Career and Family
By Chastity Lillicreme
May 7, 2000Last week, while Kelsie was at school and I was dusting off the inside of her diary, I accidentally read a page or two, and learned some things about my daughter that both frightened and angered me. We're all used to looking at our kids as personifications of everything that is good about ourselves and our society, all the while dismissing their foibles and misbehavior as the result of witchcraft or voodoo. I'm the first to admit, I have stoned more than a few Jamaican housekeepers in my day when one of my daughters sassed me back or "forgot" to do her chores. It's happened so many times that we've got a sizable little makeshift cemetary springing up behind the utility shed and the neighbors are starting to ask questions.
But shocking as what I read in her diary may have been, I could at least take solice in the fact that my daughter wasn't having sex with older married men like I know that little whore Erin Ulrich down the street is, or having sex with an 11-year-old boy in her sixth-grade class like I am. She wasn't masturbating to male-male pornography on the web all day, like her older sister, and she wasn't getting drunk in the middle of the day and urinating into the neighbor's open basement window, like I can see my husband doing right now. Kelsie's crime was at the same time less serious than any one of them and more serious than all of them combined. It's still difficult to even type the words: Kelsie had stopped taking her Ritalin.
The first emotion I felt was panic. What had I done wrong? Did I just not see the warning signs? All those times when I thought my daughter was nicely drugged up, had she been faking it? Had my daughter been getting sober with her friends? At parties? What kind of trouble was she getting herself into? Did she have crabs? I couldn't be sure of anyting anymore.
The second emotion I felt was more panic. In the wake of the Columbine shootings, the biggest question everyone asked was, why didn't those little demon's parents know what was going on with their own kids, in their own houses? Had I been just as bad a mother? Could my daughter go on a three day sobriety binge and start shooting up her morning gym class, without me even knowing that she was stockpiling weapons under her bed? Helpless and naked now, my nipples erect from the gentle breaze of the air conditioning, I checked underneath my daughter's bed. I didn't find any guns; only three 90-pound bags of fertilizer and two crates of capped metal pipes. I breathed a sigh of relief and put some of my clothes back on.
The next step was to talk about this with her father, who was also my husband. I called him home from work that day, and gently informed him that Kelsie had been getting sober on and off for the last three months. She was probably in school sober right now, I added. At that, my husband shook his head in shock for a moment, and then my big, tough husband put his face in his hands and cried like a little pussy. It was a heart-wrenching moment for both of us. No woman likes to see her husband act like a faggot, I said to him. So he dried his tears and we both set about deciding on a suitable course of action. After consulting on the internet with several concerned parent groups dedicated to this disorder, we settled on revoking Kelsie's toilet and shower privelages for a week, and she would have to spend the next month sleeping in the basement, on the dusty cement floor behind the hot water heater. It was tough, but it was also fair. There were mice and spiders behind that radiator, so she would at least have something to snack on during the evening. And plus, then we wouldn't need to buy that cat we had been talking about.
At about ten o'clock that evening, when Kelsie came home from swimming, volleyball, track, soccer and choir practice, we sat her down, took her into our arms and dressed her up in our love. We held her tight against us, told her we cared about her, forced her jaw open with a tongue depresser and dropped two Ritalin down her throat. The first one missed and when down her windpipe, which sounded like it was very uncomfortable, but the second one rolled straight down her esophagus, where it belonged. After only a few minutes she stopped struggling, and then we propped her up at the kitchen table with her chemistry book and she dutifully set about reading it cover to cover. Congratulating ourselves that we were good parents and did the right thing, Frank and I tore each other's clothes off and made mad, passionate love on the linoleum floor like two animals.
And Kelsie was so focused on her book that she didn't even notice.
Have any of you readers had similar experiences with your children? What do you do when they just won't take drugs? Share your stories with me at divisiontwo@yahoo.com.
Until then, may love and reason guide you,
Chas.
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divisiontwo wholheartedly agrees with the views expressed in this column.