here’s my question for the Z man: Where are all the cool parents? My husband and I desperately need cool parent friends…but we can’t find them. While I was never a parent in California, I remember feeling very conservative while living there and now that I live in the East..I feel like a freak.
We just need that other couple that are not all about their things or their yards. The couple that can let kids be kids and not hover, the couple that are happy to let the kids play, while the adults enjoy a glass of wine…with out being total tramps! the couple that don’t over manage and over schedule their children’s lives and think public school sucks.
Dear Reader, I will try and help.
This phenomenon is quite a blight on parenting in the US but quite unfamiliar in my home Estonia, where parents continue to smoke cigarettes and stare blankly out at the world in existential way even while their children climb perilous, outdated and rusting jungle jim.
In this country parensts think they must pay close attention always and so are unwittingly bringing up little neurotic praise leeches who can’t function on their own.. Today we have teens who can get 1600 on SAT but not fry egg or clean toilet because they’ve never been trusted with any work.
But I digress. Most of the cool parents go to spawn in Alameda, Ca. This is a small island town near Oakland where you see more hotrods and Betty Page hairdos than Baby Bjorns and Hummer-Strollers with sippie cup holders.
But since you are on East Coast, I suggest this:
Go where cool people are who you wish to meet. Rock climbing gyms, stock car races, naked bowling alleys and the like. And seek out on Craiglist, “wanted: parents who aren’t total dorks for two martini playdates” etc. Seek, and ye shall find says the bible.
In short, when the lame parents call, lie and say you are busy. Or, invite them to a cocktail party, “with Bugs Life Showing On Loop in Den” and see who shows up – these you keep as friends. Good luck- and be the parents you wish to meet!
(Thanks to Katja for aiding me in my confusion on this one…)
great zamboni 