The least shocking news of 2012 broke this week, with deep South, deep-fat fryin’ down-home cooking guru Paula Deen admitting that she has type-2 diabetes, something the rags have been dishing on for years.

With signature recipes including Southern Fried Chicken, Cheese Biscuits, Krispy Kreme Bread Pudding and Paula’s Fried Butter Balls, as well as the admission in USA Today that she used to drink “sweet tea” from “… lunchtime … to bedtime,” I’m not sure how anybody – least of all, Paula, couldn’t have seen this coming.

Criticized heavily for promoting a fat- and sugar-laden diet – a diet which is linked to no shortage of health issues, from heart disease to obesity to diabetes – Deen famously once told Oprah, “I’m your cook, not your doctor,” and refuses even now to change her cooking show habits, insisting that she has always stressed moderation in eating.

Sure, Paula, and I’m sure that tobacco companies stress moderation in smoking. I hope Paula is ok, I really do, but the truth is, moderation would have put Paula out of business long ago. What does moderation constitute? Doing something 10% of the time? 25% of the time? I’m pretty sure that Paula would not stress moderation when it comes to people buying her heart-attack-waiting-to-happen recipe books, or the cooking implements she happily shills, which – the only real shocker here – does not include a signature deep fryer.

Also disturbing is the fact that Paula has kept the diagnosis close to her ample bosom for years, choosing only to come out of the deep fryer with her news as it coincides with her new appointment as spokesperson for Novo Nordisk, the pharmaceutical company that will be supplying Deen’s diabetes medication and implements. How quaint.

I am all for people taking responsibility for their own choices and for not playing the blame game when it comes to making the bad ones, but the critics have a point –Paula preaches a dangerous message to the throngs of the butter loving faithful.

It’s like Dr. Atkins developing heart disease, Ben Cohen (of Ben and Jerry’s) undergoing a quintuple (!) bypass, or the millionaire owner of Segway dying in a Segway accident – when you make your living dabbling in the unhealthy and stupid, it can eventually catch up with you.

It caught up with Deen, and as for the blame game, well, she has nobody to blame but herself.

There’s a lot of baby talk and Mommy judging in the news this week and since we’re all about Bad Moms over here, we might as well tackle the topics at hand.

First up, Michelle Duggar. The Duggars went on the Today show with their nineteen (!) children and two grandchildren to announce that Michelle was pregnant with baby number 20th. This, of course, has led to a lot of criticism from all sides. She’s had health concerns with past pregnancies (pre-eclampsia), she had a premature baby, and she’s 45 which means her pregnancy would be considered “high risk” even if it were her first pregnancy.

While I love children and love my children more than words can express, there is no way on God’s green earth that I want to be pregnant again. My pregnancies weren’t horrible, but they weren’t awesome either. My third gave me the added bonus of spider veins on the front of my legs that make me look like I have a permanent bruise and while pregnant I suffered from varicose veins in an unmentionable area. Every time I went for a checkup my doctor would ask how it was going and upon hearing my response would say, “Each subsequent pregnancy is harder on your body.” Then she’d perform my checkup and say, “I’m so sorry.”

I’m guessing that Michelle must have easier pregnancies than I did (True confession: I have never watched the show), so I guess…good for her? They are debt-free and from what I hear have a pretty decent family life, so what is there to judge? I have a friend whose Dad comes from a family of 13 kids. They love the size of their extended family and have great times when they can all get together. Large families aren’t so bad, I think, so I can’t really understand the uproar.

Maybe one of you don’t agree with me and can tell me why so many people are up in arms.

For the second big headline, our very own Emma wrote about a woman who became a mother at 57 via IVF and now, at the age of 61, says that critics were right that the age limit for IVF should be 50. While I am all for people having the right to do whatever they want with their own bodies (see above), when you have to get a donor egg because your body can’t produce them anymore, maybe that’s a sign that you are too old to conceive? The rest of your body is aging as nature intended, so why make it do what it is clearly not able to do anymore? Yes, you want a baby, but at what cost?

