Things Our Kids Know...

So I was invited personally last Thursday to submit a video audition for an upcoming TV show last week and the deadline for submission was this past Wednesday.   I informed the producer that any lingerie store would be at market in NY that weekend and it was going to be tough to get a video done that quick.  (at least the way I envisioned it...)  She allowed me a few extra days (thank you very very much) as I returned home Tuesday night from NY.

So we had two days to gather all the troops and do some shooting.  And I was working.  So we shot footage Friday night and then my cast of characters dropped in throughout Saturday to sneak filming around customers (whom I think thought we were crazy).  At one point, we had eight people in the store who were not customers.  Nick, my buddy police officer who had helped me the prior week with a potential "incident" in the store, came in with his partner to tell me that the man who came into my store and was subsequently arrested, told him that the reason he left "without" incident" was because of a "look" I had given him.

Apparently I had scared HIM.  Which both of my sons responded with "Oh, you must have given him the "look" ".  I am told I have a "look" (which I inherited from my dad) that can scare off the bravest of souls.

I love my customers.  They make me laugh, I make them laugh.  Most days it is a party here in the store.  As it should be according to me.  Life shouldn't be so serious and everyone needs to laugh more.  Life here in the store is like a Sunday dinner with the family, complete with arguments, hooting and hollering, joking, cutting each other up... you get the picture.

So, like most things I have never done before, I don't ask how someone else would do it.  I just come up with my own version of how I think it should go.  So we got some really good footage and headed off to New York for the next 3 days with my 17 year old son.  (My son decided he didn't need to attend the lingerie show with me, even when I said there would be models walking around in their underwear.  I guess it doesn't affect him anymore.  He said he sees enough right in his own home and in my store...

So Wednesday night we start editing the footage.  My son is an expert on audio and film production.  He wants to do this for a living after college.  He's a veritable Cecil B DeMille.  He got very demanding and fussy about the video the further we got into it.  It had to be around 5 minutes long and we had to cut, cut, cut.

As we are trying to finish up Thursday night (I had wanted to finish the night before but it was after midnight and my son actually begged me to go to bed, reminding me he had to get up for school the next day), we are editing the "tool shed" section, which is about dildos and vibrators.  We are arguing about what to leave in and what to cut out of that section, and he says, "I wonder what other kids are doing with their parents right now."

My husband and I busted up.  It never dawned on us that some topics should not be discussed with children.  My older son said the other day that our discussion was bordering on stuff that shouldn't be discussed between parents and kids.  But who makes up those borders?  Obviously, my hubby and I (ok, it's probably just me we're talking about here) aren't aware that these lines of demarcation between appropriate and inappropriate exist and we need our children to remind us.

In my household growing up, the lines were not straight; they were jagged, and most of the time, there were no lines at all.  So my "filter" was never properly installed.  And I would find myself saying things that would shock the crap out of most people.  I was known as the truth sayer and big mouth in my family.  If you wanted to know what was really going on, I would happily provide the details.  So my family had to put a stop to this and they labeled me as crazy.  "Don't listen to her.  She's crazy.  She makes up stories."

I have to say, though, and I will speak for my children here, and say that their lives are much more exciting without my filters.  Nothing really shocks them.  They have done, seen and heard things that most parents would NEVER have allowed their children to see, hear and do.  I told my son that last  night.  I said, stop complaining.  You have led a very interesting life and you aren't even 20 yet. They know it.  They just like to give us crap about how we have horrified them but I know they love it and wouldn' have it any other way.

I WANT their lives and experiences to be broad.  Who says a child can't understand complicated things?  When we first moved to our neighborhood, I joined a book club and during a meeting about a scary book, I divulged that I let my kids watch scary movies and had taken them to haunted houses as young children.  (Ok, maybe I should have gotten the picture that my older son was NOT ready for the haunted house when he did not lift his head out of my shoulder the whole time we were there - I think he was 7.  But he is 24 now and appears to have gotten over that just fine - no damage done.  Besides, I love horror and haunted houses and I had no babysitter so we took him along.)

Anyway, during that first meeting, I got gasps and horror from the other women's faces who thought I was a terrible parent for letting my children watch horror films.  Luckily, my friend told them that my children were probably the most stable children she knew.  But she did ask me please not to put those movies on when her kids were over at our house.....

We took our children to rock concerts and to our own gigs and parties.  When they are tired, they will just fall asleep.  They don't know that they are up past their bedtimes!  So both my boys are very well-adjusted, bright, very well informed guys.  It amazes me  how insightful and smart they are.  They have seen so much and been a part of most of our conversations.  We involved them in everything we have done.  They helped me open the store.  They were not impressed with the deliveries of lingerie at our house before we opened the store.  And the fact that I was going to have a "tool shed" in the store did not shock them at all.  They actually talk to their friends about it.

Our older son asked us one day if we had noticed that there are breasts all over our house - in art and literature.  Oh, yeah!  You stop noticing that maybe we as a family are a bit odd.  But we are a hell of a lot of fun, too!  There is a great painting of some scantily clad women hanging over his piano, which he played every day. 

I can say honestly that my children are two of the coolest, smartest and sassiest guys I have ever met.  We all do things as a family all the time, in work and play.  We laugh hysterically at each other and our lives all the time.  So of course my younger son would be a part of this project of editing a video about the lingerie store and the "toys" in the back.  He is very well-rounded and quite the funny guy.  And very now and then they remind us of our oddities.  And we laugh and continue on on way!