Friday Follies .....err...is it Thursday?

OK Mates..."Charlie The Cop" shares the benefit of his age and wisdom with us by giving us some good friendly advice fer all the men-folk out there who just may not be aware of this concept.....

Quote for the day:

'Whatever you give a woman, she's going to multiply.

If you give her sperm, she'll give you a baby.

If you give her a house, she'll give you a home. If you give her groceries, she'll give you a meal.

If you give her a smile, she'll give you her heart.

She multiplies and enlarges what is given to her.'

So - if you give her crap, you will receive a bucket full of shit!
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...and "Charlie also sent an OBG that's always worth a reprint and a good laugh....

Making a baby. There is not one dirty word in it, and it is funny.

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The Smiths were unable to conceive children and decided to use a
surrogate father to start their family.

On the day the proxy father was to arrive, Mr. Smith kissed his wife goodbye and said, "Well, I'm off now. The man should be here soon."

Half an hour later, just by chance, a door-to-door baby photographer happened to ring the doorbell, hoping to make a sale.

"Good morning, Ma'am", he said, "I've come to..."

"Oh, no need to explain," Mrs. Smith cut in, embarrassed, "I've
been expecting you."

"Have you really?" said the photographer. "Well, that's good.
Did you know babies are my specialty?"

"Well that's what my husband and I had hoped. Please come in and have a seat".

After a moment she asked, blushing, "Well, where do we start?"

"Leave everything to me. I usually try two in the bathtub, one on the couch, and perhaps a couple on the bed. And sometimes the living room floor is fun. You can really spread out there."

"Bathtub, living room floor? No wonder it didn't work out for Harry and me!"

"Well, Ma'am, none of us can guarantee a good one every time. But if we try several different positions and I shoot from six or seven angles, I'm sure you'll be pleased with the results."

"My, that's a lot!", gasped Mrs. Smith .

"Ma'am, in my line of work a man has to take his time. I'd love to be In and out in five minutes, but I'm sure you'd be disappointed with that."

"Don't I know it," said Mrs. Smith quietly

The photographer opened his briefcase and pulled out a portfolio of his baby pictures. "This was done on the top of a bus," he said .

"Oh, my word!" Mrs. Smith exclaimed, grasping at her throat.

"And these twins turned out exceptionally well - when you consider
their mother was so difficult to work with."

"She was difficult?" asked Mrs. Smith .

"Yes, I'm afraid so. I finally had to take her to the park to get the job done right. People were crowding around four and five deep to get a good look"

"Four and five deep?" said Mrs. Smith , her eyes wide with amazement.

"Yes", the photographer replied. "And for more than three hours, too. The mother was constantly squealing and yelling - I could hardly concentrate, and when darkness approached I had to rush my shots. Finally, when the squirrels began nibbling on my equipment, I just had to pack it all in."

Mrs. Smith leaned forward. "Do you mean they actually chewed on
your, uh...equipment?"

"It's true, Ma'am, yes.. Well, if you're ready, I'll set-up my tripod and we can get to work right away."

"Tripod?"

"Oh yes, Ma'am. I need to use a tripod to rest my Canon on. It's much too big to be held in the hand very long."

Mrs. Smith fainted

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Now Sir....my amiga Missy "Nikki" who's brave hubby is in Iraq and due to return soon after his long absence, sends us this cute story about...er...well, ya just gotta read it fer yurselves....

'Lizard Birth'

If you have raised kids (or been one), and gone through the pet syndrome,
including toilet flush burials for dead goldfish, the story below will have
you laughing out LOUD!

Overview: I had to take my son's lizard to the vet.

Here's what happened:

Just after dinner one night, my son came up to tell me there was 'something
wrong' with one of the two lizards he holds prisoner in his room.

'He's just lying there looking sick,' he told me. 'I'm serious, Dad. Can you
help?'

I put my best lizard-healer expression on my face and followed him into his
bedroom. One of the little lizards was indeed lying on his back, looking
stressed. I immediately knew what to do.

'Honey,' I called, 'come look at the lizard!'

'Oh, my gosh!' my wife exclaimed. 'She's having babies.'

'What?' my son demanded. 'But their names are Bert and Ernie, Mom!'

