12 Weird Things Kids Say to Me

Butt cheeks is two words, btw

Back in my day, kids didn’t talk to adults. At least we did our damnest to avoid such a fate. I wanted to hang up if a parent answered when I called a friend. I would rather get kidnapped than have to ask an adult for help. I ate gross lunches at friends houses because that is what you did rather than tell Mrs. Anderson that her hotdogs looked like intestinal worms and tasted like mud. (Clean your damn pan, Mrs. Anderson!)

But kids these days— whole different world. I can’t get kids to stop talking to me. And it’s not because I’m so engaging and entertaining. (My brand is much too highbrow for their YouTube pranksters sensibilities.) It’s because kids today are weird. Or maybe it’s us parents that are weird? Have we inserted ourselves so much into our kid’s lives that their friends now think of us as tall children with hefty allowances?

This whole parenting is just weird.

I’m glad kids are comfortable in my presence, but I’m starting to think we need to establish some boundaries. The following is just a smattering of some of the weird things I’ve heard from the under 11 crowd:

“Shelly”

Not only do they talk nonstop to parents, but they call us by our first names. I didn’t even know my friend’s parents HAD first names! Everyone was Mrs. This or Mr. That. I still refer to the parents of my college roommates as Mr. and Mrs. and I’m basically their peer!

I do not have a reasonable solution for kids and adults being on a first-name basis. Is it a product of the chill, laidback Pacific Northwest culture or does this happen everywhere? I certainly don’t want to be Mrs. Mazzanoble or Mrs. Mazz (as my mom was called) or Miss Shelly or That Old Mom or especially ma’am as I was referred to recently while waiting to pick up my son’s iPad from the repair shop. As in, Would you like to sit down, Ma’am? The person who inquired was at least forty.

But it just feels weird when a 7-year-old yells out, “Shelly, get off the court!” or “Why do you have hairs on your chin, Shelly?”

Look kid, we have poor lighting in the bathroom, okay? Also that’s Mrs. Hagatha Broomhilda to you.”

“Do you want to play?”

I know some parents really strive for that, “We’re best friends” relationship and that’s cool— when your kid is in their forties and able to buy dinner once in a while. At six-years-old, I’m less interested in cultivating a kinship.

Some of my son’s buddies can’t take the hint. When they come over they think Bart and I are part of the playdate package. What is it about me that gives the impression I have the aerobic capacity to jump into a game of Four Square? There is literally another small human referring to me as Mommy!

“Want to play Uno?” the friends ask.

“No, thanks!”

“Want to play laser tag?”

“Nope. I’m good!”

“Want to play Twister?”

“My god no, definitely not playing Twister with a little boy, thanks!”

“Why not?”

“You’ll see things your mind’s eye will never erase, kid. And then you’ll have to poke your own eyes out.”

Look, my job is simple. Buy snacks, store them where kids can reach them, go about my business. I host playdates so I don’t have to play. Not so I can get NERF’ed in the muffin top in an all out Elite Titan blaster backyard assault! My muffin tops may look hardy, but they bruise easily!

“You’re mean!”

Okay, I think this may be some YouTube thing my son and his friends picked up on because I hear them say it to other people as well. BUT, they say it to me when in fact, I AM BEING MEAN, so they must mean it!

Why am I mean, you ask?

• I wouldn’t take them to McDonalds

• I wouldn’t order them Little Caesars because I had a coupon for Domino’s

• They couldn’t lay in our bed to watch Young Sheldon when there are 64 other TVs in the house

• They couldn’t lay in our bed period

• I didn’t have any Funyuns

• I wouldn’t let them watch Fear Street

• I wouldn’t let my son get Grand Theft Auto

• I wouldn’t let them win at basketball

“I hate your bacon!”

We host our fair share of sleepovers because my kid much prefers the comfort of his own bunk bed. Usually I leave out all the sugary cereals, bowls, spoons, and Pop-Tarts so the kids can self-serve and let us sleep in, but on rare occasions I have been known to whip up a home cooked breakfast.

I’m vegetarian, but I don’t care who eats what, so if someone wants bacon I do my best to appease. However, my best isn’t very appeasing. At least not for some six-year-olds.

“What’s wrong with this bacon?” I was once asked by a first-grade Gordon Ramsey wannabe.

“I don’t know,” ‘I answered honestly. “It’s just…bacon.

“Well, I hate your bacon!” he answered, tossing it on the counter. “Can’t you make good bacon? Or I’ll just take an Egg McMuffin.”

Friends, I ask you to take a ride in your way-back machine and picture yourself at 6-years-old telling your friend’s mom her bacon sucked. Mind you, the bacon did suck. It was microwave bacon, BUT STILL.

“How to do you spell butt cheeks?”

I volunteered once in the classroom when my son was in kindergarten. The teacher didn’t know what to do with me as I looked more scared and awkward than her students.

“Do you want to grade math quizzes?” she asked.

“Oh no, I don’t think so,” I said. “Math isn’t really my strong suit.”

She cocked her sweet head to one side and smiled waiting for me to laugh. The lesson was on sorting shapes. “Okay, then. How about you help the kids with vocabulary?”

