The Sweet Potato Queens' Guide To Raising Children for Fun & Profit

by Jill Conner Browne

I love the Sweet Potato Queens, and I've loved all the books so far, but this is the best one. I laughed, a lot! Good thing, because I'm in a funk and really need some laughter!

Quotes I liked: (I wish I could copy the entire book!)

Since the setting is the 60's, sex really wasn't talked about with kids much. People felt that talking about it was permission/encouragement to do it, so instead, kids inferred their own meanings to things. So here is the PQ story:
"Finally our older seesters actually did tell us some words and what they meant-for instance, boobs and twat. But we thought that our clever older seesters had made up these words theirownselves in order to talk in code in front of Stupid Grown-ups. And so we went around saying them all the time-even formed a club- we were the Twat Sisters-and oh, how funny, funny, funny we thought that was because nobody in the world but us (and our big seesters) knew what a twat was, and how clever were we? We even made up little membership cards with our names on them and everything and were just prancing around junior high school talking freely and loudly about our boobs and twats and our little club thinking what a great joke-because nobody knew what it meant but us(and our big seesters). And as it turned out, the principal. When he questioned the Twat club member she explained it wasn't really a club, just a joke based on some silly words that our big seesters had made up and shared with us. Somehow he managed to keep a straight face as he advised her that they were not secret words at all and that pretty much everybody in the world knew eggzackly what they meant. "

(This made me think of how much we thought about our permanent records while in school and how much we were threatened by them...and how little kids are today. Plus kids today probably wouldn't care, they'd just add it all to their myspace and move on!)
"We were informed in the first grade that a file bearing our name had been opened (our Permanent Record), that the information about our comportment would be duly recorded in said file, and that it would follow us all the days of our life. Once something was installed in your Permanent Record-that was it-you could never get it out no matter what. We obviously lived in mortal dread of committing any transgression that could somehow wind up inscribed in our Permanent Record. No telling how many actual felonies were prevented by this threat."

(I remember the exact moment I decided I had had enough and was going home. Kate could be born at a different time.)
"Queen G-Louise had been in labor for two whole days, and after two hours of steady pushing, she propped up and told her labor nurse that she thought she was just gonna go on home and rest awhile-she promised she'd be back tomorrow, first thing, to finish up, but she was done for today."

"Queen Jan was in labor for about twenty-four hours with her first child and her (then) husband stood by and fed her- in Jan's words-'those blankety-blank-blank ice chips they think we need when we're in labor.' Jan clearly was not appreciative of the ice chips nor of her (then) husband's feeding them to her. But she didn't cross the line over into wanting him to die until he left her side to go across the street to have a beer and get himself a big giant corned beef sandwich which he then brought into the room where she lay laboring-even to her very bedside he brought it- where he stood and ate the whole entire thing. It was twenty-three years ago and even divorcing him was not quite enough to quell her fury. The smell of corned beef still makes her want to go to the gun show.

"There are so many things in my life about which I am mildly chagrined, if not out and out ashamed of, things for which I and I alone am completely responsible, and I hope you don't ask me about any of those things. But the fact that I am 54 and climbing is not my fault- ain't nothin' I can do to stop it, 'cept die, and most days I'm not ready to do that."

Note to self: Read her seester's book Southern Fried Divorce by Judy Conner.

"Researchers have done a study on moms. There are two kinds of mothers. We have your dearly demented and overtly overachievers-these would be the Alpha moms. They make their own direct from scratch ...(pg. 71-71 and you get the idea)...Then we have the Beta Moms. We are the ones that the Alpha Moms trust only to bring the paper towels and trash bags to the parties. Beta Moms show up late, running down the halls, flip flops flapping on the floor, breathing hard, sweating, hair in a straggly knot, no makeup, scrub pants, and an oversized T-shirt frantic because we actually forgot this stupid party until we dropped off the kids and overheard one of the Alpha's kids talking about her mom renting a live parrot for the event and perching him in the banyan tree she made out of grocery sacks and twine. Totally freaked out, we roared off in our old Volvo sedan because the party was due to start in twenty minutes and we were ten minutes away from anyplace that sold paper towels and trash bags, which was our only assignment, and we'd forgotten them. Dads were not mentioned in the study, and that right there seems worthy of research to me."

"When you become pregnant, there is a pretty good chance that one day you will be going home from the hospital-having given birth to a baby with a penis. Although, truth be told, for much of the child's life (and nearly all of the subsequent man's) it will, at times, seem that you have given birth to a penis with a very small boy attached. There is absolutely nothing in this world-nor in any worlds that may lie out yonder-that holds for him any comparable levels of fascination-the word 'delight' would not be too strong here- to that which he feels for his own penis. It is truly the center of his universe, and virtually any decision he makes in life can somehow be reduced to happy penis/sad penis. They do make 'em seem like pretty much fun, don't they? What woman doesn't get the concept of penis envy? I mean, once we figure out the deal with them, and they are confusing, are they not? They are so different from anything we have. Doris recalled that the first time she saw her baby brother's tiny Unit, she thought he had two noses. (She was to learn that later in life, like noses, penises often get stuck in other people's business where they don't belong.) Brooke was really po'd about her own potty training experience when she observed that her older brother Blake could actually pee on the trees themselves and did not have to be satisfied with merely watering their roots. Have we not all shared her angst?"

(Note to self: Watch movie Hung)

Nick did this at the Home Depot. Also in the middle of the Memorial Day Parade...and in the Ball Pit at Sea World.
"Never having birthed no boy babies myself, I never endured the difficulty of looking up just in time to witness my three-year-old son shaking off after having successfully completed a satisfying whiz in one of the display toilets at Sears."

