Reel Scary
The hacks are haunting me.
Imagine you’re a mom. You’re visiting New York with your toddler and meandering through Central Park on a spring day, marveling at this magical green space in the middle of the city. It’s raining and you pat yourself on the back for packing galoshes and raincoats. As you walk toward a man sitting on a bench, you realize he looks familiar. It looks like Neil deGrasse Tyson…it is Neil deGrasse Tyson! Wow, what an amazing city. You gently guide your child around a muddy puddle—she’s wearing a nice dress for dinner, and plus, you don’t want to splash a world-famous astrophysicist! Neil gives you a vacant stare as you pass. He’s probably figuring out something important about space!, you think. You smile at him and make your way to the restaurant.
But Neil is not thinking about space.
He is preparing to haunt you.
Forever.
I’m sorry, but this essay comes with homework. In order to understand the above and everything that follows, you need to watch the first minute of this video. (By no means should you watch any longer than that.) I’ll wait.
Ok, we’re back. You may have noticed that this interview was posted four years ago. That is the exact amount of time it has been buried in a cemetery of dumb parenting advice (location: my brain). The problem is that this advice doesn’t stay buried. Neil pokes me with his gross zombie fingers every time I tell my kids not to jump in a puddle, not to dig in the dirt, not to eat cookie dough. That was a bit of curiosity, in that moment, that was extinguished, Neil intones, his voice dripping with contempt. His podcast-host ghost companion nods solemnly. Moms, man. Moms.
“Why are you, an astrophysicist, qualified to give me, a stranger, parenting advice based on a single interaction you witnessed between a mother and her child??” I ask him. Because I secretly hate women!! Neil yells. Whoops, he said the quiet part out loud! Bye bye Neil. Back to the cemetery.
My brain—like, I would hazard a guess, the brains of most of my fellow mom cohort—is a decrepit old mansion wherein every parenting decision is watched by the cobwebbed portraits on the walls (the creepy kind whose eyes follow you wherever you go). Ghosts roam the halls; they’ve escaped from the graveyard where Instagram reels go to die. Instead of eerie music or thunder, the soundtrack to this horror movie is one of authoritative voices informing me of every single way I’m screwing up my kids. Picture the Marley brothers from The Muppet Christmas Carol, but ambiently Mormon, with lip fillers and Stanleys.
The hacks are haunting me. The tips are taunting me. The…you get the idea. For example, I’m trying to get my kids to an appointment. When Kid One is ready, shoes on, water bottle in hand, I focus on Kid Two. When Kid Two is loaded up with shoes and water, I turn to find that Kid One has wandered away. Somehow she, her shoes, and her water are now in three different rooms. I get her put back together while Kid Two undresses herself for some reason. Finally we’re in the car, and I’m taking some deep breaths to calm myself when I feel a ghostly presence. My heartbeat quickens. I turn, slowly, to see who has joined me in the passenger seat. It’s Susie from Busy Toddler, chirping—she’s chirpy even as a ghost—that she uses the *magic carpet trick* to corral her kids while they’re getting ready to leave the house. (The trick is…telling her kids to wait patiently on their welcome mat so they don’t miss the ***magical journey*** to the grocery store.) And so try the magic carpet trick gets added, against my will, to both my mental to-do list and to the list of all the reasons why I’m failing as a mom.
If you charted my Instagram use over the past four years (please don’t), you’d see weeklong spikes alternating with steady flatlines. You might describe those spikes as binges, which makes it sound like an addiction, which wouldn’t be wrong. During a binge (usually when my kids are sick and I hit that sweet spot of stress + sleep deprivation), I shovel reel after reel into my brain-hole, deluding myself that yes, I CAN keep my kids’ toys organized with this foolproof new system and therefore I WILL feel at peace in my own home and that furthermore with this new sense of peace I will SURELY bake fresh bread daily and, bonus, never step on a Lego or yell at my children again!
So I’ll implement the system and feel renewed, refreshed, accomplished, winning at parenthood—for about twelve hours until the system breaks down because the toys always find a way. Life finds a way. Reality throws open the curtains of the haunted mansion; abandoned sensory bins and craft supplies and storage containers surround me like empty liquor bottles as I lie on the floor like a zombie, eyes glazed over, twenty clicks deep in Facebook Marketplace. A now-healthy child yells MAMA!!! and the ghosts scatter. I sweep away the evidence, delete Instagram from my phone, and reenter the real world. I’m back from the dead.
But there’s that pesky cemetery. No matter how confident I’m feeling about my parenting, there’s always a tombstone that reads “She Tried Harder.” Or “She Never Yelled.” Or “She Was Actually the Virgin Mary.” (Focus, Liz, you can tackle Catholicism another day.) Can I get an exorcism? Is there [skims the Wikipedia page for Ghost Hunters] a Spook Squad for my brain? Do I need to Eternally Sunshine myself? I’m genuinely asking. I’m sure there’s a reel about it somewhere. Or maybe I could ask Neil; this metaphysical conundrum seems more up his alley than parenting advice. If you see him on a park bench near you, let him know I have some questions. And tell him that his ghost is a jerk.
