Wow, The Woman Is Really Into Safety

On the way home from the bus stop, Hank and Laura and the beagle and I stopped to chat with Frenemy Neighbor and her daughter, who were out in their yard letting their tiny toy dog go weewee.

I offered to drive the daughter, Laura's friend P., to Laura's roller-skating party on Saturday. Normal Neighbor's daughter is riding with us, and I said it would be fun for the girls, and it would save Frenemy Neighbor a trip. Frenemy Neighbor hedged a bit and said maybe that would work. I said, Okay, just let us know, etc. FN then said, "But P still rides in a booster seat because of her weight." P is a skinny minnie, like a lot of little girls. But she will be ten years old in August. And she is not short. (She's shorter than Laura, who is nearly two years younger, but Laura is part giant on her father's side.) So I said, "Well, we can certainly make that happen." Then we said goodbye.

But I was like, really? And it's not the booster seat in itself, though she obviously isn't apprised of the latest studies showing that for children over two, car seats offer no reduction in fatalities or injuries over the regular seat belts. Whatever. Maybe P is more comfortable in her car seat. But it was another tiny example of the way she seems to be always trying to remove her kid from the normal run of kid life. So she can wrap her in bubble wrap or something. If you weren't reading me back in the day, this post might be the best little intro to Frenemy Neighbor. I haven't blogged about FN a lot lately, because we kind of stopped talking to each other in the run up to the election. Not due to any big blowup, but somehow we just avoided each other. Except for the crazy emails she sent me constantly. Those left a sour taste in my mouth, and I didn't seek out her company. But since then we've had a rapprochement. The girls have gotten together a few times.

P, who is in the fourth grade, used to attend a private Christian school, but this year her mom has kept her home to homeschool her, because, as she told me, "I want her all to myself." She also said she was sick of getting up early to drive her to school. Yes, there is a bus. But there are other children on the bus, some of whom might be older, or different, or unpleasant in some way. So now, P does go to one of those homeschool centers (they're kind of like schools!) a couple days a week, so she isn't totally isolated. But I always get the feeling from P that she is desperate for friends and company and amusement. She is very bright, and she loves to play with Laura and Laura with her. She always hates to leave our house, and she used to pitch little fits about it. So now she's home with her mom most of the time. Frenemy Neighbor told me that she's doing the PE portion of the state's mandated curriculum by teaching P to play golf.

Anyway, FN has always, as long as we've known them, been super, super protective of P. She won't let her play in their backyard unless she's outside watching her. She won't let her take the dog out front unless she's watching her. P carries a cell phone and is reprimanded if she doesn't keep it actually on her person all the time. Last summer, I let Laura and P play in Hank's wading pool on our back porch. It's a little plastic pool that is ten inches deep. I would never let Hank be around it unsupervised. But did I let a 7 and a 9 year-old? Yes. Frenemy Neighbor asked to see it, and then she clucked and clucked until she finally said, "Well, I guess that's okay." But she always makes me feel like I'm letting the kids juggle the torches too close to the vats of full-grain alcohol.

The over-arching theme of Laura's friendship with P is that Frenemy Neighbor exerts an intense level of control over every moment of her child's time. So mostly, when we try to set up a playdate, it's a non-starter. P can't play at 4pm because they're going to Granny's at 7, so she has to be taking a bath by 6, so obviously between 4 and 5:45, she needs to be home, being quiet and tidy and mentally preparing. But then, if FN needs to go somewhere, she has no problem asking if I will watch P for her.

I didn't mean for this post to be a history of my entire relationship with Frenemy Neighbor. And I know that it is not nice to question the parenting choices made by others. So I'll wrap it up. But the earliest indication that I ever had that our parenting styles might, um, differ, is when Laura was 5 and P was 7, and I let them watch Shrek. Afterwards, FN called me. She said, "You know, please don't let P watch that movie, because I haven't seen it myself, and I don't know what kind of ideologies it might put into her head." I said, "Uh, okay. What movies would be okay for her to watch at our house?" Because I completely believe that there are damaging messages making their way into our heads from the media and TV, so I'm like, let's talk about it. Then she said that all the traditional Disney princess movies were okay. And I thought, "Really? Because I think Snow White and the Little Mermaid are WAY WAY disturbing, if you want to talk about "ideologies." Yes, Laura has seen those movies, of course, but we've also had numerous conversations about the narrative conventions of fairy tales, and how those old Disney princesses seem to wind up nearly dead or maimed in order to get their men. We kept it lighter than that. But yeah, ideologies. And last summer, I mentioned how cute Enchanted was, and Frenemy Neighbor said, "Oh, but doesn't it have innuendo?" I was like, "Innuendo of what??? For the love, woman, cut the crazy!" She always makes me feel like I am barely parenting at all.

And the delicious, delicious irony is this: P used to have an overnight babysitter/nanny one night a week, so her mom and dad could go do Amway visits. And it transpired several times that the nanny picked her up from our house because the parents had to leave earlier than the nanny could arrive. The nanny told me that P is a total tyrant in that house, and that she's a nightmare to babysit because they have no bedtime routine whatsoever. FN and Mr. FN treat her like a little adult. P just goes up and plays in her room and falls asleep whenever she wants. I got a really unkind amount of enjoyment out of that fact. Here we are like the neighborhood bohemians--relatively speaking, you'd have to see this neighborhood--but our kids run like clockwork. And FN acts like a big authoritarian. She had this thing she used to do where, if P didn't do what she said or come to her, she'd whisper, "First time obedience!" in this kind of ominous way. So they're the big disciplinarians, but their kid is walking all over them. My soul is black and tarry.

Oh, and can I just tell one more story? Last year,P had to do a big report for school--that private school was big into projects and things that looked like real Educational Products. Anyway, the report was supposed to be on a figure from the American Revolution. So FN and P did a report on Ronald Reagan.

That is all.