[...]Erika Rae | MiniPoo: The Curious Case of Erika Rae | The Nervous Breakdown[...]…

The Nervous Breakdown…

Wait a minute. Born with grey hair? Wasn’t Superman’s dad born that way too???

Doesn’t go down so well.

I just tried to google the ingredients of MiniPoo. It seems that the main ingredient was Fuller’s Earth Clay, which is reportedly safe enough to “powder a baby’s bottom”. Possibly cornstarch, too, but I can’t find any definite on that. But here’s the clincher – guess what Fuller’s Earth Clay’s #2 most popular use was…(wait for it)… KITTY LITTER!

And suddenly MiniPoo takes on a whole new meaning.

Funny your mom didn’t object to all the harmful chemicals in Minipoo. That generation has a strange relationship with chemicals.

Never had pink hair. Never had lavendar either, and thank God Almighty never had blue curls. The old ladies sure did like that colored rinse. I did get some really bad perms there in the 80′s though!

My great aunt had a beauty salon back then. She catered to sweet old gals with silver hair, some tinted blue, pink, and purple, tight perms set with rollers and pins, scalps of cradle cap, all fully dusted with talcum. I used to visit her as a kid, sweep hair and listening to their stories.

talk about living life in reverse! I was born with grey hair. Silver locks that fell out within a few weeks of my birth. Those old gals used to try and pluck out my grey hairs so appalled by their appearance in my adolescence.

I love my grey hair. It has a wave my red and blonde hairs lack. Without it, my hair falls limp and flat. . . .

but I learned early in life – dye that stuff sister – else folks will want to pull it out!

I’ll bet you were MiniPooed in your sleep without being any the wiser. Whole years without a shampoo! Oh, sweet oblivious childhood.

bwa ha ha ha ha ha

Nice piece

Did hand thing really help? That’s great!

We won’t discuss my score, haha. The back of the hand thing helps immensely actually. Gracias. On that note, I bet pimps are great at golf.

Re the issue of Gravatar gender-flags, I think it’d be an invasion of privacy somehow. I’m sure Title VII has something to say about it, if not the latest Health Care legislative package.

OTH, for centuries I’ve thought there was “male” humour and “female” humour. Some comedians disagree, for example the Marx brothers, who credited their moms with their brand of humour. And there are women who’ve had a “male” humour such as Mae West (“I used to be Snow White, but I drifted”) or Dorothy Parker (“I named my parakeet Onan because he spilled his seed upon the ground.”). But it often still strikes me that mens’ humour is goofier, weirder, more physical, more boisterous, outa the box, stoopid—though not tougher or meaner—than womens’.

FWIW, I don’t officially get it, either. I have to settle for “hunched in front of my monitors with furrowed brow so people walking can’t see my closed eyes but think I’m working really intensely on something” time.

Hey – how come *I* don’t get naptime???

Re the size options: For our peace of mind, it might be well for Bad [I mean Brad] to, in the case of male persons, I suppose, eliminate “smaller size” and add “largest size ever”. Wait—they don’t work anyway, so he could eliminate the options so we wouldn’t have to waver on the edge of creativity whilst trying to figure out wot size we want to be.

Nap time.

I don’t see any difference in size.

Re IRS forms, quite right, you! “Cocks” (up) teams nicely with IRS. And speaking further about size, I’ve evolved to paying a tax prep person, thus decreasing my workload and increasing my debt. The only person who’s ever been able to QUICKLY and accurately do my income tax stuff is my son who years later has, reasonably, come to specialise in bankruptcy law. Was it something I spent?

Come on, anon—do tell us wot article you’ve writ on TNB, or hurry up and write something if you haven’t. We all need additional humour breaks from February and tax prep.

Now for a MiniPoo with Rich.

P’raps I’ve become beyond tired, past bored, with deleting Viagra-Spam each day, routinely throughout the day, which when you think about it, brings to mind—oh well.

I know a guy who changed his email address to begin with a female-sounding name, and he swears he gets less Viagra-Spam. But, hey, I’m JUDY, after all—and it isn’t likely that I’ll need to grow my penis any day soon. I can’t even recall ever having penis envy; have always figured males have mammary envy, and why indeed not. But I still get Viagra-Spam.