As a Mom myself, I know how hard having babies can be on your body. I had my first baby when I was 27 and my third when I was 31. Three babies in four years is a recipe for exhaustion in itself, but even when I had one newborn at the age of 27, I was TIRED. Up every two hours or so in the night to nurse him, trying to balance a household and help with my husband’s self-employment. I was in a sleep-deprived state for a good 6-8 months. And then, of course, once it lifted I thought, “Let’s do this again!” Oh, how quickly the mind and body forgets.

Age and exhaustion aside, I think that the most important thing here are the kids in stories such as this. The Mother in the story said something that came to mind as soon as I started reading the article:

I get a great emotional feeling when I look at her and a sadness when I realise time’s running out. If I could change just one thing I would wish to be younger so I could enjoy watching Freya grow up, get married and have children of her own.

GAH. This little girl is going to grow up and probably not going to have her Mom see her graduate from high school, never mind get married and have kids of her own. I mean, I get the desire to have kids but at what cost to the kids that you bear? To have to bury your Mom while you are still a child? I know that this is a risk all parents take — we don’t know the future — but when you become a parent so late in life, the odds are really stacked against you. I feel for the little girl and I feel for the Mom who just wanted a baby and now realizes that she won’t be around for her daughter. It’s a sad story, really.

What do you think? Should there be an age limit for IVF? Should Michelle stop at twenty babies and call it a (busy) day?

How often have you found yourself packing up the baby stroller for a day on the town with the offspring only to curse the lack of a gun rack next to the cup holder and snack tray?

That’s right, never.*

* it is highly possible that maybe someone out there actually has cursed this ‘oversight’ of the baby stroller manufacturers but those are the parents that scare me even more than the judgmental good moms skulking around the playground waiting for you to do something ‘bad’.

Anyway. I tripped across this post of pictures from some some really scary folks who have taken the time to outfit strollers with gun racks.

I'd like you to meet my little friend.

Admittedly there was a whole whack of hysterical judgement before the WHY behind the designs was established and for a long minute my inner judgmental parent screamed out a battle cry, a battle cry that hopefully would fit in under 120 characters so it could go viral in RTs on Twitter so many unsuspecting Tweeple could share in my misguided outrage.

ARE YOU TALKING TO ME?

But a little digging around revealed that the people behind these parambulators from hell had made these modifications for transportation convenience during hunting expeditions and they (hopefully) had no intention of putting a baby in-between the semi-automatic rifles and AK-47s. So I guess these rides are okay. I think. Good god, what are these people hunting for… T-Rexes?

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Mind you, this wasn’t the strangest bad idea I found on the interwebs in recent days. Twin Rivers Police Association in California had a t-shirt for sale via the union website that offended people that discovered it and so far it has caused quite the uproar despite being removed from the site.

At first glance the t-shirt made me laugh out loud but I really do get why folks were upset. If my local Toronto Police pulled this stunt I’d be equally ticked off. Judge for yourself:

Way to instill faith in the parenting skills of the citizens you serve Twin Rivers. *shakes head* Hopefully the removal and apology for their actions will be enough to regain some respect from the families in their community. Sometimes bonehead moves are just that, bonehead moves. I hope the bonehead who approved this idea realizes that sometimes funny isn’t so funny outside the box.

So thanks to Laid Off Dad, along came this little article in to my twitter feed that listed a mere dozen ways that we’re effortlessly, gleefully screwing up our kids for life.  Life, I tell you! Yes, they’ve gathered child psychologists! Psychiatrists! and OTHER EXPERTS (who’d they call? your mother-in-law?) to come up with this handy list of everyday things that you, too, are probably doing which will inevitably result in gigantic bills to either a therapist or bail bondsman later in your child’s life.   And what are these things we’re all doing to mess with our kids, pray tell? Are they things like violence? Verbal abuse? Oh no, no. Far worse. Much more insidious. To mess up your kid for life, you merely have to:

• threaten to leave your kids behind (guilty)
  lie to your kid (guilty) (No, honey, Elmo’s asleep right now, he can’t come sing on the big TV…)
  Ignore your own bad behaviour (guilty) (you should have heard the curses coming out of my mouth this afternoon when  I stubbed my toe for the goddamn 4,682nd time on that goddamn corner..)