I was equally outraged. 'Hey, how can that be? I thought we said we didn't
want them to reproduce,' I said accusingly to my wife.

'Well, what do you want me to do, post a sign in their cage?' she inquired
(I think she actually said this sarcastically!)

'No, but you were supposed to get two boys!' I reminded her, (in my most
loving, calm, sweet voice, while gritting my teeth).

'Yeah, Bert and Ernie!' my son agreed.

'Well, it's just a little hard to tell on some guys, you know,' she informed
me (Again with the sarcasm!).

By now the rest of the family had gathered to see what was going on. I
shrugged, deciding to make the best of it.

'Kids, this is going to be a wondrous experience,' I announced. 'We're
about to witness the miracle of birth.'

'Oh, gross!' they shrieked.

'Well, isn't THAT just great? What are we going to do with a litter of
tiny little lizard babies?' my wife wanted to know.

We peered at the patient. After much struggling, what looked like a tiny
foot would appear briefly, vanishing a scant second later.

'We don't appear to be making much progress,' I noted.

'It's breech,' my wife whispered, horrified.

'Do something, Dad!' my son urged.

'Okay, okay.' Squeamishly, I reached in and grabbed the foot when it next
appeared, giving it a gentle tug. It disappeared. I tried several more
times with the same results.

'Should I call 911?' my eldest daughter wanted to know.

'Maybe they could talk us through the trauma.'(You see a pattern here with
the females in my house?)

'Let's get Ernie to the vet,' I said grimly. We drove to the vet with my
son holding the cage in his lap.

'Breathe, Ernie, breathe,' he urged.

'I don't think lizards do Lamaze,' his mother noted to him.(Women can be
so cruel to their own young. I mean what she does to me is one thing, but
this boy is of her womb, for G~d's sake.).

The vet took Ernie back to the examining room and peered at the little
animal through a magnifying glass.

'What do you think, Doc, a C-section?' I suggested scientifically.

'Oh, very interesting,' he murmured. 'Mr. and Mrs. Cameron, may I speak to
you privately for a moment?'

I gulped, nodding for my son to step outside.

'Is Ernie going to be okay?' my wife asked.

'Oh, perfectly,' the vet assured us. 'This lizard is not in labor. In fact,
that isn't EVER going to happen. Ernie is a boy.

You see, Ernie is a young male. And occasionally, as they come into
maturity, like most male species, they um . . um . . .. masturbate. Just the way he
did, lying on his back.' He blushed, glancing at my wife.

We were silent, absorbing this.

'So, Ernie's just just... excited,' my wife offered.

'Exactly,' the vet replied , relieved that we understood.

More silence. Then my vicious, cruel wife started to giggle. & giggle. And
then even laugh loudly.

'What's so funny?' I demanded, knowing, but not believing that the woman I
married would commit the upcoming affront to my flawless manliness.

Tears were now running down her face. 'It's just that . . I'm picturing you
pulling on its . . its. . . teeny little ' She gasped for more air to bellow
in laughter once more.

'That's enough,' I warned. We thanked the vet and hurriedly bundled the
lizard and our son back into the car.. He was glad everything was going to
be okay.

'I know Ernie's really thankful for what you did,
Dad,' he told me.

'Oh, you have NO idea,' my wife agreed, collapsing with laughter.

Two lizards: $140.

One cage: $50.

Trip to the vet: $30.

Memory of your husband pulling on a lizard's winkie: Priceless!

Moral of this story: Pay attention in biology class - Lizards lay eggs!
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Rosa Brooks: Remember 'go outside and play?'
Overbearing parents have taken the fun out of childhood and turned it into a grind.

Rosa Brooks
May 15, 2008


Can you forgive her?

In March, Lenore Skenazy, a New York City mother, gave her 9-year-old son, Izzy, a MetroCard, a subway map, a $20 bill and some quarters for pay phones. Then she let him make his own way home from Bloomingdale's department store -- by subway and bus.

Izzy survived unscathed. He wasn't abducted by a perverted stranger or pushed under an oncoming train by a homicidal maniac. He didn't even get lost. According to Skenazy, who wrote about it in a New York Sun column, he arrived home "ecstatic with independence."

