Letter From a Nut

In the world of parenting a tween you sometimes have those days.  You know the ones.  The days where their lunchbox gets stolen, the homework mysteriously disappears, the deciding to get out of bed after you have tucked them in twice, and that day when no matter what you say gets you the same snippy remark.  It is that day when you find yourself actually Googling boarding schools!  Yep, see I knew you would understand.

Today has been that day here.  This afternoon and evening I existed in tween mood swing hell.  That land where nothing you say can sooth it and no fight is going to resolve the problem.  So you do what any sane person would do, you walk away.  You walk away in frustration and with the relization that this war is only one sided and you are on the wrong team! 

On nights like these, after the house is blissfully silent, you begin to reflect on the moments that you could have done better.  The situations that could have been resolved in a rational manner.  If I had been dealing with a rational human being that is.  But I wasn't.  I was dealing with the irrationality that can only come from a hormonal tween. 

Now I could be the mother that goes to bed angry, I could drink, I could do any number of destructive things but I'm not.  I refuse to allow his hormones to dictate my mental state; although there are times when that seems like a pretty fivilous notion.  So I decide I need a laugh.  I need to laugh hard and long and wash the cares of middle school down the drain. 

It is nights like these that I pick up an old school favorite.  The book is Letters From a Nut by Todd L. Nancy.  Now, the first thing you should know is that this book was placed in my hands over fifteen years ago now.  I remember the first time I read it and how randomly hilarious it is.  Although I have read the book a thousand times over the years I still laugh.  Here I will copy the description so you can get a better handle on what I mean.

"What if you wrote to the Baseball Hall of Fame offering to donate a full set of Mickey Mantle's toenail clippings? Why, they'd be glad to have 'em--even if you are "a Level 4 bed-wetter." Cooperstown is only one of many institutions terrorized in Letters from a Nut, a collection of crazed correspondence by Ted L. Nancy. The name is a pseudonym, perhaps for Jerry Seinfeld, who wrote the introduction. Seinfeld never comes clean, but the yocks sure sound like his material. And the letters have his prints all over them--who else would write the L.A. Lakers posing as a rabid fan who wears pants with a see-through back end, "for medical reasons"? Whoever wrote it, the book's a real lark. Where else can you meet "Pip, the Mighty Squeak," a man who gambles in a giant shrimp costume, or a corn that looks like Shelley Fabares? Only inside the fevered brain of Ted L. Nancy--whether he's Jerry Seinfeld or not."  -Amazon Description

Yes, it is the book written by a man that writes letters to companies and organizations that then write him back.  That is the basic premise but Todd L. Nancy takes these simple little letters and makes them into a full blown Broadway musical.  Before you know it you have tears running down your face and you're popping online to email a friend the most hilarious message that you have probably already told her a thousand times before.

That is my martini, my vodka, my drug of choice - a good book that lifts the spirit through blatant ridiculousness.  That's what will sustain me through these horrible tween years and the teen years ahead.  Thank God he has since written many more editions!  I think I may just need them.