Relax, Judy, think about puppy-curling. And those IRS forms.

Good luck, man. The back of your left hand should face the target. Imagine the club face is the back of your left hand, that you’re hitting the ball with the back of that hand. Tip for the day.

I was going to type a “binge-&-purge” schtick re: the skinny gravatar but I’m tired and, for a blessed change, actually have something to do at work. Short version is I did nothing more than use MS Paint to duplicate the rough size of the generic background here, fill it with the proper shade of grey (hey – that might make a good title someday), draw a white circle to the approximate dimensions of the generic and then just, you know, add some sticks. Sadly, my incredibly well-developed quads aren’t visible beneath the pane, so….

Ha ha.

Difficult for me to track your writings for TNB as “anon” ain’t in the line-up.

How do you do the high-fashion-model skinny gravatar thing?

Seriously, though, I told my wife I probably would have reacted differently if it was some young, competent-looking male, which has illustrated a blind spot I should correct. Can you imagine the ignominy of getting whacked by a some old coot because I thought, “Oh, poor old guy’s arthritis must be acting up. He can hardly load that shotgun! Let me go over and help him….”? Ah, well. Live and learn. Or vice versa. (:

I think it’s hilarious, btw, that you think you’re being stalked when all you’ve given us is a skinny white guy and the name “Anon” to go by.

I’ve tried a bunch of things now, and still to no avail. I’ve emptied the cache, reset Safari (yes, that’s what i use…). Ugh. I’m workin’ on it!

Your doing?

Btw, the “shift and click refresh” reloads all the images for that page only. Keeps you from having to refresh the whole cache just to see one new picture. It works on IE and FF. Not sure about the others.

Also, I was sort of lucky on the monobrow in that they were almost in style for a few years there (just look at Madonna back in the Lucky Star days): http://www.mamarazzi.org/images/madonna/madonna-1.jpg

But man my pictures from back then are embarrassing now.

Hmmm…highlights…I haven’t tried those yet.

And at least we know our moms loved us with all that pneumonia prevention, right?

I do wonder, though, if the elderly are kinder to their fellow elderly than the young are to their youthful “friends”… I really, really hope so.

I’ve heard about the guy who died on the three legged stool. Tragedy.

There’s always more I could squeeze in, but don’t…just because.

HI DAD!

I mean, as JMB pointed out, crazy like Stephen King, but I love her. Ha!

Man, I hope she never reads this.

I love you, Mom!

(And honestly, I can’t imagine MiniPoo speaking to ANYONE where they are currently in life. A bit presumptuous of me to pull readers into this bubble in which I live. Thanks for stopping back for a comment!)

[cue Buster Poindexter]

Bottom lines:

1) Explain the “rules” to the kids, remembering to say that you’ll have your own sanctions ready for them if The Authorities come after you, the parents, for infractions of the kids.

2) Give yourself profound respect and love for just plain loving and generally treating your monsters well.

3) They mostly want to know they can DEPEND on you, can get free hugs and kisses from you, that you will give them the tough facts as well as the sweet rewards, and that you will ALWAYS BE THERE FOR THEM. Not so hard, after all, really. Just the most challenging and gorgeous job in the world. Oh, there’s the wife role…..I forgot.

Dear Rodent recalls to me Alice Thomas Ellis’s wonderful quote: “Love is not reciprocal: Men love women, women love children, and children love hamsters.”

Okay, first off: WTF, Marketing Geniuses? I mean, really? As if lying in bed as an invalid wasn’t humiliation enough, now you have to have your head dusted in a product called “MiniPoo?” I was clearly not consulted during the pitch meeting. Granted, I was only 15, but damn if I couldn’t have done better.

Also, your pitch-perfect illustration of your mom, was, as someone pointed out, elegant. She looks like an over-protective nutjob, but a completely sympathetic one, and for that I’m both happy and slightly embarrassed, because I too might be an overprotective nutjob. Such is life.

And I love, love, love little intimate portraits of life that develop from presumably mundane events, like the completely erroneously conceived necessity of having one’s hair washed with a product called “MiniPoo.” This is exactly the kind of stuff I respond to. I don’t dare scratch the surface of that too deeply, but there it is.

