Wisdom of the ages

Lori Borgman

I was never one to believe the older women.

The older women are the ones who stop you in public when you have children younger than theirs and offer free advice.

Once I was in an elevator and an older woman said the baby was too hot wrapped in a quilted bunting.

Hmmphf. How would she know the baby was too hot? If anybody would know it would be me, the baby’s mother.

When I took the baby out of the stroller, the back of her head was hot and sweaty.

Lucky guess, I thought to myself.

“Enjoy your children when they’re young,” an older woman once said at the grocery. “Time passes so quickly.”

The baby strapped into the basket was gumming the handle on the grocery cart because she was teething, the middle one was stepping on my feet trying to wiggle between the cart and me, and the oldest was lobbing junk food into the cart every time I turned my back.

Time passes too quickly? There were days when time couldn't pass quickly enough.

When our son was old enough to use a public restroom by himself, I told him to get in there and do his business, not to mess around in the sink and if anything weird happened to scream like a banshee and I'd be there in a flash.

An older woman passing by, smiled, and said, “You never quit being a mother.”

“Shhh. I’m trying to listen,” I said, with my ear plastered to the door.

When the kids hit the teen years, they set their own alarm clocks, packed their own lunches, began using razors and shaving cream and driving cars. They’re growing more independent, I told my mom.

“Yes, but you never quit being a mother,” she said.

One by one they went to college. “This is it, the big launch,” I told a neighbor as we packed boxes and clothes and a mini-fridge into the back of the van.

“It sure is,” she said. “But you never quit being a mother.”

I worried when they called home hacking with a common cold. I sent sunscreen by snail mail and left phone messages reminding them to wear flip flops to the shower so they didn't get that ugly nail fungus you see in the Sunday circulars.

When the oldest got married, I smiled at the bride and said, “He’s all yours now, honey.”

An aunt over heard and said, “Yes, but you never quit being a mother.”


Recently, an acquaintance asked how the kids were. They are young adults now, all in their early 20s,” I said. “They are doing great and are pretty well grown.”

She patted my arm and said, “Yes, but you never quit being a mother.”

Last Tuesday, I drove through torrential rain late at night to swap laptop computers with the college kid whose machine was on the blitz.

On Wednesday, I put work on hold for a day to drive three hours out of town and three hours back with another one in order to help search for an apartment.

On Thursday, I spent 20 minutes on the phone giving the oldest one a pep talk about a slump in his job and reminded him to get his haircut.

On Friday, a friend called to say her little boy had started kindergarten and was doing very well. He is growing up, she said.

“Sure,” I said. “But let me tell you something: You never quit being a mother.”

World's most famous thankless job

Lori Borgman

I don’t know what the president’s job approval rating is today, but interest in having his job is at an all-time low.

Just before the ’04 presidential election, ABC News and Weekly Reader found that half of the teens polled thought it was possible to grow up and become president -- but 80 percent had absolutely no interest in the job.

Next to being the parent of a rebellious teen, being president has to be one of the worst jobs in the world.

All eyes are trained on you 24/7 waiting for you to trip, totter, stammer, mispronounce a country or throw up at a state dinner.

Your slightest slip is fodder for late night comedians and every hack at a computer keyboard.

Junior Achievement polled teens this summer on their ideal career. For the fourth consecutive year, businessperson came in first, followed by teacher, doctor and nearly anything in the field of computers.

There were 36 careers on the list and President was nowhere in sight.

The Constitution says the qualifications for president include being a natural born citizen and at least 35 years of age. What the founding fathers neglected to list was having a thick hide. Rhino thick. Walrus thick.

In July, the 1976 Nobel peace laureate Betty Williams lashed out at the president in a speech to Australian school children, saying, “Right now, I would love to kill George Bush.”

If a kid said that in school he would be suspended.

And now “Death of a President” has debuted at the Toronto Film Festival and will be heading to the States. The British film, dubbed a “mockumentary,” portrays the assassination of President Bush and the events that follow.

Democrat, Republican, Independent or life-long Apathetic, there’s nothing entertaining in depicting the death of a sitting president.

The film’s creators insist the movie is not a personal attack on the president. Of course not. Only the thin-skinned and highly sensitive would perceive a feature-length film about oneself being gunned down on the big screen as a personal attack.

To spice things up, a Syrian-American is wrongly convicted for the crime; the real culprit turns out to be a black man. The only thing more appalling than a hideous plot is a hideous plot pumped up with racial and ethnic tension. Something for everyone.

For the record, four U.S. presidents have been assassinated, all by crazy white guys.

Better to be a police officer writing parking tickets, a bored toll booth attendant or a roofer laying shingles in the blazing sun. Even the guy scraping animal carcasses off the highway gets an occasional friendly wave from passing motorists.

The president? He gets a film touted as art that depicts his violent death.

And we worry about kids playing violent video games. Our greater concern should be demented adults putting a bull’s eye on our commander-in-chief and giving ideas to the already unhinged.

The kids are right. Who in their right mind would want the job of being President?

The New Zero

Lori Borgman

Women’s clothes have shrunk to a new low. Try size 00.

