Ah, remember the Fifties? When everything was Mom’s fault? And the Sixties, and the Seventies, and the … you get the picture. At some point, however, don’t you have to say, “No, maybe Mom is not exactly June Cleaver, nor Wonder Woman, but might it not be possible that Junior here is just a complete twerp on his own merits?”

Because, you know, Junior here is just a complete twerp on his own merits.

From the original poster on YouTube:

HOW IT ALL STARTED- Some boy named Noah complains that he was trying to get his mom’s attention by poking her arm. His mom gets angry and jabs him back very slightly to tell him to wait… He gets pissed and gets a boo- boo for like 20 minutes… Then they argue on national television for nothing. After intense violence and warfare, Noah slaps his mother across the face… What do you think of this matter? Please respond. Ironically, I think it’s the mother’s fault and other elements that kids are exposed to daily. (School, Media, TV, ect.) However, this child needs to learn respect using his common sense. He has gotten into lots of trouble too. It is quite obvious he is abused and that his family is distorted. He has a single mom and his sister died of cancer. He complains his mother hits and abuses him and then denies it. He and his mother have been fighting for years. Noah has also claimed that he has called the Child Protection Services because of physical abuse. THIS IS THE MOTHER’S FAULT!

Is it, now? Well, I suppose she DID get pregnant in the first place.

The always excellent and erudite Mr. Henry wrote a post last week regarding food and grandmothers. Specifically, the food our grandmothers made that reminds us of growing up. It is amazing how the food of our childhood can bring back such strong memories.

I was lucky enough to have two grandmothers who were fabulous cooks. One was German, the other Italian, neither of them much far removed from their homelands. So I took for granted all the wondrous, made-from-scratch food they made for us.

We are lucky enough to still have one grandmother with us, a great-grandmother to the Munchkin. But her days of being able to stand at the counter and cook polenta from scratch are sadly behind her.

The other grandmother, the German frau who passed away many years ago, would have recognized in the Munchkin her culinary soulmate. Butter? Why not just put it on with a spatula! Something doughy? Oh my, yes! Apple strudel and puffy German pancakes? Pass the plate please! And for her, making food and nourishing her family was her expression of love. Because bless her heart, she was a stoic woman who was not often outwardly affectionate. But one taste of that strudel, at once chewy and flaky and perfectly sweet but not-too-sweet, and you knew there was nothing but love and care in the making.

As the Munchkin gets older, I find myself wanting to connect him with his ancestral roots, and thus I have attempted to make some recipes from both grandmothers. Before he was born, I wistfully thought of the dishes that I looked forward to eating as a child, but didn’t do much in the way of actually making them. Now, I try much harder to recreate the food I equated with love and happiness, hoping to have some of that rub off on him as well.

And as for my own mother, someone who didn’t enjoy cooking in the same way her mother did, it seems that the Munchkin will always equate her with chocolate chip pancakes.

She could defintely do worse.

Ah, the ubiquitous and well-beloved gumball machine. A sight to warm the cockles of any heart, no matter how wizened and dried. Who among us cannot confess to (even now) covertly scoping out the offerings, searching in vain for that five cent jellybean motherload. But as the ancients knew, the only constant is change, and change, my friend, has come to the gumball machine. Not only are prizes segregated now, removing the delightful thrill of actual gambling and completely slaughtering the grey market in traded prizes, but the prizes themselves have changed.

If only they’d had this a generation ago! Legions of now-regretful inked-up former hipsters could have gotten the urge to impersonate Cher out of their systems before puberty (or toilet training, for the either truly precocious or truly slow).

They grow up so fast!