Same. My parents read to me pretty much from birth. When I was about 2 years old, Christmas present festivities had to stop as soon as I received a book because someone had to sit and read it to me RIGHT. NOW.
ceruleanspiral
ceruleanspiral
Friends who are designated “Aunt” or “Uncle” (this is particularly common in Scotland, not sure of anyone else) or the Aunts and Uncles of the parents (so Great Aunts and Great Uncles to the child), particularly if this is the first child of a new generation (as has happened with my daughter - everyone is just…
Gentle, sane way to address that issue: “We’d love you to come celebrate baby’s birthday with us! But please, no gifts, we already have far too many toys and will find ourselves having to return your generous gifts”. If they wanted to go CRAZY, they could even suggest donating to charity in the child’s name instead.…
The key word is “gently.” I think it’s fine to be like, “Here’s some stuff we want, please don’t give us a bunch of extra stuff, our baby doesn’t need it!” Or to be like, “Please no gifts, our one-year-old is doing great, just bring your beautiful selves, thanks!” But to go on and on about it to the point where it’s…
I get that, and I figured the same thing, but also, like...make a phone call. Explain the reasons. Don’t make a list of demands in a formal, creepy email. Just be like “Aunt Ellen, I get it, you love buying the kid stuff, because its adorable, and he is adorable. We live in a two bedroom apartment though, so could you…
I’ve heard it said that you shouldn’t get your older kid stuff with his/her name on it because potential creepers might take the opportunity to strike up a conversation with your kid and pretend they know him/her or his/her parents, because the kid would forget the name was on the backpack or whatever where anyone…
Now playing
This is where I learned about it:
I’m pretty sure the number one thing that leads to kidnapping is people deciding to kidnap.
“Clothing with names is the #1 thing that leads to kidnapping”
More likely it was all “stop eating so much rice and eat fries like Americans” or something super ignorant. I think that’s much more likely than a subtle pop-culture/news reference.
Can’t believe I missed “twitter was still fresh.” Twitter was 6 years old. Mitt Romney was flooding it with sponsored tweets and hashtags. That’s pretty much the definition of “not fresh.”
“At this time in our lives, racism was not the talk of the country nor had we ever witnessed the true power of social media, twitter was still fresh and we had never heard of anyone getting in trouble for posting anything on social media, it was the beginning of this social era.”
Showing one’s regret for something like this is more complicated than just writing a letter blaming everyone else for what you did. Writing and composing entire songs about racist shit, where you sing about wanting to kill people based on their race, is on a whole different level from what the average idiot child…
I regret crushing on Lance Bass so hard because it was clearly wasted time. Should’ve been pining after that ramen-haired one who made it big.
I had a horrible mouth when I was a kid (I called my sister the c-word on multiple occasions), and I would NEVER use racial slurs. You can’t say shit like that and then try to claim you’re not racist.
Hopefully this will head off the inevitable comments of, “But weren’t we all awful as teenagers? Haven’t we all said something we regret?” I regret saying I was going to marry John Taylor of Duran Duran. That’s about it.
The only slur I ever uttered in my whole life was “Polack”, and that was when referring to myself. I could be an asshole as a 14-year-old too, but certainly was never a racist asshole. Reminds me of why I can’t stand the human race and prefer the company of my kitties.
Oh, they’re not so very racist.
This may not be very culturally literate of me, (and imma let y’all finish) but I need to say that Mankiller is the best name of all time. OF ALL TIME.