By nature I’m a curious person, and like to know things. For instance, I’d like to know why a single cigarette ash can burn down an entire national park, but using a box of Duraflame starters, the Sunday paper and a squirt of lawn mower gas, I still can’t manage to ignite a fire in my own fireplace.
I’d also want to know why, no matter what strategy I employ, I always pick the grocery line where someone needs a price check on kelp powder or is using a coupon that requires a manager intervention and subsequent global summit over a 35-cent discount on Frank’s Hot Sauce.
[Lead Illustration Wes Rand]
After hours of frustrating negotiations, I sometimes just want to fish a $20 out of my purse and offer to buy everyone out if we can agree to drop the whole thing.
There’s also a lot of stuff I don’t want to know but somehow manage to stumble across on the internet anyway while looking up cat videos. Most of the time it involves celebrities and the creepy things they reveal.
Back when Kim and Kanye tied the knot, it was widely reported that they choose to have the wedding in Italy because it’s where they conceived their baby. While that’s charming and everything, I’m not sure why I need to know this and wonder at what age their child will find out the big secret behind mom and dad’s favorite vacation spot.
I’m pretty sure that if my kids ever found out where they were conceived, they’d spend the rest of their lives attempting to erase it from their collective memory, let alone plan some kind of vacation there. But since they’ve already been upstairs, I probably don’t have to worry about it.
Not too long ago, I came across an article about Martha Stewart who apparently confessed to sexting on her phone and admitted that she “might” have had a threesome.
I’ve always admired Martha and her ability to crochet turkey platters from old bed sheets. Although this new, and uncomfortable, information hasn’t lessened my appreciation for her considerable talents, it has provided me with a fresh perspective whenever I hear her say “It’s a good thing.”
Thanks to a celebrity gossip website, I recently learned that, after the birth of her first child, former Playboy model Holly Madison had her placenta turned into vitamin pills that she could take to assist in her recovery.
Despite all the health benefits that I’m sure are associated with it, there are mornings I find it difficult to get a poached egg down, let alone ingest something that passed through an orifice of my body, regardless of what form someone has managed to fashion it into.
I also read once that when her son was an infant, actress Alicia Silverstone chewed up his food before spitting it into his mouth for him to eat.
For the sake of transparency, I confess that, for a brief period of time while I was in elementary school, I picked up the habit of chewing ABC gum for no other reason than it was there and I could. Which really doesn’t make it right.
Anyway, in addition to the food thing, Silverstone also named her son Baby Bear Blu. I admit it has a certain ring to it and that there’s a pretty good chance no one else will accidentally raise their hand at the same time during attendance.
Even so, I can’t help but wonder if, at some point in Baby Bear’s life, like during wedding vows or being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, it might feel a little awkward to be named after a Fisher Price toy.
He’s not alone, however. Celebrities ranging from Beyoncé to Michael Jackson have given their children weird monikers, too.
I sometimes wish we had been more creative in naming our kids. At the time, we thought it was pretty controversial adding a completely unnecessary “Y” to the middle of our youngest daughter’s first name.
I realize now that with some ingenuity we could have given our girls more impressive names like Bubble Bath McFarty or Solar Panel. If we’d gone the route of Gwyneth Paltrow, who named her daughter Apple after her favorite food, we could have been ordering birthday cakes for Ben & Jerry Alfredo.
Thankfully we decided kept it simple, and I’m sure our girls, K8 and Cayenne, are glad we did.
Sarah Lemire 