Moms: The New Frat Boys?

Posted November 04, 2009

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Posted Thursday, Nov. 11, 2009 by Jackie Morgan MacDougall

Picture this: A crowd gathers 'round an outspoken and animated storyteller to hear a descriptive low-brow tale of toilet humor, complete with play-by-play of vomit, feces, or a combination of both. The growing audience laughs uncontrollably, waiting for their own turn to share their TMI tale; each trying to one-up the last.

Sounds like a scene from the latest sophomoric bromance to hit the big screen, right? But it's not. These are actual stories told by the very people who've lived through it - moms.

Ever since becoming a mother and enduring my first plane ride with an explosive 2-month-old (and I mean physically explosive), I've noticed that moms LOVE to share their own personal accounts with bodily fluids. If Judd Apatow, the director of Knocked Up and 40 Year Old Virgin, is looking for poop scenarios for his next comedy, he should look no further than the local Gymboree class.

Now moms have taken the poo poo parable to a whole new level in See Mom Run, [Plain White Press $12.95] a just-released collection of mom blogger essays. It includes, but is not limited to, stories of a mom running to Target covered in vomit, and the case of the toddler who decided to interject himself into his mother's important phone call with his hilarious, yet untimely, pronunciation of the words "fire truck."

All this makes me wonder: What makes us stop and chuckle heartily when someone else tells their own harried, gross-out tale (or puts it in paperback)?

Therapist Stacy Kaiser says women talk about these scenes because it's the perfect way to let go of the drama they felt in the moment. "In parenting, things can get so stressful, so out of control, that the only way to get through it sometimes is to laugh. When we commiserate with our girlfriends - especially those who have been there -- it's our way of supporting each other and finding humor in those messy scenarios."

I certainly could be charged guilty with telling my own anecdotes of inconvenient regurgitation. Just a few weeks ago, my husband and I brought our oldest child to a concert at the Hollywood Bowl. It was a special night for the three of us, a rare occasion for our 5-year-old to get an entire evening with Mom and Dad, sans siblings. We went and had a lovely dinner at a little Italian restaurant where my finicky son surprised us by devouring his cheese ravioli, even scraping the tomato sauce off the plate until it was cleared of all food.

We ran across the street to grab the shuttle to the concert and climbed aboard. Just as the shuttle began filling up, my son looked at me with those eyes that kids get when they know something bad is about to happen, uttered a quick "uh oh," and furiously began to empty the contents of his stomach.

My mom intuition had me grabbing my jacket, shoving it under his face, and somehow saving him from humiliation and the bus riders from enduring the sight of my son's meal. Out of nowhere, a woman handed us a bag, we cleaned up the floor, pulled off my son's jacket and threw all evidence into the plastic sack. But what were we going to do about his shirt? By then, the shuttle was almost at the venue. After a wash down in the public restroom and a stop at the souvenir shop, our son was enjoying the evening sporting an adult sized t-shirt and a grin from ear to ear; because, like the stories in See Mom Run, a little disaster can't keep this family down either.

Jackie Morgan MacDougall, on the never-ending quest for balance, enjoys life in Los Angeles with her husband, Jeff, and their three small kids. Read more of her take on parenting, kids and everything else on The Silver Whining.

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