Anyway, for the sake of brevity and to keep you from reaching the point where you really just want to call children’s aid on me already, I will let you know that I’m pretty much guilty of every single sin on the Atlantic’s list. And so, probably, are you. Because there is nothing that isn’t on it that we, as parents, don’t do every day just to get through the day.  We’ll rush, and we’ll serve junk food, and we drive our cars, and we just do whatever it takes to keep everyone alive and healthy and happy. And even by doing that, we’re screwing it up. So thanks, Atlantic, for providing us with yet another impossible measure, yet another list that tells us how we, as parents, are irrevocably screwing up the next generation and how the downfall of western society is ENTIRELY OUR FAULT.

So the way I figure it, given that we can do exactly nothing that does not screw up our kids, here’s a list of things I am henceforth not going to give a crap about when it comes to parenting.

1. Kraft Dinner. I have had quite enough of making homemade macaroni and cheese with wholewheat pasta and 1% organic freerange whatthehellever milk and cheese made from unicorn farts. A couple of bowls of KD are not going to kill her, and frankly, not having to stress one more ounce about making that carb-laden shit from scratch is better for both of us in the long run.

2. Swearing. She’s gonna learn the words somehow, might as well learn how to use them appropriately and in context. Bonus: She’ll be the cool kid on the playground. And I’ll get to know the Principal really well.

3. What anyone else thinks. Yeah, I might do things you’d never do as a parent. Tell you what: You call me in 25 years and remind me of that time I did that thing at the mall that you rolled your eyes and huffed at. And then I’ll laugh at you, then you’ll laugh at me, and then we’ll pop our teeth in and go have a drink and chortle at the things we all used to take so damn seriously.

Photo credit: D Sharon Pruit

My five-year old daughter is beautiful, objectively beautiful. The kind that stops people on the street, and it is often the first words out of people’s mouths when they meet her. She is my only girl so maybe that is the way with girls — strangers always obsessing over their looks. I try  not to remind her of her beauty.  The compliments out of my mouth are more often: your smile makes me feel good; you look happy; and when her outfit is over the top — is that comfortable to play in?

But her beauty is something I hold dear to my heart. Just like mothers everywhere, I stare at her flawless complexion, I appreciate the angle of her nose, her rich dark eyes.  I revel in it, and hope that she experiences some of the charmed life that the beautiful seem to have.

And then I got bad news the other day.

My daughter needs glasses. I realized that on the scale of bad news, this is just a blip, a pinprick, a minor incidence in a litany of admittedly first-world problems. But, at the risk of sounding completely self-centred, it made me feel horrible.

I didn’t realize how invested I am in her beauty until I was told she may have to cover it up with glasses. Say what you will about Violet Affleck, five-year old girls with glasses are cute but not beautiful.  People treat kids who wear glasses differently, they are more careful of them, they assume they are smarter. I know what you are thinking — that I am crazy. But I am right, and unless you were also a four-eyed kid, you can’t comment.

I wore glasses from the age of eight until Lasik surgery at 38.  I was your typical glasses and braces wearing smart kid. In my tween years, I had some of the ugliest, pink 80s-styled glasses that you have ever seen and I still carry the psychic scars from my Grade 9 Yearbook  photo. I graduated thankfully to contact lenses at 14.  Until I had Lasik, I was never able to see the other side of a swimming pool or open a car window without fearing losing a contact lens. I went through life being told by my mother to take my glasses off for pictures — so I would look beautiful.  My grandmother always told me that “boys don’t make passes at girls wearing glasses.”  I know from wearing glasses.

Of course, after the appointment I called my sister. Which as an afterthought was a bad move. What could a slim, blonde, non-glasses wearing, never-had-braces woman know about looking different? Nothing.  I told her maybe the upside is that my daughter would get in touch with her nerd side, as everyone would assume she was smart. She told me to get over my baggage. Which I could if it wasn’t so wedged in my psyche and hard to open.

I started to see the bright side — she would go through an awkward phase just as Tina Fey suggested.  She would be teased and learn to defend herself (kids are mean and will choose any opportunity to tease each other. I am not a novice on the schoolyard.). She would never be a mean girl (have you ever seen a mean girl with glasses? No.);  she would be forced to step up and become stronger all because of glasses.