Thanks for sharing the MiniPoo.

Did you see the shot of Nicole Kidman with an inch of silver proudly displayed under her dye job? Respect.

Yeah, I’m a lot of talk with this whole grey hair thing. I’ve never ever dyed my hair and the thought that I will suddenly be dutifully making an appearance every 2 weeks to get my roots done seems a little far-fetched even for me.

I’m glad you two have it sorted.

Yes, I am one of those weird, semi-sensitive males who attempts – sometimes pretty badly – to nurture his offspring. I don’t cry overmuch, I spend my days doing things I *hate* in order to provide for my family and I do kill things once in awhile so I still feel kind of manly.

And Erika, sorry to impugn your ma’s rep, but well like most moms—-she needs to get a life! Ever notice that the way kids or husbands dress or speak or move is directly the fault of the mom?

In moms’ minds, that is. “Oh God, you can’t go out with your hair looking like THAT!” translates to: “Fix your hair or everyone will blame ME.” And then the Mom Virus hops onto her daughters [sons learn quickly that they can ignore mom about lotsa things, can "forget" her demands longer than daughters can, and only hafta pay attention when she gives THAT LOOK].

Bottom line of course is that if moms acted like dads on this whole clothes-wearing, hair-fixing process things would be great! BUT, who would be the first bold mom to switch gender roles? I think if a bold mom could be convinced that it would ultimately help her kids—not her—we’d have a changed planet. Kids could forgo breakfast, miss the schoolbus, go barefoot to school with their hair tied up in little rubber bands and all scrunched flat on one side of their head, and they could pick their nose and never hafta look at the adults who are talking to them. A perfect world!

My mom was very concerned about germs, incidentally. She still is. I almost never think about germs, which is undoubtedly one of the reasons that I’m so prone to getting colds.

I think you’ll be beautiful with gray hair, though, Erika. I too am getting grays. My mother went gray in her 20s and I’m not freaked out about that possibility. Rather, the appearance of gray hair confirms my suspicions that prolonged unemployment is prematurely aging me.

Good luck with the tone in your piece. I’d love to read it when you’re finished.

Thanks, Richard, for the sweet comment.

The table runner matching the drapes line, as so many have pointed out, you knocked that one out of the park.

But my personal favorite is, “When the gray would not completely disappear, I would settle on trying to make the color of my hair uniform. It may not have glistened like the girl’s hair on the canister, but at least it didn’t make a cloud when bumped.”

Baaahahahahaha.

Excellent piece of writing here, Erika. I’ve been struggling with a piece about my own mother, not making much progress, and I appreciate the tone you struck here, a way to render odd parenting choices without demonizing the author of those choices.

Thanks.

“We can just MiniPoo instead.” Thanks to you, I just had the best “Girls Night Out” idea ever. OMG!

So, were you, like, clean all the time as a young pup? Did you rebel by jumping in actual mud puddles?

Unfortunately, I also thought back to this story when I discovered some streaks of silver in my chest hair. I don’t suppose the make a Just For Men for…. Oh, hell with it.

I sort of like the image of you (your gravatar) sneaking in for a clandestine MiniPoo puffing in the middle of the night while she was asleep and unable to object. Hey…is that why you’re so white and featureless? Tell the truth now.

Hm. Perhaps this is what my mother saw in MiniPoo. Adventure. Hostel hopping. Risk at every turn.

I like “slap-heads”.

I asked Ruth, who is older than I am (by 3 entire months!) if she remembered MiniPoo, and she said No, not by the name, but Yes, a product like it. Allegedly for traveling when the bath is down the hall, as in hostels and the like.

Ruth says I should try shaving my head out here where no one cares. Maybe.

I close this by declaring that of all the bad-hair/bad-head days I’ve ever had, the bad sunburn and subsequent peeling is the worst. A peeling bald head. Doesn’t get worse than that.

I’m so happy you don’t live in a room with padded walls.

I guess that proves that children are way more resilient than adults.

When I was a kid, my mom was obsessed with not letting me out of the house after I’d had a bath. It wasn’t because the bath left me more open to life-threatening disease. Rather, the very second I set foot outside, I became radically dirty, thus undoing the effect of the bath. Even the porch was a mud pit, compared to the interior of the house, or so the reasoning seems to have gone.

