This is my daughter Emilee dressed as Yo-Landi Vi$$er in our glorious backyard. It's white trash chic back there. Come and get it, exterior design/lifestyle bloggers! Yeaoh! haha. Nest, you want a piece of this?
Last week, I heard about a mom forcing her young daughter to stand on the sidewalk at the city park holding a sign, for all highway 14 travelers to see, that said, "I've been naughty. I'm a bad girl." I know, right? Everyone's pretty angry about it, though nobody's pulled over and read the
mom the riot act yet. I would definitely consider this child abuse. I hadn't seen the mother and daughter out there, so when I read about it on a friend's facebook, I said something like, "I ain't afraid to throat punch a bitch."
This statement, which may have been bigger talk than I'm capable of, and MAY have been the kind of braggadocio resulting from imbibing a Pabst Blue Ribbon or two before facebooking, is just the sort of shit I regularly find myself in.
A friend who cashiers at the local gas station just said, "Hey, I heard what you said on facebook. She might be out there today..." Oh crap. I'm not really much of a Jonnie-throat-puncher. Back in the late 90s I took up boxing, mainly for self defense reasons (I was living in Las Vegas and there are plenty of undersexed male loony bins). When my trainer told me he could offer me a professional bout at the Hard Rock in Vegas, I thought, well, I've been training for years, maybe I'll just give it a shot. I told him I needed a few small bouts first, since I'd been fighting guys and the guys I fought wouldn't punch me, even if I asked them to.
He dug up a professional fighter with just 3 fights under her belt, so in experience, we're pretty matched. But I'm looking down at her (literally) and wondering why he paired me with a girl 4 inches shorter and maybe 20 pounds lighter. AND he says, AND she's a kindergarten teacher. Oh great, I have this picture in my head of Jonnie-the-bruiser putting some poor kindergarten teacher in traction and sitting next to her in the hospital, apologizing and hoping her comatose brain can hear me, when 30 five year olds walk in sobbing and holding hands. At once they recognize the louse that took their sweet teacher from her candy cane clad classroom and all at the same time start chanting, "You killed our teacher! You killed our teacher!"
Yeah, so I get in the ring and tell myself I won't throw any punches, just let her throw a bunch, get really exhausted, and maybe just sort of fall over on her own (don't laugh; it happens in women's boxing, especially with amateurs posing as professionals, such as we). So I'm doing the plan, keeping my gloves over my face, and she's doing her best to pummel me. Coach is on the side of the ring yelling at me to throw one, so I just kind of throw a light jab, which she walks right into. I'm not kidding. You think I'm Jonnie-the-kindergarten-teacher-pummeler right now, but this is not the case. She did walk into it. She did. And oh boy, down she went! With a thud! All my fears were coming true. Hospital. Coma. Kids. Chanting.
I threw off my gloves and leaned over to give her an arm up, but that's when I found out she wasn't done. Apparently years of herding 5-year-olds, wiping noses, using gallons of hand sanitizer, dealing with the educational bureaucracy, had come to hinge on this second. It was time to let the frustration fly. She comes straight up at me with an upper cut I didn't see coming and proceeds to let years of anger leave her clenched fists. I got the tar beat out of me by this itty bitty girl and all my coach had to say was, "Well, I'm thinking 'no' on putting you in that fight. I suspected it, but wanted to make sure; you don't have one ounce of pit bull in ya."
It's all true, friends. I have no killer instinct, just a big mouth about being tough after a beer or three. But that was a teacher who'd never done a thing to deserve a punch, as far as I was concerned. The lady making her daughter hold these signs... well, if I see this happening, there's no doubt I'll stop my car and talk to the woman, but I'm probably going to be more of a Dr. Drew than a Dr. Pain. If things get really bad, I'll probably say things like, "You're being mean," and any number of elementary school lingo.
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