“My boobs are broken,” is the instant message I send my friend last Thursday afternoon. I send this to my friend whose life is the most similar to mine. Our husbands are friends, we each have a son in the fourth grade and a daughter slightly younger than their older brothers. We attend the same church and both live in nice homes in Stepford, commuting to paralegal jobs in North Dallas to work in, if not identical, exceedingly similar mid-rise glass office buildings.
“WHAT?!?!?!?!?!” is her response. I smile.
“They are broken. My left one keeps sneaking out of the bottom part of my bra and my right one is doing something that is causing the strap that is supposed to be holding it up fall to my elbow,” I type.
“Your boobs aren’t broken, your bra is,” she tries to explain. Her boobs aren’t as broken as mine, so she cannot understand.
“NOPE ... it’s my boobs. Before they broke, all my bras worked just fine,” I clarify.
Fast-forward to later the same evening. You can find me sitting at my kitchen table in Stepford, with my fourth-grader, working through two hours of prepositions and math word problems that contain names of hypothetical children, which neither my son nor I can pronounce, and which certainly no parent in Stepford would dare name their child. I’m not exactly sure what happened to Dick and Jane, but they no longer live in my son’s math book. For that matter, Dick and Jane’s children, Jennifer and Jason, are also conspicuously absent. There are also no Stepfordish names such as Grace, Sam, Emma or Jack.
At some point during my hellish revival of fourth grade, my first grade daughter asks if she can play dress up with a bag of clothing I’ve gathered to give to charity. I’m pretty sure I answered her with a “Sure honey, just be sure you clean up your mess.” Although, what I remember thinking was, “whatever, please just don’t interrupt me again while I’m trying to figure what the probability of getting two apples and a banana out of whatever this kid’s name is basket.” Where do kids with fruit baskets come from anyway?