My God that line is brilliant!

A few years back my hair stylist suggested I try some sort of similar product for my daughter, who at the time, wasn’t concerned with how greasy her teenage hair was. Apparently there is still some form of Minipoo out there on the market. Though there is not a need for it any longer as my daughter has come to her senses and showers frequently.

As a mother, I shall backlash by REQUIRING my children to have a daily, morning shower. Or no TV.

As you are no doubt in the TV ROOM RIGHT NOW, I expect you to have a fresh coif.

Good girl.

Forgive me for shooting right down to commenting without reading the comments. I swear I will get to it but there are two different couples staying here because I somehow double-booked our house this week with guests and I still have the stupid broken ribs and I am just getting to the end of the flu from hell and victor wants me in the TV ROOM RIGHT NOW! I promise I will read the comments later!

Anyway. I had a mother that believed no one should wash her hair more than once a week. I had the world’s greasiest, most repulsive hair. I NEEDED to wash every day, but was not allowed to. The kids in school tortured me for my greasy hair. I bought a product not unlike MiniPoo, but it was a different brand. It made my hair dull and dirty colored and flat. I went through high school with clean hair only once a week, and my mom wanted that day to be Sunday for sunday school, so no one important saw me clean!!!

By the way, I spit out my gum when I read this: ” I had a face that, according to my well-meaning father, would someday catch up with my nose. ” That is the funniest line I have ever read. (I had the same nose, too.)

I’m so getting a kick outa Angela and you throwing your moms under the bus. “Mom Myth-Making” is awesomely indelible, innit?

Oh, and re Don, I think it’s common that beards get white while hair doesn’t.

What I totally love about England is the Very Sexy “slap-heads” (meaning nearly or completely, tho not necessarily naturally, baldheaded men—whom you’re tempted to slap in the head, sez Rodent). They get what’s called a “#1″ haircut (as close to being shaved off as possible). Dunno why I think it’s sexy, but it defo is. Also, lots more UK men wear beards and moustaches than USAmerican men. Love that, too!

And no on the infant curling…I should think not.

I think it’s sexy, too. I so admire Rogue.

My husband’s beard is getting peppery and his hair up top is remaining blond. But from what I can tell from your pic, your hair is more of a “see-through” color – yes? ( ;

(I like the bald on top look in combo with facial hair, btw.)

Crazy that your mom was worried about a wet head in the tropics, too. This must be residual from the last century when our ancestors feared bathing.

Thanks for the kind words, Don.

my mother also had weird beliefs, like not wearing an undershirt would make you sick, which did *not* go well over seventh-grade-me when all the other girls were wearing bras (though i didn’t need one).

the thing is, my mother totally brainwashed me. when it’s cold and when i’m sleeping, i have a psychological need to cover my stomach. even if it’s 100 degrees, i’ll take a corner of a sheet and cover my belly.

ack, mothers and their supernatural powers!

Now infant curling is another matter entirely…. (:

And we are totally connected. It has to do with those energy vortexes by your house, I’m sure.

Anon – Shame on you. Puppy curling. Sheesh. And no, no chance of her waxing the floor. My mom does not do floors.

I’ll report that the wet-head-can-make-you-sick goes back to my youth, too, meaning the middle of the last century. My mother totally believed it, and this was in the warm tropics.

The Minipoo triggered some memory in me, but I can’t excavate it yet. Do you think it was the only one of its kind? I think the name “Minipoo” would have stuck with me because it’s so ridiculous, so maybe I’m remembering something like it that was differently-named. Maybe it was some pet shampoo thing.

I wonder if I’m alone in thinking that long dark hair streaked with grey is extraordinarily attractive? Ah, I mean in women.

For me, I think it odd that my beard turned completely white while my hair (what was left of it) was still brown. Weird.

Part of the problem with my hair back then was that my older sister loved to cut it. Don’t get me wrong, she did a great job, but the hair almost always sported 1980s style layers. My pillow loved those layers and apparently stroked them all night long while I was asleep. They were well fondled layers.

Curls would have been a nice solution.

