An Ode to the Beastie Boy's Mom

We recently purchased a new car and subsequently entered into the 21st century of automobiles. This new car has Bluetooth which means I can listen to my playlist from my phone! I'm sure that is nothing new, but I have been in a minivan bubble the past decade.   No more mixed tapes for me.  OK, our van wasn't that old, and it did have a cd player that had a pirate CD stuck in it since 2006.

This morning I decided to expose the boys to one of my favorite groups, the Beastie Boys.  As we started to listen I realized I hadn't listened to them in awhile... like since I have been a mother. I never realized how mom-bashing these guys were.  "Your mom busted in and says what's that noise, oh, mom is just jealous it's the Beasty boys". Or "you ask your mom please, but she still says NO!" or
"your mom took away your best porno mag." Well, good for her. 
How could they have been so cruel as to publicly criticize their mother who by all accounts was protecting them from popping their ear drums, keeping them in school and taking away their porno mags which depicted women in an unrealistic and degrading light? And to think I agreed with them back in the day. She sounds like a great mom to me.

Before my beastie boys could sing along I changed my mind.  As I started to flip through my play list I realized that they shouldn't be listening to any of it.  Rump shaker,  Shoop, Gin and juice.   Why was my playlist so full of meaningless music and why could I sing every single word of it?

My son's birthday is tomorrow and one of the things he likes is T-shirts with funny graphics.  He has one that has a TV talking to a remote control saying "You're so controlling!"  So he asked for some new shirts. I'm too late to order any online so I decided to go to Spencer's.   I haven't been in a Spencer's since I was a teen but if I remembered, they had funny stuff.
I walked in and immediately had to adjust my eyes because it was so dark.  As my eyes are adjusting I almost run into the girl who is working there who must also like to dress like rainbow bright, but not bright, more like rainbow dark, or rainbow goth, although it's not goth anymore it's emo.

I make my way to the T-shirts and once I read them I had to hold my jaw up from hitting the floor.  How can you even enter this store under the age of 18?  In fact, if you are under 18 stop reading this, actually you shouldn't be reading this anyway, you should be in school.

I cringe as I type this, but here are some of the tame t-shirts.

I'm not a gynecologist but I will take a look.
This isn't a beer belly its a gas tank for my sex machine.
You give me a "heart" on

These are actually the mild ones. The rest are very graphic and the rest have a pot reference.   If this is what the youth of our country is willing to wear in public then we are in some serious trouble.

When I was in high school my family took a trip to Florida for Spring Break. My brother took a friend and I took a friend.  While shopping, I got a Grateful dead t-shirt with Jerry bears copulating in various positions.  Several things are wrong with this. First is,  that I  even considered myself a dead head at 14. Second is that I thought I could wear this somewhere when I  couldn't even buy it myself and made my friend buy it because I was too embarrassed.
My brother discovered my t-shirt and threatened me for the next 5 years that he would tell our parents.  All he would have to say is "T-Shirt" and it would shut me up. Guilt finally got the best of me and I ended up burying it in the trash.

As I made my way to the back of Spencer's it looks more like a Pleasure land museum.  Seriously, objects that I didn't even know existed.  What happened to funny toy cats doing flips? Or monkey's playing a drum?  That was the Spencer's I remember. I made a quick exit and added Spencer's to the list of places I need to keep the boys away from right under the Lion's Den.  (If you have ever driven to Florida from Indiana you know what I am talking about).

My birthday is coming up very soon. I will be 37.  I cannot believe it is possible. I remember my 21st birthday like it was yesterday. That is a lie. I don't remember my 21st birthday at all.  I remember my 20th birthday like it was yesterday and now I'm entering my late 30's.

Is this why I have become the mother the Beastie Boys were singing about?  I always thought I would be unlike my mom,  the cool mom.  The mom that all the boys friends think is awesome.  I have already blown this when my son had a sleep over and I asked them all to get their jammies on.   He was just about to do it until he saw the expression on his friends faces.   Not only do I have a generational gap but I also have a gender gap. When I was a little girl we couldn't wait to get our jammies on at a slumber party. Nowadays young boys wear their stinky clothes to bed and God forbid you call anything but a sleep over.

What ever happened to the coolness of a pajama jammy jam. Kid N Play did it and it was cool.

I'll stop now because I am only dating myself. But what I do know, is that I want nothing more to be the uncool mom.  I want to be the most lame parent on the block if it means keeping my sons from wearing T-shirt's that have subliminal meanings behind the text that read  "I'm an idiot" and "my mom must be an idiot too for letting me step out of the house wearing this stupid T-shirt".

Parenting is not for the weak-hearted.  I have 2 more years until my son is a teenager, I should be able to get my heart in shape before then. Rather than singing along with the Beastie Boys I will follow the lead of their mom.  She seemed to know what she was doing and for the record, I highly doubt she was jealous that you were the Beastie Boys. She probably busted in to put away your clean underwear she had just folded.