Winning and losing: what's the difference?

When I was a kid, I was best friends with Kristi and we played together all the time. We loved playing outdoors; we'd disappear for hours at a time in the woods and my mom would have to send our dog Poochie to find us. I always knew that when Poochie came running up to us expectantly, it was time to go home.

We played a lot of indoor games as well. We played board games, and we played house with baby dolls, and we played barbies. However, Kristi and I were, how you say, creative children, so sometimes we got bored and had to find other ways to entertain ourselves. [This is not about to get dirty or sexy, so just hang that up at the door.] One of our favorite things was to tear the legs off of barbies and play with them as if they were individual people. Seriously. Each leg was its own person; we would put dresses on them, change their shoes, whatnot. We had great fun, and I'm pretty sure that we came up with some pretty elaborate story lines.

When I think about it now, I realize that my mom had a great deal of patience, as well as the ability to let slide that which is not important. That second one is really a double-whammy, because not only must you be able to let it slide, you must be able to discern that it's not important. This may seem obvious to some of you, but it is not obvious to me. I have a lot of trouble figuring out what is important and what is not. I mean, if Shu Shu goes onto the front porch, I let it slide; I know that it's not important, that she'll come back in when she's ready. But if Jude and Kane were ripping their action figures apart, and making the legs walk around and talk, I can't say that it wouldn't FREAK ME THE FUCK RIGHT OUT. I mean, if they were actually doing that particular thing, I would probably think it's cute since I did it too, and the three of us could revel in the freakoutification that Jason exhibited. But you see what I mean; if they were destroying their toys in some way that I hadn't thought of myself, and doing really weird things with them, I would be crossing myself and saying a few "Hail Mary"'s.

My mom had the balls to just ignore us, and assume that we wouldn't be serial killers, or animal abusers, or Bay City Rollers fans, and just move on with things. That's something that I'm afraid that I haven't acquired.

I think if I came home and Kane and Jude were yanking the arms off of their transformers and playin' with 'em, I would secretly fear for the rest of my life that the next step in their dementia was wearing roller skates and singing "S, A, T-U-R, D-A-Y, NIGHT!"