Fools in April

What to write...what to write...I blithely agreed to step in and do a guest appearance during the new baby days, and then I promptly pooped in my pants because this is such a daunting proposition. Apparently, I'm perfectly happy to write dreck for my own blog, but not so much on someone else's.

So I'm drunk. I thought that would make the words flow better.

It's April Fool's day and already I've had to rearrange my classroom, as my students snuck in yesterday and reversed all the furniture in the room, my clock was set fifteen minutes fast - although now it's missing altogether, and yet another little angel left boob cupcakes on my desk. Long story. For another day.

I could have concocted some elaborate fake story here about new baby Elliott learning to speak French, placentas, sharing breast milk, but like I said before. DAUNTING proposition to write in someone else's space. Plus. You know. I'm drunk.

I was recently asked to record a brief review of my favorite children's books for the website Just One More Book. You can click over for a peek, but my review isn't there yet because I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to record an MP3 file and I could phone it in, but they're in Canada and I don't know how to call Canada either. As I was pondering my incredible and notable lack of technological skill yesterday - hello, I do not know how to make a phone call - I was reminded of another children's book, Amelia Bedelia.

Amelia Bedelia is big in my house, but I'm thinking about imposing a ban. The Amelia Bedelia series introduces too many topics that are confusing for kids, and I'm not ready to go there yet. Seriously, what on earth is her problem? My kids think she's hilarious. I think she's either an idiot savant, like the Rain Man, or, and this explanation for her utterly moronic behavior is more complicated, she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder due to her oppressive relationship with her sadistic employer, Mr. Rogers. Plus she has Stockholm Syndrome. Why is this appropriate reading for small children?

Stay with me here...

Amelia Bedelia screws everything up so royally that it's hard to imagine how she gets through the day without dropping a radio in her bathtub or poking her own eyes out with a rusty pitchfork. Once, Mrs. Rogers even sent her over to babysit a friend's baby and Amelia Bedelia didn't change one diaper, let the kid cry in a playpen for hours while she, Amelia Bedelia played with the baby's toys, and fed the infant strawberries! First of all, the kid had no teeth so she would have choked, and even if she had managed to avoid asphyxiation, everyone knows that you don't give strawberries to kids under two because of the threat of allergies. GAH.

When asked to decorate a Christmas tree with balls, Amelia Bedelia tied basketballs, baseballs, and footballs to the tree with rope. When asked to make a date cake, Amelia Bedelia made a regular cake but cut up the Rogers' calendar to mix into the batter. When asked to change the towels (and here it occurs to me that I could really use a maid, a competent, not idiotic maid), she cuts holes and designs in them and proudly announces, "Look! I changed them!" The list goes on and on.

Which leads me to the savant part of "idiot savant." Girlfriend can bake anything. Just when you think Mr. Rogers is going to grab her by the throat and scream in her face, she hands him some cupcakes or a muffin or some pie and all is forgiven. She can whip up any kind of marvelous creation with a moment's notice as long as she is acting of her own volition. The voices in her head may tell her to act like a complete fool most of the time, but those voices have baking mojo.

Fortunately for her, she can bake and Mr. Rogers loves him some pie, because otherwise he would have lost it on her completely long before now. Mr. Rogers is a scary dude. Mrs. Rogers is obviously terrified of him, because she never says anything, and all she ever does is write long lists of chores for Amelia Bedelia to do and follow him around wringing her hands looking tense. Mr. Rogers took Amelia Bedelia on a camping trip once but made her wear her maid's uniform the entire time. That's just kinky. She was all excited to camping for the first time, and he told her she was going to learn how to catch fish and stuff, but when they got there and she actually caught a fish (standing waist deep in a stream in her maid's uniform, she caught it with her hands by saying, "here fishy, fishy, fishy" because, you know, she's an idiot), he made her go back and unpack the car, set up the tent, build a fire, and start dinner! What a jerk! He degrades her constantly, calling her names, blustering around telling her she's stupid and asking what's wrong with her.

Poor Amelia Bedelia, the idiot, doesn't leave though because she's, you know, an idiot, but also because she suffers from Stockholm Syndrome. She's so damaged by Mr. Rogers' sadistic treatment of her that she is emotionally attached to him in such a way that she must stay, endure more abuse, and constantly bake him delicious treats. WTF???!!!

I think she needs a telethon or something.

p.s. I'm not really drunk.

p.s.s. yet.

love,

The Well Read Hostess