Advice to the Youth of Tomorrow

 If I could give one piece of advice to the Youth of Tomorrow it would be this: Find the funniest most well read nerd in your class.  Lock in that friendship now.  Preschool is not too early to start.  The longer you've known this weirdo, the better.  Sell yourself as equally weird and funny and bookish.  It's a two way street.

Now, some might say "okay but the friendships of age 4 aren't likely to last past elementary school." To which I say "fie!"

In high school you will never have a class together.  Stay pals.

One of you will be a theater nerd.  One of you will be a history nerd.  Stay pals.

One of you will go to a private all-women University on the East coast.  One of you will stay at the hometown state school on the west.  Stay pals.

One of you is an atheist who majors in religion.  One of you goes on an LDS mission while being woefully ignorant about the history of Christianity or her own faith.  Stay pals.

One of you marries a hometown boy and stays in the hometown and has kids and a minivan.  One of you is in Cairo for the Arab spring and has a partner with no desire for kids.  Stay pals.

The fruits of this palship, 30 years later, are sweet.  I had a horrible day.  Some lowlights: 

• Fred elbowed me in the eye twice in the space of five minutes.  I was curled in the fetal position on the couch, too depressed to move or parent at the time.  I did not respond graciously and patiently to this.
• I have largely given up on trying to make my child pay attention or participate in online school.  He's ahead of his class in reading and math so honestly who gives a rat's patoot anymore.  Not I.  Unfortunately my lack of oversight enabled my child to send a direct message to his teacher on Zoom that read like an inscrutable but still offensive rap.  My best guess is that he hit the "dictate" button then went back to playing with his brother.  Child 2 says "poopy" pretty much constantly, but the dictation was sure this was offensive so it changed it to "booty."  It also thought it heard "s**t" and so it sent it exactly like that (asterisks) amid all the booty talk.  There was also something about Grandma's bottom and pink jello. There's nothing like your child obscenely harassing his teacher to make you feel like a crappy parent.  I sent an apology and noted that it probably seemed like I'm a lazy parent who doesn't supervise my child but "that's only, like, 70% true."  I keep it real.
• We have workers demolishing a shower.  So in addition to the standard screaming, there's constant pounding. It makes it harder to tell when my children are being destructive.
• I roasted some tomatillos and peppers to make enchilada sauce.  When I took the pan out of the oven the cloud of steam surprised me and it burned the skin all around my eyes.  I collapsed on the floor and cried in pain and ended up calling a nurse line.  I'm fine.  But it hurts.
• I got some oil or something on my fingers from handling serrano peppers and even though I washed very carefully I still managed to get it on my nose and so my nostrils burned and burned no matter what.  Don't touch your face, I know, I know.  Easier said than done.
• I went upstairs to go to the bathroom and when I came back down I slipped and fell down the stairs.  I'm okay, just hurting on my butt and lower back.  I cried some more.  And I peed my pants a little as I fell! How?! I had just peed.  Does my body save just a little bit in case I need to be humiliated right after using the bathroom?

Anyway.  By the end of the day I was in no mood to have the family Valentine's party I had planned and prepared.  Just let me curl up and stare at the wall.  But we did have our party.  And it was wonderfully lovely.  I had saved all my mail for the last week or two hoping that the envelopes had Valentines, and they did.  Chris got me the latest illustrated Harry Potter book.  It's gorgeous.  And I opened a mystery package from my friend.  The friend I wisely locked down back in the late 1980s.  The friend I text almost daily with offensive quotes from the tacky romance novels I read.  The friend who just invited me to join her romance novel book club and the book of the month is BDSM misogyny angsty yuck.  So we hate read and text each other.

And amid my awful day (which is coming on the heels of a severe depressive downturn that has left me bedridden for hours) I got this wonderful, one of a kind, surprising gift:

My favorite gif, one that never fails to make me laugh, is Oprah giving her audience a swarm of bees.  And now I have it on my wall, to make me laugh every single day.  A true labor of love, and the only of it's kind I'm sure -- neither of us like to use existing patterns for things.  Make your own or bust.

And so I repeat my advice:  Befriend the funniest weirdo in your class.  Cool rich kids are all well and good, and I imagine they have rewarding friendships too.  But the weirdos are the ones who offer literary critique of trashy novels and send you hand stitched gifs to make you laugh when the entire world feels like a moldy armpit.

Love you, friend.