my coveted She-Ra when I noticed my brother’s He-Man lying all muscle-y and lonely-like in the corner of the room with his pile of transformers.

  Well Ryan is not here... I thought to myself.

  So I opened up Castle Gray skull next to She-Ra’s Crystal Castle lining them up so I could create a “secret passage” from He-Man’s torture chamber (That’s what I figured it was. It contained a rack of weapons) and She-Ra’s super sexy bedroom. And when they aligned... nothing could stop what would happen next. Never mind that He-Man and She-Ra were twin siblings. They were too hot to keep their hands off each other. But they never used the bed once. She-Ra preferred being bound to the weapons rack or bent over the laser cannon base. I searched out Wonder woman’s whip (I could never find her otherwise she would have been in on this action) to fulfill He-Man’s masochistic needs.

 And my parents are totally normal! I swear I hadn’t seen any of this stuff anywhere. For years I thought I invented  S&M. My little seven year old brain was that of a sexual genius! And between She-Ra’s sword of protection and He-Man’s “sword” of power, how great (and safe) must that sex have been? Skeletor never entered the games. I had standards, but sometimes I let him watch. I cherished these He-Man/She-Ra sessions as much as I loved the smell of Strawberry Shortcake’s head (and this was a lot. I fell asleep with S.S’s curly locks under my nose).

 And that was merely the beginning... This is why I have the daughter nightmare times two.

 That was in the eighties in the midwest. Now I live in a world where moms do strip aerobics and invisible friends are teenage boys named Ron that skateboard and smoke. I must be vigilant. How difficult is it going to get when there’s even a woman in Texas who teaches a “Pole dancing for Jesus” class that mixes the obvious combo of exercise, stripping and church service? My eighteen month old was invited to a disco birthday party that was held at a Hollywood night club. You better believe there are poles there. I’m trying my damnedest to follow Chris Rock’s advice and “keep my daughters off the pole,” but there are scansions, merry go rounds, swing sets, railings, subway poles, frickin tether ball courts everywhere you turn. Why do they have to make poles not only accessible, but really, really fun?? It’s like they are magnetic. She’s within a couple feet and her hands fly to it and she must do her patented spin.

 I look at my girls and I worry. I worry they will make the same mistakes I did. No. They are going to makes their own. Horrendously fresh and new. There’s only so much I can do especially since they have my sexual genius genes. I’m going to do my best. At the very least I did not get Love Monster the platform heels and pasties that she wanted in her Easter basket.

Disclaimer: She did not actually want platform heels and pasties. That was a joke.