TheMommyBlog

Monday, May 19, 2008 Other people who write

Well, that does it. I’m nineteen pages into Michelle Lamar’s The White Trash Mom Handbook (Embrace Your Inner Trailerpark, Forget Perfection, Resist Assimilation into the PTA, Stay Sane and Keep Your Sense of Humor) and already I’m willing to throw in the towel and suggest you transfer your links and your loyalty to her. She’s far more organized and sensible than I am, and is able to articulate–in the first nineteen pages no less–why some of us are the way we are and are so incredibly self-conscious about it. She totally strips the veneer off the ideal mom and tells you to knock it off already if you are spending time and energy trying to be perfect, or even good enough. Chances are, you’re aces.

I’ve known Michelle for years through her blog, The White Trash Mom. We’ve never met, but I’m pretty sure I could recognize her handwriting because we’re in each other’s address book for holiday cards. That’s a big deal for bloggers. Most of my address book consists of email addresses with obscure referential terminology and slang. It says a lot if you can look at a blogger’s email address or title and come up with a real name to go with it.

What I love about her, and her writing, is that she’s already in my head. I don’t ever find myself navigating away in the middle of a post, overcome with feelings of inadequacy. I’ve never had the old “yeah, whatever” feeling creep up on me with her around. We’ve exchanged the most inappropriate finds and unbelievably hilarious emails, and I know that I could never cross the line with her. Seriously, if you’re a longtime reader, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. I can tolerate just about anything from her because I automatically assume it’s funny, and she gives me the same benefit of the doubt. Besides, who else gave me totally free advertising for my book because she just KNEW how shitty I was feeling about not having the funds to promote it? She just sent me the code and said, get yer ad up, sister.

What really got me to put down the book and scurry to my keyboard was her guide to Spotting the White Trash Mom in Her Native Habitat. One of the first things to look for is a big laugh. A biiiig laugh. She is so right. I like to see molars when a friend laughs. None of this pursed up-curve of the lips that doesn’t quite make it all the way up to the eyes. It made me feel proud, and authentic, and at home, because I have what has been described as a room-clearing laugh. Or a sort of Mindy GPS. People know where I am in the building.

My favorite laugh of all time was with Phil. We were waiting to go on the Mystery Spot tour, and he was whispering to me and I was bent over, feet off the ground, crying, and unable to stop laughing. A girl about twenty feet away punched her boyfriend in the arm and asked, “How come you never make ME laugh like that?”

She needs a White Trash Mom in her life.