Dear Parks,

So, here we are. Two days down and.....well, several more to go. Sorry I can’t be more exact, but I don't count well at all. I don't do ANY kind of math well actually. That's why I currently work in the humanities field. Your mother only made 2 "B's" in her entire school career-from kindergarten to graduate degree. One of those "B's" was in the 5th grade when we were studying fractions. I just didn't understand them. And, I can honestly tell you that I still do not give two WHOLE craps about whether or not I have two PARTS of freaking anything-unless we're down to 1/5 of a 1/5 of gin. Then I just know we're screwed. Especially if your Auntie Elizabeth comes to visit.

The other “B”, you ask?

Well, let me tell you a little story about that other “B”.

It was 1995. Oh yeah, I’m going THERE.

Picture it… flannel button-up shirts from J Crew, lots of hiking boots, copious amounts of Cobain-induced angst-ridden poetry, and a ridiculously whole lot of “Indigo Girls” listening.

Your mother was 19 and a sophomore in college. Her life….it was a-changing.

Previous to 1995 your mother- while cool in her own special way- was still the same sack of nerd that graduated from high school thinking having a beer on Saturday night at “The Edge” (NOT a bar, mind you, but a back road that went off behind one of the levees surrounding the Mississippi River) with twenty other of my classmates was a HEATHEN and UNACCEPTABLE thing to do. Your mother owned her VERY OWN COPY of the 6 VHS tape series of the original BBC filming of Pride and Prejudice. That kind of nerdy runs deep and doesn’t disappear very quickly. I went to college with a lot of the same ideas. As such, my freshman year was extremely “vanilla”. Because your mother really didn’t know any other way to be.

It took me until my sophomore year to figure out that if you didn’t go to class, PEOPLE DID NOT CARE. Your head wouldn’t spontaneously burst into flames and your skin turn inside out. They wouldn’t call Nana and she wouldn’t come prance me around the quad wearing a placard reading “SLACKER”***

(Take note: You are NOT ALLOWED to skip class in college, young lady. Because, unlike Nana, I WILL come prance you around the quad with a placard reading “SLACKER” and I’d add “AND SHE HAS BIG MOLES IN WEIRD PLACES” just to freak out any cute guys that, like, TOTALLY have crushes on you.)

Slightly into sophomore year, while living on my sorority hall, I started hanging out with the “bad” girls that lived at the “End of The Hall”. We even called ourselves the “End of the Hall” girls. We were the WILD girls. We were the girls that bought 40 oz beers and took back roads and wrote poetry. We skipped class and drove to New Orleans for concerts with no place to stay. The Earth had opened up and your mother had found her coolness. It was drinking wine out of a box while breaking into people’s farms just to chase their chickens. It was listening to “Least Complicated” with the windows rolled down and screaming spontaneously written poems into the flat darkness. It was Delta Joie De Vie.

It was sometime during these semesters that you mother learned the art of funneling beer, napping through most daylight hours, and the intricacies of the University’s mandatory minimum attendance policy. It was while “learning” these policies that I discovered a grade could be dropped simply for lacking to show up to a certain percentage of classes. Unfortunately, I had a 2pm elective that hit right in the middle of the required daily nap that kept my inner poet alive on the roads at night. This class was KILLING my “joie”. I remember attempting to separate my face from my pillow most Wednesday afternoons around 1:30pm and it seemingly magnetically being pulled back to the coolness of the pillow case. It was too much responsibility for any one person to be expected to handle. So, I eventually stopped even trying. Sleeping blissfully, I let myself give up any guilt attached to my cutting.

Due to my lack of showing up, my grade was reduced from an “A” to a “B” and there was nothing I could do about it. I even tried telling the teacher the one about having to have an ovary removed due to THE LARGEST CYST ANY DOCTOR HAS EVER SEEN. You know, the one that worked TWICE on my psychology professor who wore purple Birkenstocks and thought all female organs were sacred and should be worshipped on corners. This teacher, on the other hand, was 73-years old and still wore booty shorts to class that-with a suntan pair of control top hose worn underneath-made her legs look still half-way to rocking. This was not the type of woman that swooned when one used the term "vagina" freely and spoke damningly of female goddess exclusion from mainstream religion. She had frosted hair and tanned extensively. She wore red lip stick and lots of spandex tops that glittered subtley in the light reflecting off her silver tipped hair. Honestly, she made me throw up a little in my hand. Although, the times I did attend class I really can’t tell you if the strong urge to vomit was from the 70-year-old wearing the booty shorts or the actual alcohol I had ingested the night previously. I’m going to blame the 70-year-old. But, that’s beside the point.

I tell you this long and somewhat pointless story so that you will laugh less-and respect your mother more- when you hear the actual NAME of the class that I made a “B” in. A task so FOUL, I obviously found it just as difficult to figure out as fractions.

The class was aptly named, “Walking 101”.

It was a class in which one walked.

In circles.

Around a gym.

For one hour.

Basically what I’m saying is that in your tenth month of life you seem to have mastered a skill your mother had issues with at a college level. As the typical new parent’s response to their child’s mastery of something they find extremely difficult, I’m going to say the one thing I’ve been dying to say since you were born, “YOU ARE A GENIUS! I EFFING KNEW IT!”

Love,
Mama



***Not that Nana ever did that. Nana doesn’t make scenes…unless it’s unintentional and she’s just trying to prove someone wrong. Then Nana will make a scene. We’ll discuss this more later the first time she takes you to a car dealership, holds her hand up in front of the salesman’s face BEFORE HE UTTERS A WORD and says, “Are there any WOMEN that sell cars here?” Then, when I mortify you in public at the age of 16 you will understand it’s genetic……and medication won’t do a damn thing for it.