Liz Farrell is the editor of Lowcountry Current. She is a native Bostonian and a graduate of Gettysburg College. She is excellent at wasting time, loves to drink coffee and read, and has made Google-Image-stalking Tom Selleck a real pastime.
Ordinarily I make my plans according to what I assume to be the opposite of whatever one million moms have scheduled for their days.
Change some diapers? Nooooope. Mold and shape young lives? Uh-uh. Kiss boo-boos and put myself last? Ha! Not likely, folks. Spend embarrassing amounts of money on things I might throw out next week and then take a mid-afternoon cocktail nap after Googling “can a person be too well-rested” and “how do I know my cat loves me for me”? Ah yes, pencil me in for that — and I do mean use a pencil. You never know when an emergency meeting with my couch, some chick-lit and a giant iced coffee might come up.
Bosses! Am I right?
This isn’t the only way the moms help me, though. I also turn to them, or rather a group of them who call themselves One Million Moms, to gauge how I should think on any given issue in current pop culture — which, again, is to say, the opposite of whatever they think.
Not that I’m not trying to take on any large and well-organized assortment of moms here — mainly because there’s no way for a child-free woman in her 30s to do so without sounding bitter and like she’s scared no one will visit her in the nursing home. God knows if I thought I could get away with that, I would have already published my secret self-help book, “Your Child Is Average and So Are You: How to Know When a Smile is Just a Smile and When It’s A Very Lengthy Blog Entry or Exclamative Facebook Status Update.” This, of course, being the much-awaited sequel to my first controversial would-be best-seller, “Congratulations! You’re the One Person Who’s Made a Baby! A New Mother’s Guide to Being the Only Woman Who’s Ever Done This!”
No really, someone will visit me in the nursing home, right? Girl Scouts are forced to do things like that, no? What about your kids? What do they have planned for 2061? Maybe they could do a real mitzvah and swing by just to say hi to a sad old lady, clutching a necklace made of cat fur?
Anyway, this personal guideline to opinion-forming has put me in quite the conundrum with Ben & Jerry’s latest ice cream variety, which One Million Moms has called “a vulgar new flavor” that “has turned something as innocent as ice cream into something repulsive. Not exactly what you want a child asking for at the supermarket.”
Well, first, we need to get one thing straight: Ben & Jerry’s isn’t for kids. It’s for women who are gravely disappointed by their jobs and the men in their lives. Usually it is consumed straight from the carton and in an upright manner using the glow of the freezer light to guide whatever utensil was the easiest to reach.
It’s best that kids never see this.
That said, the, uh, “new flavor” is a little much, no? The, um, “new,” um, “flavor” ... OK. There’s no way around this. It’s called Schweddy Balls and it’s based on a clever, innuendo-filled “Saturday Night Live” sketch from 13 years ago, in which Alec Baldwin, Mr. Schweddy, offers spherical snacks to two public radio hosts. Again, 13 years ago, which means Mr. Ben and Mr. Jerry are having flashbacks, and we should all expect to see “Wayne and Garth’s Licorice kNOTs”-flavored ice cream very soon.
Lucky us.
While the ingredients in Ben and Jerry’s new flavor might sound delicious — Fair Trade vanilla ice cream (fair trading is important here) with a hint of rum and fudge-covered malt balls — it makes me wonder what’s next for society. If we allow something so puerile and impolite to become part of what we consider normal, in-public and around-strangers humor, then what’s left to find funny?
I guess what I’m saying is, visitors or no visitors, I never want to live in the kind of nursing home that serves me ice cream like this without having the decency to do so with a whisper and a wink.
Please, someone visit me ...