Thursday, May 19, 2011

fear of the Mummy

While I’m still wasting my time nursing my hangover on the weekend, or staying up late stalking some Taiwanese actor that I’m obsessed with after watching Autumn Concerto, many friends around me have entered the era of parenthood.

Log in to Facebook and a quarter of the updates are about their babies – photos, status, profile picture, links to videos, websites, amongst others. To be honest, half of the time I’m not quite interested. The other half of the time, I’m glad I get the kids updates without having to physically deal with them all the time. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate kids, I’ve two beautiful nieces at home and I love my friends’ kids especially a handful of them who I’ve spent more time with (they’re mostly not annoying/screaming/crying/demanding kids).

What I can’t deal with are the Mamazillas. You know those mums who cannot stop talking about their children? What’s their favourite food, favourite phrase, how they act when they see their dad coming home from work, or when they see their grandma, grandpa, uncle, aunty, neighbour, etc. Yes, I understand you’re a new mummy, you’re very proud of your children, so am I. Talking about your kids over our entire lunch catch up and expecting me to response like I’m super-duper keen, THAT IS UNFAIR!

Look, we are all excited about your new life, new baby and new experience. I do look forward to hearing your stories but there should be a limit, say… 20 minutes? Anything after that would become annoying, for people like me who isn’t married, have no kids or pets, and at the same time not keen on having either one anytime soon. I could perhaps carry the baby talk with you all day if I am a mother myself but right now I am not. And if you on the other hand find me boring because I can’t give you enthusiastic-enough responses, I suggest you join a mother’s group, or spend more of your time with the other mothers. Really, it’s just like me talking to every f*cking one of you about my work, the girls I trained, how she f*cked things up, the customers I had, our funny conversation, my boss, my colleagues. They are interesting and funny – only if I don’t talk about it for the whole hour over lunch!

It makes me think, where has my friend gone? That interesting, fun-loving and witty woman who I used to hang out with. We enjoyed each other’s company, we had great conversation and we did silly things. I understand we’ve to give up the latter because we are mummy and aunty now. Is that what happens? When you give birth to a child, your child takes your personality away with them? You’ve nothing to talk about besides your offspring? You’ve no slightest interest in the outside world besides your own with your kid? You’ve no interest in knowing about my life although we called it the “catch-up session” instead of “all about my baby session”? I am sure there are more to talk about besides the baby and I am happy to help. We can talk about your cooking or the book that you’re reading? Just something!

Mamazillas are highly capable of scaring your friends away. It makes us reluctant to hang out with you. You know I feel nervous prior to catching up with these people? My heart tells me that they’re my good friends and I should not stop seeing them because of these petty little things but my head tells me that I shouldn’t go get myself tortured.

Not every one of my friends are like this, thank God for that! I do have heaps of sensible friends who are rather normal. I love listening to their baby stories because they don’t overdo it. They talk about other things, ask about me and in fact a few of them were telling me I need to give them more updates on the places I go and people I meet because they are so scared to become one of those mummies who become socially inept, the Mamazillas that I call!

You’re possibly rolling your eyes now and mumbles something like “let’s see what you would become after you have kids”. Yes, you’re probably right, I could be the worst Mamazillas around and the most annoying person with 99 photos of my newborn in my phone and I will make sure you look at every single one of them and make appropriate comments at appropriate times. I might also host a dinner party inviting a handful of my close friends so I could talk about my kids all evening and get different opinions and responses all at one go. But right now, I wholeheartedly pray that I will not be one, and for those who are one now, please take on something new in your life. Read a book, start blogging, watch the news, knit, just do something so we can discuss about it next time!