Now that I could do! I’m a writer! The kids were busy writing their weekly words in their scratch pads and you know, they seemed to get it, so not much for me to do. Then I noticed little Hades Hadley had his hand up.

“Hi!” I said with all the forced cheerfulness of a sock puppet at a children’s hospital. “What can I help you with?”

Little Hades Hadley and his Satan-esque black eyes looked deep into my soul and asked, “How do you spell…butt cheeks?”

“Butt cheeks? Hmm… I actually don’t know if butt cheeks is one or two words. Maybe I can look that up…”

Did you know if you utter the word “butt” in a kindergarten classroom every child within a 65 miles radius will burst into a fit of uncontrollable giggles and point at the person who uttered the word? I know this to be a fact.

“Umm, that’s not actually one of our vocabulary words,” the teacher said, handing me my coat. “I think the copy room needs organizing, okay byeeeeeee!”

“It’s two words,” Hades Hadley said, sticking his forked little tongue out.

“Quinn, your mom is drunk!”

On the rare occasion a kid actually cleans up after himself, he may discover an empty White Claw can in the recycling. This may prompt said child to proclaim:

“Quinn! Your mom is drunk!”

“Excuse me,” I say sixteen inches away. “I am not drunk. That can is from three days ago and I promise you, my tolerance can handle more than one can of mango Claw.”

GTFO with your accusations. You’ll definitely know when I’m drunk, kid. Also lower your voice, the windows are open.

“Eat a Butt”

Really needs no explanation.

“You’re a bad mom!”

Okay believe it or not this wasn’t said to me (to my face), but rather to my friend who is 100% not a bad mom. But kids man— tiny a-holes with very high standards!

My friend was decreed a “bad mom” because she wouldn’t let some random kid at the park keep her kid’s basketball. She was even polite about it! She apologized!

“YOU’RE A BAD MOM!” the kid screamed for all at the park to hear. And get this— the little shit didn’t run away. He just stood there waiting for her to, I don’t know, disagree?

“Uhhh, ok,” she said packing up the rest of her kid’s stuff. “Sorry you feel that way!”

Can you imagine telling a mom other than your own that she’s a bad mom! Damn, kid. You don’t need her son’s basketball. You got enough balls already!

“Why is Quinn an only child? Can’t you have sex?”

!!!

Despite what I’ve told my husband¹ (hee hee hee) I can have sex. NOT that it’s any of your business! You want to know why Quinn is an only child? Ask this next kid:

“Why are you so old?”

The jig is up.

Once these kids learned how to count by ten they figured out I was a decade older than most of their parents. But does that make me wiser or worthy of respect. No, it does not. But it does shroud me in the same awe and wonder reserved for the, “Headless Living Woman” or the Fiji Monkey Mermaid housed at Ripley’s Odditorium and that’s pretty cool too.

“You’re not my dad!”

Again, clearly not said to me but, I was there and bore witness to this unnecessary emancipation. Some days my son’s best friend would get dropped off at our house in the morning and we would take him to school with us. The kindergarten kids lined up and entered the school after the big kids. Usually parents waited around to wave and bid farewell.

“Goodbye, Levi!” Bart called out to my son’s friend. “Have a good day!”

“Goodbye, Bart” Levi responded. “YOU’RE NOT MY DAD!”

Bro. No shit! But he was hardly a stranger! This kid was at our house at least four times a week. Oh, the looks poor Bart had to suffer from the other REAL parents, mostly through the lens of an iPhone as at least fifteen of them tried to be all sly capturing footage to sell to Dateline.

Can’t a guy hang out on the blacktop at an elementary school and shout good tidings to children that don’t belong to him? When did the world become so cruel?

“Your mom jokes”

Half of the time I don’t understand what my son and his friends are saying (What is this Skibidi Ohio toilet BS anyway?) But I do understand and appreciate a well-delivered joke. Even if I’m the butt of them.

“Your Mom” jokes were a favorite of mine too, but clearly I never understood the shame and pain and embarrassment my callous little throwaway line imprinted on my own mother.

“Your mom is so ugly when she entered an ugly contest the judges said, ‘Sorry, amateurs only!’”

“Your mom is so fat when she sat on a Walmart she lowered all their prices.”

“Your mom is so stupid when she took a blood test she asked for time to study.”

Okay, that last one is kind of funny.

But, come on! I’ll be standing right there, arranging mini corndogs in the air fryer while these ten-year-old jackalopes are roasting my kid’s mom and just having a riotous ol’ time.

“You guys realize I’m his mom, right?” I say after the 87th joke. “You’re literally saying I’m the one calling 911 on a microwave because I’m too stupid to use a phone.”

Silence.

Then riotous laughter resumes.

“Hahahahha” they said. “We forgot you were a mom!”

Bitch, please. If only.

Oh, there’s plenty more, trust me, but I have six 10-year-olds coming over after school and I need to get prepared. These White Claws aren’t going to drink themselves.

XO,

Shelly

1. We’re all still telling our husbands this, right? (That’s a joke for all my Middle-Aged Ladies!)