so the 50-foot-tall Redneck Mommy batted her impressive eyelashes and threw me a few questions. i was, of course, secretly hoping to be chosen, standing by the bleachers in my best dress, trying to look taller. Redneck Mommy made my day. i frequently wish life was as simple – and as full of harmless flirtations, even with other housewife types – as blogging. ;)

1. If a magic fairy swooped down into your life and offered to turn you into a man for ONE day, what would you do with your day?

Answer, take one – yeh, well, actually, i AM a man. i’m just pretending to be Bon, mommy, because i want to meet housewife types. ha. April Fools. no really, April Fools. (chuckles nervously…looks around, hoping you haven’t left).

Answer, take two – i’d ask that damn fairy why s/he wasn’t offering me unlimited riches and power, instead! or wait, maybe that’s what being a man is secretly all about? do i get to choose WHICH man i am?

Answer, take three – seriously…um…my inlaws read this blog sometimes. and they’re very nice people, and i hate to make them feel dirty. so i would, uh, erm…shave my face a lot? revel in my unplucked eyebrows? check out my new centre of gravity? lift things? and perhaps take a few extra minutes in the shower to…um…wash?

much as the physical discovery of inhabiting a male body would fascinate me – i’d really hope for good biceps, and would go around all day long squeezing my flexed arms quite lovingly – it is actually the potential power differential that would interest me most. i’d love to break into regular conversations, say things i usually say, and see whether or not people accorded my new lower register more authority and room. i’d like to tell someone off without being called “shrill” or “strident.” (not that people actually call me that now, to my knowledge, but i refrain from telling an awful lot of them off in fear of those kind of epithets…)

2. What would it take or how much would someone have to pay you for you to pierce your nipples and flash them to a stranger?

about ten bucks? maybe twelve. they’re not exactly my perkiest feature anymore and my modesty is growing with all this motherly maturity, so the price is going up. ;)

i don’t actually have any piercings that are not on my ears, but in truth would have been very open to nippiercings back post-college when all my friends were raving about them, except i’ve always been a little shy about my nipples. they don’t quite match. this used to bother me. i’d have flashed my tits for free in any number of circumstances, and *may* have on a couple of fuzzily-remembered occasions, but would never have drawn attention to my nipples for fear of having them found wanting. (inlaws, i hope to god you stopped reading back at the word nipple.)

i did do nude art modelling back during my undergrad, because $9 an hour was a lot of money to me then. and it was probably the best thing i ever did for what was at the time a very troubled body image…there’s something about having the familiar quirks and planes of your body reflected back to you in clay or on paper that makes it harder to see yourself as hideous. except for that one weird kid in the sculpture course who, while i was doing a reclined pose, breasts resting comfortably in my armpits, built my assets up into watermelons exploding from my chest. with NO nipples….like Little Orphan Annie’s eye sockets. when i walked by by his clay in my robe on the break i did whisper quietly (quite unstridently), “dude. i am not a comic strip.”

3. If you could magically have a Do-Over and change one thing in your life, what would that be?

insert big sigh here. i suppose the obvious answer, and the one my heart leaps to first, is Finn. i would make my firstborn live. i would have him with me, would get to hear his little voice and hold his hand, would get to see what he looked like at almost two and whether his brother really does look like him except that O is fair and Finn, even as early as he was, was dark like Dave & i, with a little brown almost-monobrow across his forehead and a shock of hair that O has yet to catch up to. i would have hope of hearing him say “mama.” i would have him here to worry about. and i would be less scarred for having not had to let him go.

but…but. much as this is clearly the big Do-Over looming in my file, i don’t know if i could choose it, were i really given the chance. even just imagining myself on that precipice, with that power, makes think of the old tale of The Monkey’s Paw, where the parents wish for the return of their dead son and get a creature from the grave. it’s not the ghoulishness of the story that puts me off. i could not fear Finn, in any form he might take, nor turn him away. it’s the metaphorical morality tale that hits home for me, the reaping of unexpected horror in wishing to abate one’s pain. if Finn had lived, would there be no Oscar? if i got my Do-Over, would i lose the child i have? i recoil from the possibility of fucking with the space-time continuum because i know enough to know that i do not in any way fully grasp causation, or how things come to be. had i carried Finn to term without problem, he’d have been born only a few weeks before Oscar was conceived. chances are, O would never have existed, certainly not as the particular Oscar he is…not firstborn but still our practice baby, focus of our fumbling attentions…locus of much healing. if i could have them both, safe? then yes. a thousand times yes (though the cloth diapers might have to go as my boys were born 51 weeks apart, to the day, and that seems like a lot of laundry). but without guarantees, i cannot use the Monkey’s Paw. the Do-Over will have to rot on the mantle, taunting me. i have one i can still protect, even from my own heart’s desire…and losing the other has made me wary of trying my luck.

4. If you were a crayon, what colour would you be?

you know, i always coveted the 64-box of Crayolas when i was a kid, just for its splendour and excess, but i don’t think i ever owned one. and in truth, i wasn’t a fan of crayons…i liked fingerpaint better. pure pigment. pure red. pure blue. colours so bright and rich and deep my head spun. but…if i had to be a crayon, i’d be a stubby little silver one, nubbed down and with the paper mostly ripped off, but still shiny and a little gaudy, and just a bit waxier than all those regular colours. because waxy is, you know, cool.

5. What do you think about people who chew on their toes or the dead skin off their feet? (Are you one of them?)

erm…well…no.

but i used to live in a glass house where i quite liked to chew on my toenails, so i cannot in good conscience cast stones at those with an oral fixation for their own feet. of course, i was about ten at the time of my own little chew-fest, and my friends eventually caught me doing it at gymnastics practice one night because i apparently had no inside/outside privacy boundaries. they teased me so mercilessly that i completely lost the ability to even get my toes near my mouth. so no. not anymore.

but i do not judge those who do, merely envy them and suggest they keep their chewing to the privacy of their own bedrooms, as i don’t particularly want to watch. unless they bring popcorn. i like popcorn.

so there. now…if any of you would like to play the interview game with me, announce yourselves in the comments and i’ll select a few lucky contestants to torture interrogate. :) you don’t need to put on your prettiest dress or anything…but batting your eyelashes will get you everywhere, dahlings.

Happy April, everyone.