So, I don't wanna pauschalisieren or anything but, basically, Good Mums do the following things:
- take their kids swimming
- take their kids to Mitmachtheaters
- take their kids to the library
- take their kids to Mitmachmuseums
Bad Mums, on the other hand, do the following things:
- Lesebühnes
- Poetry Slams
- leave their kids with three different people in one week, so that they can perform in Lesebühnes and/or Poetry Slams
- buy their kid, afterwards, as a reward for General Bad Mumishness a) the entire High School Musical Trilogy and b) Stars Wars DVDs from Media Markt. Don't get too het-up about the Star Wars thing, by the way. It's a U in England. Fucking chill out, to quote Catherine Tate's nan.
Guess what? Am sick of being a Bad Mum. So, I had nothing to do on a Sunday and a brilliant idea. I would take him to the zoo. The Tierpark one, out in the sticks. You have to understand, last time I took him to the Tierpark it kind of ended in disaster. It rained. A lot. And we couldn't find the monkey house. The Tierpark zoo is one of the best zoos I have ever been to in my life, but it is very big, and it was kind of hard to find the monkeys. And Rico really, really likes monkeys. I was kind of in despair. We kept on ending up at those sea-cows thing place, and God, they're disgusting. I know you're meant to find nature beautiful and magnificent and stuff, and, mostly, despite being a Hauptstadtkind, I do. I'm all into hills, mountains, lakes, trees, all that kind of shit. If I spend enough time in a forest, I get all Anne of Green Gables about it and start believing in God and stuff. But those sea-cows. They're fucking disgusting. They look worse than I did, pregnant. YUCK. Rico wasn't gonna be palmed off with some sea-cows. So you know what I did? I told him these awful rodent creatures - God, they were also fairly hideous - tiny little rodent things with human hands, freaky human hands and their tiny babies stuck to their necks like leeches - I told him they were baby monkeys. He bought it, as well. Well, I think he did, anyways.
But this time, I was determined to be a Good Mum, and although the weather wasn't fantastic, it wasn't raining, so we trooped around the park like we were doing our Militärdienst. I was feeling really smug afterwards, I can tell you.
"What animals did we see at the zoo, today?" I asked Rico on the S-Bahn home.
"Elephants," he said. "And cows, and snakes."
"And crocodiles," I added.
"And alligators," he said.
"And secretary birds," I said.
"And tigers," he said, "and flamingos and camels and hyaenas and wolves."
"And goats," I said.
"And polar bears."
"And foxes."
"And duckies and pigs."
"And porcupines."
Rico stopped suddenly. He looked at me, all puzzled. "What is it in German, Mum, porcupine?"
"You know," I said, gently. "The spiky one. A Stachelschwein. We saw them after we looked at the flamingos."
Rico scoffed. "No, Mum! We didn't see the porcupines. We just looked at their cage, where they live. But they weren't there."
I felt my face turning to stone. I was like the White Witch when she realizes Spring is coming and her poisonous dwarf mentions Aslan to her.
"They were asleep in the corner," I whispered to him frantically.
"Oh." He shrugged. "I thought we were just looking at their cage."
Sometimes. I. Literally. Don't Know. Why I FUCKING Bother.
Comments (6)
Comment FeedMumsie
Erik Blomquist more than 10 years ago
moms
farrfoto more than 10 years ago
porcupines
Amok more than 10 years ago
monkeys
more than 10 years ago
Whatja gonna do?
Good Mum more than 10 years ago
Football matches
Seymour more than 10 years ago