Hint Staging: Delusional process by which parents attempt to communicate with props. Here, the empty milk jug has been staged to convey the message to the 17-year-old that drinking the last of the milk should be followed by disposal of the empty jug. Also: We are thinking of moving the recycling bin into your bedroom.
from the hint staging archives: The optimist sees the bag as completely full and also completely visible to other members of the household
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We could really use some eradicrapping1 around here. But nobody pays any attention when I suggest it. Must be the macoustics.2
I don't actually believe my house will ever be free of High School Musical playing cards, ponytail accessories, or those shiny green gum wrappers I find everywhere, but thanks to Eric Ruhalter, a New York television writer/producer, father of three and author of The Kid Dictionary, at least I know what the process would be called if anyone ever bothered to undertake it. Which they won't.
And while it can never match profanity for sheer usefulness, especially during the teenage years, the Ruhalter lexicon has plenty of words you're going to want to begin using in your rants right away.
Stop that mallowmining right now!
It's probably not going to fix anything (see "macoustics") but knowing there's a word for it makes you feel like you're not the only person taking requests in the shower. Where the fuck is Daddy? is all we had before Ruhalter recognized this phenomena as the shampestery it is.
So you know that thing your kid does that should have its own word? Tell me about it in the comment section and I'll send one of you a copy of The Kid Dictionary. The rest of you get High School Musical playing cards, beginning with the six of diamonds. Why is there a six of diamonds in my palm tree? I blame the people at Disney merchandising, but what do I know? I'm just the momikaze.3
1 eradicrap v: to purge your playroom of old toys when your kids aren't around to protest
2 macoustics n: the frequency of a mother's voice that her children find so easy to ignore
3 momikaze n: a mother whose children push her to the very brink of her sanity
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mop•to•mis•m \mop-tə-mi-zəm\ noun 1 : The belief that the amount of time spent cleaning the floor is equal to or less than the amount of time the floor will appear clean.
syn see DELUSION
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Uptitude: intense desire to be the one who presses the elevator button, from The KidDictionary by Eric Ruhalter. Cage match: What follows among families trapped in an elevator following an unresolved bout of sibling one-uptitude, from Suburban Kamikaze, Everyday Life with Teenagers.
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Back at home where the children have spent the last three days eating flaming hot Cheetos and breakfast cereal out of the box in the living room...
But what's this I see? Has someone been vacuuming?
flimflam \flim-flam\ noun 1. Staged housecleaning created by the casual placement of props in various locations in an attempt to convince the mother of the house into believing that things are not as bad as they appear. syn see VACUUM FRAUD
From the dictionary archives: We have ways of making you talk
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emergency \i-mer-jent-see\ noun, 1. The state or condition of having misplaced1 the only2 acceptable article of clothing necessary to complete the Middle School Dress Up Day ensemble and which necessitates same day action3 by one's personal assistant4 regardless of other scheduling commitments5.
1Left in a place that will be revealed immediately upon purchase of replacement item.
2 One of several. 3You should have been at Forever 21 an hour ago. 4 Mother. Duh.
5 Please. What could you possibly have to do that is more important?
From the Archives of Emergencies Past: Expensive, Messy and Elaborate Last Minute Project Week Featuring Hard-to-Find Items that Must Be Purchased Today
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unbelievable \un'-bee-lee-vuh-bull\ adjective 1. Everyday events in a household that includes one or more teenagers that manage to seem more outrageous the more routine they become. synonym see COMPLETELY BELIEVABLE
Someone has put an empty milk carton back into the refrigerator to save themselves the thirty seconds of effort required to take it to the recycling bin. Unbelievable.
From the word archives: We have ways of making you talk
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11 minutes to yourself, or EMTY \'em-tee\ for short: noun 1. Short break from the responsibilities of career and family for watching, rewatching and working out the implications contained in soft-porn video clips of a bearded, shirtless Daniel Craig asking "do you want to touch me?" Yes, yes we do. But we only have 11 minutes. 2. Any similarly inspired break. 3. Material deemed likely to inspire such a break.
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iPology n. 1. Spontaneous display of remorse following the confiscation of a teenager's mp3 player.
"Do you understand what you did wrong?" the mother asks.
She has his attention. Also his iPod.
"Yes," says the boy, whose brief electronic withdrawal has left him jangly and compliant. "Can I have my iPod back now?"
"Is that an apology?" she asks.
"Yes," he says, his fingers vibrating in the empty space where his touch screen should be. "Yes."
"For what are you apologizing?" she says, with the careful enunciation required for parent to teen communication.
He looks longingly at the shiny black rectangle in her hand, but is not yet ready to pay full price. "For tapping her on the head," he says, drawing out the word "tapping" to signal his disgust at being made to suffer for so insignificant an infraction. His sister sprays silly string all over his bedroom and he gets punished? He barely even touched her.
"Tapping?" His mother raises her eyebrows to indicate the insufficiency of his remorse.
He switches to exaggeration to make the same point. "For giving her a black eye?" he says.
She starts to walk away.
"Okay," he says quickly. "I overreacted."
Now she can sense the power emanating from the leather-encased pile of circuits in her left hand. There is something in his voice that sounds almost like sincerity. The iPology, she thinks. Why not see what this application can do?
"And?" she says.
"I'm sorry," he says. "I shouldn't have hit her."
"That is a start," she says. "Is there anything else you shouldn't have done?"
"I shouldn't have talked back to you," he says. The words are coming faster now, his eyes moving between her face and the hand that holds the device.
"What else?"
"I didn't take the recycling out," he says.
"And?"
"I drank cranberry juice out of the bottle."
"Yes," she says, concealing her disgust. "Is there something else you want to tell me?"
"Like what?" he says.
"Not necessarily at home," she says. "Maybe something that happened at school?"
"At school?"
"Possibly," she says. "If someone from school had called me, what do you suppose they wanted to tell me?"
"Was it Mrs. Sill?" he says.
"It might have been," she says, twirling an earbud wire around one finger and letting it drop again. "What would Mrs. Sill have called me about?"
"Because I didn't bring my violin to class?" he offers.
"Maybe," she says. "Or maybe it was someone else who called."
"Mrs. Harris?" he says.
"It could have been," she says, encouragingly. "What do you think she would have said?"
"Um," he says. "Did she overhear me say something?"
"She might have," the mother continues. "What is it she might have overheard?"
"I might have used some bad language," he says.
The thing is inexhaustible. And it might have been too, if not for the friend in the other room. "She's just trying to get you to admit stuff," the friend says finally. Her son blinks slowly, still emerging from the pull of the device.
"Now, shape up and give me a hug," the mother says quickly. And he does.
Photo: iPenitence
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