His mother wasn't so lucky. Her column generated as much outrage as if she'd suggested that mothers make extra cash by hiring their kids out as child prostitutes.

But it also reinvigorated an important debate about children, safety and independence.

Reader, if you're much over 30, you probably remember what it used to be like for the typical American kid. Remember how there used to be this thing called "going out to play"?

For younger readers, I'll explain this archaic concept. It worked like this: The child or children in the house -- as long as they were over age 4 or so -- went to the door, opened it, and ... went outside. They braved the neighborhood pedophile just waiting to pounce, the rusty nails just waiting to be stepped on, the trees just waiting to be fallen out of, and they "played."

"Play," incidentally, is a mysterious activity children engage in when not compelled to spend every hour under adult supervision, taking soccer or piano lessons or practicing vocabulary words with computerized flashcards.

All in all, "going out to play" worked out well for kids. As the American Academy of Pediatrics' Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg testified to Congress in 2006, "Play allows children to create and explore a world they can master, conquering their fears while practicing adult roles. ... Play helps children develop new competencies ... and the resiliency they will need to face future challenges." But here's the catch: Those benefits aren't realized when some helpful adult is hovering over kids the whole time.

Thirty years ago, the "going out to play" culture coexisted with other culturally sanctioned forms of independence for even very young children: Kids as young as 6 used to walk to school on their own, for instance, or take public buses or -- gulp -- subways. And if they lived on a school bus route, their mommies did not consider it necessary to escort them to the bus stop every morning and wait there with them.

But today, for most middle-class American children, "going out to play" has gone the way of the dodo, the typewriter and the eight-track tape. From 1981 to 1997, for instance, University of Michigan time-use studies show that 3- to 5-year-olds lost an average of 501 minutes of unstructured playtime each week; 6- to 8-year-olds lost an average of 228 minutes. (On the other hand, kids now do more organized activities and have more homework, the lucky devils!) And forget about walking to school alone. Today's kids don't walk much at all (adding to the childhood obesity problem).


Increasingly, American children are in a lose-lose situation. They're forced, prematurely, to do all the un-fun kinds of things adults do (Be over-scheduled! Have no downtime! Study! Work!). But they don't get any of the privileges of adult life: autonomy, the ability to make their own choices, use their own judgment, maybe even get interestingly lost now and then.

Somehow, we've managed to turn childhood into a long, hard slog. Is it any wonder our kids take their pleasures where they can find them, by escaping to "Grand Theft Auto IV" or the alluring, parent-free world of MySpace?

But, but, but, you say, all the same, Skenazy should never have let her 9-year-old son take the subway! In New York, for God's sake! A cesspit of crack addicts, muggers and pedophiles!

Well, no. We parents have sold ourselves a bill of goods when it comes to child safety. Forget the television fear-mongering: Your child stands about the same chance of being struck by lightning as of being the victim of what the Department of Justice calls a "stereotypical kidnapping." And unless you live in Baghdad, your child stands a much, much greater chance of being killed in a car accident than of being seriously harmed while wandering unsupervised around your neighborhood.

Skenazy responded to the firestorm generated by her column by starting a new website -- freerangekids.wordpress.com -- dedicated to giving "our kids the freedom we had." She explains: "We believe in safe kids. ... We do NOT believe that every time school-age children go outside, they need a security detail."

Next time I take my kids to New York, I'm asking Skenazy to baby-sit.

rbrooks@latimescolumnists.com


As I read this, I couldn't help but see the veracity of the article, and recall the fact that at age 6, I was walking (all by my little lonesome) to school everyday, and that by age 12, I was Hitch-Hiking to just about every place I needed to go. The spirit of independence and self reliance reinforced at every foray out of the house.

There were also those nice summer days when I was going in and out of the house every five minutes or so, and usually slamming the screen door behind me. This alway prompted that motherly threat, "If you come in this house one more time, you're staying in for the rest of the day!", and, damned if she didn't stay true to her word and I got stuck in the house while all my friends were still outside playing and having a great time.....

Yupper...there be some sad truth's in this here article....
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...and we'll end with some real cute "Baby Bloopers".....


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