Hyperbole? Perhaps.

But when it comes to our girls, we wish for them to be beautiful don’t we? Even we feminist mothers? The ones who should know better? We never want our kids to suffer, we don’t want them to have to go through whatever hardships (however small) that we did. We want the world to get past their physical appearance and know them on the inside. But sometimes we are confused about what we want — sometimes it takes small things to make you realize what kind of parent you are. Sometimes an easy doctor’s appointment can make you realize how shallow you are.

I will never tell my daughter to take off her glasses to be beautiful, I will buy her every prescription goggle-like apparatus that she needs to ensure that she stays in sports, that she swims. And I will also encourage her to cultivate her nerdy side – because in the end, it is her brain,not her looks that will give her a charmed life. I am starting to hope that maybe wearing glasses will allow my daughter’s winning personality to shine through the coke-bottled lenses. Or maybe it will not affect who she is at all, maybe she is stronger than that, and the world more forgiving, less likely to judge. Or maybe I’m just not seeing straight.

So, what do you think? Are you scarred by your appearance as a child? Do you think that kids wearing glasses get stereotyped?

Photo credit: D Sharon Pruit

Jumping through hoops, working for free, and deceiving their readers — these are three things it seems like mom bloggers are a little bit less willing to do these days. I must admit, it is a trend I like and one I’d love to see go viral.

A lot of bloggers get multiple e-mails every single day from companies and public relations professionals offering to send them free product if they’ll review it on their blog. Some go for that, some don’t. Some of those brands want just a little bit more. They may want you to host a giveaway of their product on your blog, one that requires people to click through to their website and, for example, comment on which product they like the best. That takes work and may also take money if the company is asking you to ship the product to the winner of the giveaway. Will they pay you to do it? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Mostly no if they can find enough people to do it for free. But then there are companies who ask a whole lot more.

Recently, toy company Melissa and Doug was promoting a “Great Opportunity” for bloggers. In the promotion (captured here by Mommy Niri), they wrote:

If you’re a BLOGGER looking for the opportunity to provide a Melissa & Doug giveaway to your audience – look no further!

If you would help us promote your Sand Play Toys, specifically the 4 items listed below, and suggest that your followers come by our Facebook Page and *Like Us, we can send you a set of these sand toys for your own enjoyment, as well as a giveaway to your audience for every 200 fans you send our way! Just ask your audience to post something on Our Facebook Wall saying that YOUR blog sent them! The giveaway form for the sand toys set will be on your blog.

Two hundred fans? Who not only need to “Like” Melissa and Doug based on your recommendation, but who also need to leave a comment indicating that you sent them? That’s work. A lot of work. More work than a few sand toys are worth. Not just a lot of work, but a lot of social capital to expend in a world where that capital slips away all too easily.

Mommy Niri wrote about the contest on her blog, outlining what was wrong with that particular scenario. Melissa and Doug did end up responding in the comments and indicated that the page was poorly worded (although it was awfully specific for something that was simply poorly worded). They also updated their web page for the contest to simply read that if you wanted to help them promote their Sand Play Toys, you should send them an e-mail.

I wonder if anyone got them 200 likes?

Speaking of likes, there is also a bit of backlash against the “Vote for Me” contests. You know, the ones that make you beg your friends to go back every single day for a month to vote for you? It seems as though some people have realized that these contests are more beneficial to the website that is hosting the contest than the person who is nominated for the award. In her post, On Blogging, Popularity Contests & Why I QUIT!, Katherine Stone from Postpartum Progress wrote:

What good does it do for me to drive friends and family and people I hardly know up the wall so that some other website can get a lot of traffic?  What are we doing?!  Everyone I know who has to beg for votes is uncomfortable the entire time they are doing it.  So why do we do it?

Yes, why? Being on a list based on merit…has merit. Being on a list because you annoyed more of your friends than the next person…not so much merit.

Unless you’re the website that benefited from all the page views and associated ad revenue, in which case “woo hoo!”

