Other Retro Pages
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MOMS ON RITALIN
Ritalin and the Retro Housewife
First of all Nancy was right, Just say no. But what if no one asks, must
I still decline? It was the question I asked myself one tired dreary
morning, with a day full of domestic labor loomed ahead of me; could I
pass off a Sara Lee semi-defrosted apple pie for homemade at the fourth
grade bake sale? Does the red light on the dash of the station wagon
imply that my brake pads are worn down to smoking rubber nubs and our
bodies in motion would remain in motion until I am sent careening into
Vons aisle seven “women’s hygiene/incontinence” instead of stopping
discretely in the perfect parking spot? After the third load of once
white, now pink laundry, I spied the pharmaceutical bottle up on the
medicine shelf. My son had tried the medication Ritalin briefly, but it
made him more oblivious to the teacher than usual. If it didn’t cause
young Morris to implode, what could it do for me?
Turns out that A.D.D. is short for Amphetamines are the Drug of
Distinction. I popped a few of the submarine shaped mother’s itty bitty
helpers and followed it with a cup of Peet’s coffee. (Hard workin’
hausfraus do not, repeat , do not drink instant.) Before I knew it there
was flour on the kitchen counter, floor, and ceiling, and a self rising
crust was being tucked around apples I had chopped up myself after
picking them from my own (neighbor’s) tree. If I’d had an axe I may have
told an extemporaneous fib and chopped the damn thing down, a la father
of the U.S.A., but Brenda Bartleson was sunning her cellulite-less (yet
hardly untouched by scalpel or liposuction hose) body by the pool and I
barely made it out of her backyard without alerting the Weimereiners. (I
trying to tell you , speed was my drug and current rate of movement.
I saved time cooking by cranking up the convection oven to 475 degrees
and then opening it frequently to keep the crust from burning. I got the
Toyota people to come pick up m car and take it to the shop, because I
imagined I was an amputee while selling them my story, and believe me,
this method acting/lying is a piece of cake. They promised to have the
car back by two PM, when they would hand the keys to my seeing limb dog
and take the check from his special doggie halter. Now to learn to sew a
special doggie halter and then train that doggie to answer to door,
accept car keys and allow a stranger to feel his doggie cleavage whilst
the payment for the car changed from paw to hand. I think I will take
another Ritalin before I go abscond with my neighbor Brenda’s
Weimereiner.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
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Mommy's Little Helper
Does it say something about the times we live in that we have moved
from the valium and electro shock therapy of yore, to Speed? Now we're
overtired, stressed and coming up with our own set of funny ailments;
- Instead of "Hysteria" we have "Attention Deficit Disorder"
- The tried and true Headache has now become a Migraine.
- We are no longer Tired, we have "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome"
Factoids
- Valium was introduced in 1963
- Valium's popularity Peaked in 1978. Americans popped about 2.3
BILLION pills that year.
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