"Pint-size Penis People practically all prefer to be perfectly naked most of the time. Little boys just do seem to love to get naked-and I've not met too many-hmmm-make that any---who ever get over it. The big boys are just about as happy to be nekkid by themselves as they are if and when we get nekkid with them.)

"I think I speak for all po-po owners when I say that, yeah, the penni do have some convenience features that we lack, but overall we really wouldn't trade-holding, as we do, that major trump card-the old Multiple Orgasm."

I once put a crayon in my little sister's nose. At my grandma's house, I still remember, it was red. My thoughts were better her nose than mine! Nick put a bead in his...and then snorted with rage, so it was up close by his eyes. I was in a panic. Eventually, though, between me clamping my fingers at the highest point of his nose, and him snorting in rage to escape me, it did finally fly across the room.
"Tammy Linda was driving along with her three year old son, Allen, in that blissfully ignorant state that mothers share-right before they notice in the rearview mirror that their son is shaking his head repeatedly from side to side and they ask him why is he doing that and he tells them it's because he has an eye in his ear-like, duhhh, how could she ask such a stupid question? And so she is then forced to ask yet another one along the lines of ' What do you mean, you have an eye in your ear?' He patiently explains that he found one of those little googly doll eyes and he put it in his ear-again, like detour-what else would one do? And she, just making conversation during the detour to the ER, asks ever Mom-like, "Why did you put it in your ear?" Big duh...because he didn't have any pockets, MOM!" I suppose moms would have an easier time understanding crap like this if they had started life as little boys- but then they'd be trying to hook up the baby's nose to the Shop-Vac, too. So, I guess it's worked out best in the long run with the current setup."

"Mama, Michelle said the B word. Did not. Did too. Michelle said 'Bagina' and I heard her!"
(This makes me laugh, since our word for the Po-Po is China, due to Misty S., who in the 2nd grade told a boy named Merlon very indignantly, "Boys have Peanuts and Girls have Chinas."

"Rules for Governing Sex after Children:
1. The Park is open only when the "Park Manger' (read: wife) gives the All Clear. The All Clear means that all Attractions are up to standard-it does not guarantee that all are, in fact, open. Some Attractions are not and never will be available. (If any Campers are disgruntled over this ruling, they should perhaps consider exploring their own Attractions.)
2. The Attractions have rules. No one may ride unless certain specifications are met. All specifications are set at the total discretion of the Park Manager and are subject to change without notice. Depending on the mood of the Park Manger, some Attractions may be Shows Only, while others may be more interactive and participatory in nature.
3. Personal Park Hopper Passes are available but Campers should expect to pay hefty Fees (covering the cost of paying someone to take care of the children for a week whole all the Park Mangers go off on a va-damn-cation that includes, but is not restricted to shopping, drinking, shopping, lolling in the sun, drinking, and, of course, shopping-funds for all of which will also be included in the fees). Only when the Fees are paid in full will the Personal Park Hopper Pass be valid, and it, like so many things in this life, has an expiration date.
4. Positively NO Early Admission to the Park. All Attractions must be readied before the first guest enters. This requires some pre-Attraction setup- preview, and the occasional practice run of some sort. The Park Manager will not give the All Clear to pen the Park if the rides' wheels have not been properly lubed.
5. The Park is subjective to closing for repairs-either major (plastic surgery) or minor (eating the whole damn cake because it was easier than putting it away.)
In summary: Camper Does Right- Park's Open. Camper Does Bad- Park is Closed. Camper Screws Around- Park is Relocating. I do kinda like thinking of myself as Disney World, don't you?"

"No one was Mentally Ill when I was growing up. You were just crazy."

"My driving time as a youngster was divided up between making sure that my family arrived as quickly as possible at the Poorhouse and qualifying my mother for a padded room."

"It is only now, as the mother of a teenager myownself, who wants to drive, that I can even begin to comprehend what my mother meant by muttering about "the tortures of the damned."

"It is true-that ole saying you've heard- that the decision to have a child is the decision to have your beating heart just out there, walking around free in the world. Free and exposed to every danger ever thought of by a mother and more. But when they learn to drive- then you have your beating heart out there, but it's now riding on top of a four-thousand-pound bomb- if you are lucky, it's wearing a seat belt."

"You just think you worry about your children when they are little and you have an equal or perhaps greater misconception regarding the level of torment that you endure at their hands. Terrible twos? The mother of a teeager will laugh in your very own face- she would/could take on ten or twelve two-year-olds concurrently for the rest of her LIFE and it wouldn't be a very tiny pimple on the very ample ass of motherhood."

"Somewhere around 11 to 13, the eyeballs of children become extremely loose in their sockets, so that just about any disturbance in the air around them-say, a word issuing form, say your mouth- will cause immediate and severe rolling. Time and/or consequences will eventually cause the sockets to tighten up again so that their eyes remain facing forward, but I swear, for about five years, there, my daughter looked like she was from the Village of the Damned- I saw nothing but the backs of her eyeballs, she kept em rolled up so far!" (I had to share this with my niece Kristen since she has been rolling her eyes at her mom (and teachers) since she was about 7. Now she has a valid excuse...a true illness!)

A story of little Krisanne who didn't want to be a clown but a fairy, made me remember Kirsten pretending to be Cinderella while Katie was the Fairly Good Mother.

"The minute you see your baby you grasp the full measure of the human heart's capacity for boundless love and transcendent joy-and the merest glimmer of its potential for being truly and utterly broken. You know that you can bear, believe, hope, and endure all things-for the sake of this little bitty baby on your lap."