Then there are the swank offers to travel across the country, be wined and dined, and be given exclusive access to the inside scoop and high level executives in a company. Once upon a time there were the Nestle Family Bloggers. Invited on an all expenses paid trip to Nestle’s USA headquarters only to be fed a bunch of doublespeak by company executives while receiving flack from anti-Nestle activists on twitter and across the blogosphere.  Some people learned that company executives and media relations people do not follow any sort of oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Others didn’t.

But I have to hand it to McDonald’s Canada. Not to be outdone by Nestle, they decided to offer bloggers the opportunity to go on a similar junket. However, in their case, they were offering not just one trip, but four. And, instead of just inviting a group of bloggers they thought would help spread their gospel, they decided they were going to get bloggers to compete for the opportunity to be All-Access Moms. But the opportunity for what? To be deceived by McDonald’s executives, to be shown only what they want to show them, to be fed public relations approved answers to “tough questions”. There is no way that McDonald’s will choose someone who is truly critical of what they are doing. They are going to choose someone who likes McDonald’s, who is popular, and who has a few tough but not really so tough questions they want answered.

The funny thing? Although McDonald’s Canada promoted this contest across the blogosphere and even on television ads, I haven’t seen more than a handful (around four people) who have actually posted anything saying that they entered the competition. Maybe there are many, many, many more that applied secretly and didn’t tell anyone about it, but I have to admit I’m kind of hoping that most moms were smart enough to see that the downside to this offer was likely greater than the upside.

I won’t hold my breath on getting real answers to my questions to McDonald’s via whoever is chosen, because I’ve read their spin before and I doubt it has changed much.

Finally, there are the more plainly and painfully obvious requests for deception. Those e-mails, saying “I would like to place a text ad on your website.” Great. A lot of bloggers do offer text ads and they provide a bit of extra income without taking up too much space. But then in the second e-mail comes the caveat — they want the text link placed discreetly in a blog post without any mention of it being an ad. No disclosure = no go. That’s my policy. That is the law in a lot of places. Yet every day, there are companies e-mailing and asking mom bloggers to deceive their readers and break the law all the time.

Like the spam bots on twitter, I wonder who takes them up on their offer? There must be someone, right? I’m just so glad it is none of you, bad moms. Cause I know you’re smarter than that.

What do you say Bad Moms? Are you ready to be part of the trend that says “we are not your bitches” to the brands out there that want us only for our social capital and that ask us to do unseemly things in return? The very same social capital that will go down the drain if we take them up on offer after offer after offer?

Image credit: cote on flickr

OK, look. I know times, they change. I know that the style is no longer 90s grunge, where you wore everything three sizes too big. I know the style is short and sexy.

But on children? Who then do suggestive, provocative, emulating-sex-moves-ative dance moves? Why?

And yet, this is what they did on So You Think You Can Dance last night.

That’s always been the one thing with SYTYCD that bothered me… the clothes. Or lack thereof. The dancers, particularly the female ones, generally wear what appears to be underwear when they dance. Bras and panties. How…. enlightened. (Yes, I’m a cranky old Bad Mom fogey, but STILL.) Sure, maybe it’s comfortable. Maybe it gives them room to move. But in this age of lycra and spandex, surely there are other options. Except it’s obvious: The producers like it this way. The sexifying of the dancers seems to be just as important as the talent. Make sure they dress skanky. Make sure they look hot. It’s the only way to engage viewers, after all. It’s not like people can tell a good dancer from a bad one. It’s not like they are looking for talent or anything.

But last night they brought in the Rage Crew – a troupe of young dancers ranging in age from 8 to 18. Who are undeniably talented. Who will no doubt continue to grow and learn and dance at the top of their game. And whose impressive talent was overshadowed by their choices of wardrobe. 8 year olds were dancing in teeny sparkly bikini tops – despite having no breasts to fill them – and pleather pants, and were caked as heavily with makeup as the adults were – in fact, probably heavier. Check it – it gets creepy about a minute in:

Lots of tweeps loved the routine, for its complexity and the obvious display of talent. And lots of them were just as horrified as I was. Not to mention totally squicked by the fact that while they were watching a dance show, they all of a sudden had oversexualized 8 year olds dressed like hookers doing grinding club dance moves on their screen.