Who wears a size 00? Desperate housewives on Wisteria Lane, for starters. Producers were so tickled to learn Eva Longoria is a size 00 they worked it into a script.

The woman is thin. Paper thin. If you held her up to a bright light you could see her skeletal system.

Posh Spice recently made headlines custom ordering blue jeans with a 23-inch waist. You know how small that is? I can tell you how small that is because I have just returned from my refrigerator with a tape measure. It is the circumference of a medium cantaloupe.

Today’s stars build entire careers on not eating.

Still, you might think manufacturers would hesitate to tell a woman, any woman, a famous woman, even a not-so-famous woman, that she is a zero. A big fat (figure of speech) zero. Make that a double zero. You know, self-esteem and all that.

But they don’t hesitate, because the smaller the garment size, the happier the woman. Why? Because a smaller size means the brownies didn’t count, the deep dish pizza doesn’t show and there is more to life than red leaf lettuce.

All of which explains why clothiers have been practicing vanity sizing – cutting clothing larger but labeling it smaller. Some in the fashion world claim a size 8 in the 1950s became a size 4 in the 1970s and is a size 0 today. Call it the phenomena of the incredible shrinking woman.

Harvey Mansfield, author of “Manliness,” says men are conceited and women are vain.

The man is on to something. Only a woman will carefully drape a jacket over a chair so the tag doesn’t show. Or does show. It depends on the size.

Men, on the other hand, wear their waist size and inseam length stamped on the back of their jeans and don’t care who does or doesn’t know that they have the dimensions of a cube.

When men’s clothing goes beyond large, they just keep adding Xs. If that XL shirt isn’t ‘big enough, get the XXL or the XXXL.

Women’s clothiers have been adding Xs as well, but to the other end of the scale. You can now buy an XXS shirt, although store managers say the new XXS is last year’s XS. Small wonder.

The US Department of Health and Human Services, which apparently has been spending a lot of time snooping in women’s dressing rooms, says the average woman wears between a size 11 and 14. Who knows what that really means? We have sadly come to the time when you can’t trust a tag.

And now, vanity sizing has spread to vanity aging.

“Fifty -- the new 30.”

“Sixty -- the new 40.”

Right. Try telling that to the cardiologist.

Dress size or age, nobody wants to be the number they really are.

It’s just a matter of time before a 50-year-old woman shows up at the license bureau demanding her age be listed as 30. If they refuse her request and she’s still smiling, chances are she just bought a size 00 skirt.

If it were me, I’d wear it inside out.

No retrun policy on identity theft

Lori Borgman

A friend thought the commercial with a man talking with the voice of a woman, due to identity theft, was hilarious. And then she had her identity stolen.

I’ve never worried much about identity theft. Anybody tries to steal my identity and within 24 hours they’ll be screaming to give it back.

Say somebody steals my driver’s license. First reason they’ll give it back: I’m short. Your average identify thief would have to walk on her knees to pass herself off as me. Walking on your knees in bank lobbies tends to attract attention, and thieves generally like to avoid that kind of thing.

The second reason a thief would reject my driver’s license is the picture. Trust me, there’s no way an ordinary woman can get a clump of hair to wave like that on the side of her head. It was a freak act of nature – an act that nature should not, cannot, and will not repeat.

Of course, identity thieves don’t want your driver’s license as much they want your credit card.

I’m safe there, too.

An identity thief steals my credit card and shops anywhere other than the grocery store or a gas station, and it will prompt one of those security calls from the card company.

“This is your credit card company and we were calling because there has been unusual activity on your credit card.”

“Really, what kind of activity?”

“You used it. Twice in one day.”

I’m not what you’d call a big spender. Last summer a credit card company representative called all excited because our card had been used to buy gasoline, hotel rooms, meals at restaurants and tickets at a marina.

“We were on vacation,” I said. “People do that.”

“We know people do that, we just didn’t know you people did that.”

Someone into identity theft isn’t going to put up with that kind of sass. They’ll just pitch the card and hit some other unsuspecting dupe.

The government has a Web site set up to educate people on how to protect themselves from identity theft. They urge people to deter, detect and defend. It’s the new stop, drop and roll, for people who live on plastic.

The government also says you shouldn’t put your first name on your checks, just your initials and last name. That way, if someone takes your checkbook, they won’t know your full name or how you sign your checks.

As if anybody checks signatures anymore. Those credit card boxes with plastic pens have conditioned us all to scribble. If you see a signature that’s legible these days, there’s a good chance it’s a fake.

It is also a good idea to avoid writing information in the memo line on checks, especially account numbers. People who process checks can use that information to get your identity.

I now use the memo line to write things like “guess” or “for me to know and you to find out.” It seems a little antagonistic, especially when writing a check to the church, but you do what you have to do.

You can also call “opt out” (888-5OPTOUT) the credit card version of the “Do Not Call List” that lets you stop most of the pre-approved credit card junk mail.

I’m thinking about doing that, too, but that could mean there will be days when I don’t get any mail.

I guess if I got real lonely, I could use the credit card twice in one day.