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I have an 8 year old son.  He’s an immature 8 year old.  Today I went clothes shopping for myself and took the kids (lesson learned).  I gathered a bunch of stuff, walked into the tiny, crowded dressing room and immediately came into a crisis of sorts (first world, obviously).  Should he go into the dressing room with me or not?  I have been emphasizing private time for quite a while now.  Drew has NO MODESTY AT ALL.  He will happily and freely run around in front of us naked, family members naked, strangers naked. His innocence and naivete have always been one of our favorite parts of him.  He totally lacks guile.  BUT YET.  As a purposeful move, the kids never/very rarely see me naked.  They rarely see me unclothed.  But here I was faced with a choice.  Leave him/them outside the dressing room area to create havoc and be unsupervised in a very small, crowded area while I tried on a bunch of clothes or take them in with me.  I ended up taking them in with me and Drew was, remarkably, a little embarrassed.  Well, maybe not embarrassed.  I took off my shirt to reveal my purple bra and he said, “Whoa!  Mom, that’s a nice color…uh…thingy (bra)…you have on there.”  I tried to be discrete and only remove/replace one article of clothing at a time but when I took off my pants, he hid his eyes and laughed and made some mumbled comment about “that part you sit on”.  (I think it’s funny that he has a hard time naming a private part around me.  It’s not like we call them bun-buns/twinkle spots and, you know, have pet names for everything or whatever.  We call them their actual names and we do so without embarrassment or giggles.  In fact, the other day, he was talking about something with an acquaintance of mine and clarified what he was discussing with a comment about it not being the kind that came out of his penis.  Pee, I am assuming.  And although it seems a rather important detail to forget in the retelling, it seems that I have forgotten what the topic of conversation was but I do remember thinking at the time that that sentence out of context would be eye-brow raising but in context was perfectly clarifying.)  Audible giggles about my rear end and my bruised confidence aside, he eventually (read: 10 seconds) got tired of watching me change and he and Malyn commenced pretending they were Perry the Platypus and Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb.  Malyn would occasionally glance up and critique the article of clothing.  (“No, Mom, that looks bad.” or “Ooh, I like that.”)

So I think the lesson here is to leave the kids at home the next time I want to go clothes shopping for myself.  Or only go into stores that have reasonably sized dressing areas?  Maybe it’s no big deal and I should not worry about him scoping his Mom out while I get changed.  This is why parenting is so hard.  He may grow up and need therapy because he saw me undressed from time to time (OMG, it was HORRIBLE!  I just wish she would have KEPT HER CLOTHES ON!) or he might need therapy because nudity/unclothedness was avoided (My Parents were such prudes, I had NO IDEA what was going on that first time I went to get laid.  I just ASSUMED my girlfriend had a PENIS LIKE ME!)

Rant:

Organizations pimping themselves to kids at school.  It seems on the edge of seedily manipulative to get kids FIRED UP with Brightly Colored Stickers! Enticing Brochures! Representative Sales Pitches!  I mean, it’s a non-school organization advertising ‘aggressively’ (in my opinion as the parent of a K and 1st grader) in a school situation.  Recently it’s those damn Boy Scouts.  I’m not sure exactly what the promotion situation is but Drew came home ALL AQUIVER with excitement about Going Camping! Hiking! Roasting Marshmallows! Doing Cool Boy Stuff! and said that He Just HAD to become a Boy Scout and all of the cool kids are doing it.

Ahem.  (I feel like Delores Umbridge in Harry Potter.  {Ahem, Ahem})

First of all, participating in Boy Scouts is Not Free.  You have to pay  dues and pay for the mandatory uniform.  Also, while the regular weekly activities are included with the dues, the Fun, Cool stuff with Tents and Sharp Pointy Sticks are extra.  Of course, Drew doesn’t understand this.  He just hears Outdoor Activities and he’s all gung-ho to go.  It doesn’t help that for a week solid it seems that we got stuff Every Day in his folder–it was like a political campaign.  Of course, it’s not just Boy Scouts.  It’s the YMCA, the various sports leagues, the area Karate Studios.  And Drew, being Drew, just does not understand why he can’t do all of these fun things.  We try to explain that A) He’s already doing soccer–which is not exactly a cheap activity and it involves quite a time commitment. B) It’s not like Boy Scouts is all party zone and marshmallows all of the time. C) We cannot participate in multiple activities with multiple children requiring multiple late nights per week.  What he hears is “You are missing all of the fun that all those other kids are having.”  I wearily accept that schools allow SOME organizations advertising access to my kids’ backpacks.  I don’t LIKE it, but I accept it.  What I do not like is that they cannot simply put a brochure into the folder, they have to Sell it with the deliberately misleading videos (it’s not all fun all of the time), aggressive marketing tactics (for a first grader, anyway) and the rah-rah ‘everyone should be a part of this!’ attitude.

It’s not just the Boy Scouts and maybe I’m a overly sensitive to this sort of thing (YA THINK?).  But Boy Scouts is the one that Drew’s driving me CRAZY wanting to join.  And if they had simply sent home a flyer in his folder, Bryan and I could have discussed it without the eyes shining with excitement and the “PULEEAAAASE, MOM” and the damn sticker on his chest, reminding him that He Should Be a Boy Scout!  It may be that he does it and LOVES it.  We may end up being a Scout Family.  Who knows?  It may be that we try it and find out it’s not for us.  But of course, that’s not before we pay the dues, buy the mandatory uniform and pay to attend the campout.  It may be that this is one of those Life Lesson moments for us in terms of not getting to do everything.  But I would have preferred to make that decision without the propaganda and the advertising ploy applied to My First Grader.

I would just like to add “GET OFF MY LAWN!”

All of this leads me to think that I probably need to get Mexican food and get laid tonight because WOOBOY, an entire blog post bashing the Boy Scouts is a New Low for me.