And, “MiniPoo.” Could there have been a better name? Nope.

Also, I’m lucky that dear Rodent’s a word-seeking missile, seems to be a brain repository for dictionaries, and is currently working on a book about cant in English writing between 1500 and 1900, as well as the standard anthology of cant poetry.

“Cant” basically means criminal speech, a secret language of criminals, rogues and vagabonds. Best short read would be David Haggart’s brief autobiography, “LIFE”, available via Google Books full view, about 150 pages, written just before he was hanged in Edinburgh in 1821. [He's not in Wiki, for some reason]

It scares me sometimes that it has become THIS easy to track the history of a word. Ten years ago this was impossible.

From Henry Rule’s HOBSON-JOBSON, A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases:

“SHAMPOO: (page 821)
1857.– “At an early hour we retired to rest. Our beds were arranged under large canopies, open on all sides, and which are termed by the natives ‘Shameanahs.’”- M. Thornhill, Personal Adventures, 14. SHAMPOO , v. To knead and press the muscles with the view of relieving fatigue, &c. The word has now long been familiarly used in England. The Hind. verb is chāmpnā, from the imperative of which, chāmpō, this is most probably a corruption, as in the case of Bunow”

The url for it: http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/search3advanced?dbname=hobson&query=shampoo&matchtype=exact&display=utf8

And here’s a funny little bit from the OED [Oxford English Dictionary] Online, 2010, 2nd ed. 1989:

“1813 J. FORBES Oriental Mem. II. 52 She [a Mahratta wife] first champoes her husband, and fans him to repose; she then champoes the horse.”

It wasn’t until around 1862 that “shampoo” (was used as a noun and) meant soap that cleans hair.

My husband agrees with you, btw – about the Stephen King-ness of my childhood years.

Sigh.

Hot date, eh? You go on with your bad self.

Oh erika.

Ummmmmmmmmmmmm.

I’m turning in my head every possible reason she might have done that.

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

I got nothing.

I guess you’ll have to tell the tale

It’s a gift, girl. Thank you for brightening my morning. With poo.

The last time she came to visit, she warned me against walking through the house on our hardwood floors in my socks because I could slip. (AAACK!) Well, guess what I did last week. Yep, flat on me arse.

Anyone?

Thereafter were a series of tea-spurts—-and then an incontinence moment: ” . . . there was so much oil in my face and hair it would warrant the attention of OPEC.”

Re the brainstormed word “mini-poo”, yeah, Slade, they had to go bankrupt. When you think about it, though, its etymological parent, “shampoo”, pretty much denotes “fake shit”. And we don’t object to that.

Lock yourself in the house, Erika, and don’t come out ’til you have a couple books publication-ready.

[huddling in corner]

Exactly on the naming. The only thing I can think is that the world must have been such a different place when that stuff was invented. I don’t have my Oxford English Dictionary handy, but maybe people didn’t say poo back then. They did, after all, name the world’s most famous bear similarly. It’s terrible. Just terrible. What a world we live in that names an innocent bear after something one’s colon does. Shame on that Milne fellow.

I’m pretty sure your mother takes the cake on this one but mine was big on instantly-fatal poor choices as well. Going near any open windows (we lived on the fifth floor but still….) and either showering or using the phone during a thunderstorm were akin to tap-dancing, naked and peeing, on a train’s third rail.

The table runner was awesome but drilling rights to your forehead…. I’m heading out to coffee in about half an hour and will be giggling like a fool the entire time at that one.

Now, to use in a sentence (ahem):
“I don’t think I could stand hanging out with Paris Hilton for an entire day, what with all of that fake shit she’s got going on.”

Look out, Urban Dictionary.

Thanks, Judy. Sorry to have ruined that cup of tea for you.

My stepfather had the “wet head” thing as well. Every damn morning he would make a comment about it, something mocking and sarcastic: “You’re going to get sick with that wet head” “What kind of idiot would leave the house with a wet head like that?” etc. When I finally pointed out that my head was, in fact, dry, and the hair gel was making it look wet, I was grounded for back-talk.

minipoo, that is. not the story. the story is funny… way more than it has a right to be.

There were several lines that made me smile, but the table runner wins, hands down.