Currently This

I was cornered the other day by the mother of one of my kids friends, a woman I cannot stand because she isn't taking very good care of her kids. She's in the middle of a nasty support battle with her ex-husband and she spends a lot of time complaining because he's a jerk and not giving her enough money to feed the kids. Fair enough - lord knows my own ex-husband has hardly been forthcoming with support. She talks to me about how humiliating it is to have to rely on her church to feed her kids and I'm sure it is humiliating, but she always seems to have enough money to buy cigarettes and booze and hair bleach and internet access. She can always afford an excuse, too - there's always a reason why she can afford to bleach her hair and hook up in bars but trusts feeding her children to people she has never met.

Worse, if I have to hear one more word about how she isn't getting enough sex in her life, I'm going to strangle her. If she spent as much time worrying about feeding her children as she does worrying about her tired vagina drying up, her kids would never go hungry. If your kids are hungry, the last thing on your mind should be your sex life, lady.

Why are some women like that? Why does the state remove children who are being beaten by their parents but not children of parents too wrapped up in their pussies to feed them? How does a woman look herself in the mirror when she is failing her children so miserably?

I know it's hard to raise kids on your own. I know that it is a hard world for women with zero skills and hardly more sense. Even for educated women it can be tough. But for heaven sake, if what you aspire to is some kind of operatic, Jerry Springer, white trash existence in some bohunk trailer park, why drag kids into it? How hard is it really to use a condom? For heaven sake, even white trash, trailer park, bar hopping losers recognize used snatch and want to avoid diseases - using condoms these days is not all that tough.

Pet peeve. It just makes me angry when people are too wrapped up in themselves to notice how badly they're hurting their kids. And of course, it scares me. The woman terrifies me because she reminds me of how I was raised. This isn't a stupid woman, either. She does remarkably stupid things but she isn't stupid - it would be easier if she were, because I could distance myself even more. If she is stupid, that's one more remove between us. But being not altogether unintelligent makes her more like me and if she is more like me, maybe my kids could end up in some bohunk opera one day, too.

That's stupid, I know. But in a very visceral way, she scares me. I want to slap her for what she is doing to her children and I want to stomp on her for reminding me of everything I almost was and have worked so hard to save my kids from.