Breaking news: you can still party like a co-ed with a toddler!

The scene.

A basement. The ceiling is low. The place is packed and its starting to get warm and sticky. The beer bottle lights strung from one wall to another have started to tumble down. Tables packed with beer bottles line the walls. More bottles fill ice buckets and coolers nearby. We move in a haze from one room to another. I cling to the back of my man’s shirt as he pushes his way through the sweaty crowds. Someone is eating all the pretzels off my awesome pretzel neclace. I look around wildly to find the jerk.

Someone tugs at my tank top. “Mo! Mo! Mo!”

Damn. I forgot about the kid.
The reality.

We’re at a family beer tasting party at a friend’s home. Junior has eaten all of my pretzels so I have nothing to cleanse my palate with between tastes. I’m on tasting cup #2 not because I’m a wild party girl, but because Junior took the first one and smashed it. (Not cool, dude.)

Rather than the crowd pushing on me to move around the party, I’m dodging bodies and tables, grabbing up Junior at every turn so he doesn’t trip the party goers he’s maneuvering. When I’m not doing that, I’m scolding him to put down the beer bottles that he’s pulled out of the coolers. Mad that he can’t have a beer, he demands more pretzels.

After Mr. J and I have had the equivalent of about  half a beer and all of the pretzels we haven’t eaten are gone, we move upstairs to get Junior some BBQ and let him play outside with the rest of the children.

(I don’t remember this part at all the frat parties I have [not] attended…)

The awesomeness.

Remember the good old days, ladies? Playing hard-to-get with your guy (don’t want him to know how much you melt inside every time he looks at you), and enter skuzzball with the slicked back hair who throws out a line like, “Do you believe in love at first sight or should I walk by again?” Before he’s even done saying the words, your guy comes flying in from out of nowhere and knocks him out. BAM! Total awesomeness.

But now that we’re someone’s mother, and most guys consider that to be “with baggage,” we don’t often find ourselves in this situation anymore.*

*If you are, may I offer the helpful suggestion to reevaluate your social life at this point?

But today I found myself in that all-too-familiar situation. (Okay, maybe in my dreams all-too-familiar.) Junior and I were puttering around in the living room waiting for daddy to shut the hell up so we could take off (granted this was like 20 minutes after the party started… had to get Junior home to bed *sigh*). A lone guy sitting on the couch smiled at us and waved. I didn’t even have time to explain to Junior that this guy had three kids and a wife outside and he didn’t mean anything…

HOLD UP SUCKA!! NOBODY MESSES WITH MY PRETZEL LADY LIKE THAT!!!

Junior stared him down and gave him the evil stink eye until the guy became so uncomfortable he turned his head away and refocused on his plate of food.

Yeah! I still got it, baby!!

Enter Mr. J who glances around and says, “Oh, I didn’t even notice you in here, babe.“

………..Oh well, this is why we have sons.

All Things Unlearned chronicles my journey in unlearning everything I already thought I knew through my experiences as a wife, a mother, and an American through funny, overly-opinionated, witty, sometimes offensive, and yet always entertaining banter. Come be amused.