redundancy breeds contempt

There comes a time in every parent's life when they realize they are no longer needed by their children. Usually this happens sometime between the license to drive and the license to wed. Mine happened somewhere between ages 7 and 8.

I had no idea that I had been made redundant (as the English put it) until we went on a family walk. My son brought up the Death Penalty as his chosen topic of conversation. He and my husband talked at length about this cheery subject until at the end, my husband asks, "So how do you know about the Death Penalty"? Instead of the bastard saying "My loving, intelligent mother", he just hooked a thumb at me as if to say "That old broad". My husband says, "Mom's a wealth of information". And my little bastard rolls his eyes and says "Yeah, but she doesn't know anything about Black Holes". While Little Bastard and Big Bastard launched into a conversation about black holes, space and all things "cool", I was left wondering "What DO I know?" The answer? Nothing that my son cares about.

This morning, I woke up angry. Since the packers have taken 90% of our personal belongings, I'm sleeping on an air mattress in the middle of a very chilly living room. Anyway, I woke up angry and congested only to hear my husband and his loving son going over his homework from the night before. Pa-Leeze! We all know you're bucking for Parent of the Freaking Year, no need to rub it in my allergy-reddened face, all right? Nowadays, my son goes to his dad for everything and I'm left out in the cold. Well, fuck em both. They can have their perfect little life without me. I would say "See how far they get", but apparently they've gotten this far without my help. I know when I'm not wanted. I know when I've been made redundant. This is me, stuffing my personal effects and all the cool shit I don't know into a cardboard box and heading for the elevators for the last time.