I am not a pedophile. Seeing sexualized children makes my skin crawl. I am a mother. Seeing sexualized children horrifies me. Most other people who are not pedophiles feel the same way. How on earth could an international television show not *get* this? Bombing regular people with a routine equivalent to an introduction to Pedobear’s wet dream in the middle of mainstream evening viewing? It just plain sucked. And boo to the producers of So You Think You Can Dance, who obviously have immersed themselves too far up their own ratings-motivated asses to realize how creepy – seriously, creepy – the whole thing really was.

We try so hard not to judge other people’s parenting choices at the Bad Moms Club but we do make exceptions when there are concerns for the children. This is one of those times and while maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m not being open-minded in this case, maybe it’s me that has the problem — I doubt it.

British Glamour Model Sarah Burge, aka The Human Barbie, has spent over 500,000 pounds on cosmetic surgery to achieve that moniker. Which is nice fore her – not gonna judge – but a little less nice, maybe, when her Barbie-fixation gets transferred on to her daughter. Sarah Burge gave her 7 year-old daughter a gift for her birthday that is, in my opinion, totally inappropriate, completely misguided, and carries a metric ton of potential damage to her little girl’s self-esteem. She gave her 7 year old daughter a 6,000 pound gift certificate for a breast augmentation which she can cash in when she’s 16. Notice how I keep emphasizing 7 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER? A 7 year old child that I will safely assume does not yet have breasts but is already being told her future breasts will be inadequate. Excuse me while I step outside to let my head explode.

OK, I’m back and now wearing protective head-gear to complete this post.

I will reluctantly ignore the fact that for 7 year old Poppy’s birthday party the theme was ‘exotic pamper’ which included manis, pedis, fake tattoos, fake champagne, a party bus that probably rivals Bret Michael’s, and of course makeovers for all her friends. I will even ignore the fact that the birthday girl wore a dress worth more than my wedding dress, slapped on full makeup, and had hair extensions even though no child needs to damage her hair with extensions, wear over-priced clothes, or distort her beauty with pore-clogging compounds. I will ignore all this because if my child was planning a birthday party, she’d make the same requests. I’d shoot them all down nicely and extol the virtues of Pin-The-Tail-On-The-Donkey but I do know that Human Barbie’s mom choices fits my 5yo child’s idea of an all-out party. But contrary to the relationship I think Sarah Burge has with her children, I’m the adult in our mother-daughter relationship who’s primary concern is my child’s safety in all sense of the word and I make these choices taking into consideration her requests and mental health. *ahem*

So back to the gift. Why does a child need this ‘get plastic surgery to make yourself perfect!!’ message at such a tender, impressionable age? WHY???? I cannot understand the encouragement to surgical alter her body to fit another person’s definition of beauty. WHHHHHHHHHHHYYYYYYYYY??? Sending this message to such a young child only reinforces the media and horrendous societal messages she is already being bombarded with and if her caregivers won’t guide her through this dangerous, mine-filled marketing garbage, who will?

Poppy’s mom Sarah justifies it with

‘Poppy begged me for a boob job, so I gave her the voucher so she can have it after she’s 16, when it’s legal. If she develops naturally big boobs, she can have something else done with it.’

AWESOME idea Sarah, just awesome. My daughter begged me for a diet that only includes corn syrup and refined sugar products but I shot it down. Basically what Sarah is saying to her child is if Poppy does not develop big breasts, she’s got a backup plan to solve that ‘problem’ (CRINGE). Because we all know that every parent dreams that their daughter has large, literally back-breaking, wrong-kind-of-attention-seeking mammaries so that she can be confident because large breasts pave the way to self-esteem. *head-desk*

I guess this shouldn’t be a surprise considering her other three daughters, aged between 17 and 25, have already had unnecessary plastic surgery. But I am be concerned, disappointed, and outraged over her parenting decisions. I AM judging her. A child needs guidence, a child needs to know that being born that way is beautiful (props to Gaga), a child needs to be a child for as long as possible, and I judge any adult who takes that away.

I’m not alone, right?

Did I mention she has already taught Poppy how to pole-dance?

source

what would you do?

He was a cute baby, perhaps 8 months old, all chubby cheeks and waving hands and little squeals. Sitting on his adult’s lap (I can only presume that it was his father, but that is indeed a presumption), that baby looked happy and clean and well-cared for. That baby made me smile.

And then the baby’s adult reached down beside him into a little paper bag, and shoved a fistful of popcorn into his mouth. The baby, being a baby, grabbed the man’s hand and yelped at him. I thought it was cute. It’s always cute when babies want what their adults have. Except then, the adult reached down into the bag again, came up with a single big, fluffy piece of popcorn, and popped it into cute baby’s mouth. Not cute! Not cute!

My stomach dropped and my eyes widened. Popcorn? For a baby? Is that adult crazy? I looked around to see if anybody else had noticed, but I seemed to be on my own. The man fished out another piece and gave it to the baby. And then another. They got into a bit of a rhythm – a fistful for me, a kernel for you. Cute baby was happy and seemed to like the popcorn, but all I could think was, cute baby is going to choke! Don’t you know how dangerous it is to give a baby popcorn?! Cute baby is going to die because cute baby’s adult is a moron!

I was absolutely stuck in a moral dilemma between standing there watching, minding my own business, and sprinting up to cute baby’s adult, informing him that You can’t feed popcorn to a baby! He will choke! He will die! I had no idea what I should do.

If cute baby had been un-seated in a car that pulled up next to me, I would have rolled down my window and yelled at them. Or maybe even called 911. If cute baby had been playing near an electrical outlet, or had a purse strap tangled around his neck, I would have said something. But I had no idea what to do about cute baby being fed popcorn.

The story ends with me getting off easy – cute baby’s female adult (presumably his mother) came back to the pair from some other corridor of the mall, and scooped cute baby up. She seemed neither concerned nor surprised about the baby’s current snack, but I can’t be sure she saw him eating it. The man got up and pushed the strolled after the woman, popcorn bag tucked into the basket underneath.

So I said nothing.

But it’s been nearly two years now and I still think about cute baby, my inability to make a moral vs safety call on the subject, and wonder if I should have said something.

Should I have said something? Would you?

I’ve been thinking a lot about adultery — not in the ‘that would be fun’ way — but in the ‘how would I handle it?’ way. Of course the Sperminator got the ball rolling but a salacious affair at my daughter’s school got me and my husband talking.

This particular affair is surprising for it’s mundane qualities — a married dad and a married mom had an affair for a couple of years. It finished up one doomed relationship and the others have chosen to work it out — in full view of the other parents in the schoolyard. Our schoolyard isn’t different than yours, the same thing is probably happening right now at your schoolyard and throughout the hallways across the country. In my neighbourhood the ones I know of include a father having an affair with his son’s Kindergarten teacher, a friend getting “her ducts cleaned” by her contractor  and two moms getting it on before lunch pick-up.

We can’t really know what goes on in a marriage and the secret arrangements and deals that spouses make with each other. Marriage is a compromise and we all make those compromises in our own way. I don’t know how I would handle the knowledge that my husband had an affair and I’m not sure how he would handle it if I did. I think marriages can go on after affairs but there are lines that should not be crossed.

The thing I find particularly galling  when it comes to both Schwarzenegger and the less famous dad in my schoolyard is that they chose people to fool around with that their wives see everyday. (Understanding that the Guv may have had many others littered around town). And that is the part that seems so awful to me. Assuming that you have secretaries and interns and some other willing participants, why do you choose someone that your partner has to interact with? That seems to be the most humiliating part, the knowledge that one party thinks they are talking bake sales and childcare and the other person is thinking: “If you only knew what he did to me last night”. Isn’t the “Ha!” just assumed there?

When I brought this angle up with my husband (how do I know he doesn’t cheat? the man is very germ-phobic that alone will stop him), he didn’t get it. He just said all cheating is bad, how can you rank one as worse than another?

Well of course there is a ranking! From the forgivable night with Angelina Jolie to the unforgivable carrying on with a best friend. That is a continuum that women understand to be true. But did men miss the memo?

Is there a scale onto which you would graft a transgression? Do you think that you could forgive your spouse for stepping out? Could you make it work after an affair? I’m not sure the answers are knowable. I’m hopeful I won’t have to find out, you?