The Real Hooligans of The Oregon Coast

The Man Who Lives In My House is on a trip to Ireland with his dad.  They are exploring their roots and drinking Guiness.

To pass the time until his return, I packed up my fatpants, the hooligans, some skateboards and we went to the beach with my side of the family for a few days.  We partook of the usual beach family things:  taffy, sand castles, crabbing, crabbiness (Part of the teen hooligan/mom dynamic.  What fun.)

Overall a good time was had.

There were a few minor incidentents to mar our familial bliss.  Like a teeny fistfight.  Only one punch was landed by the fist of the Larger Hooligan onto the nose of the Smaller one.

Unfortunately for the larger Hooligan (who was fed up with having things chucked at him) the Smaller Hooligan has a bit of a trick nose that bleeds quite easily--like sometimes just from a sneeze.  This does not look good when your mother comes downstairs to see what all the yelling is about and finds the younger child bleeding (slightly) into a dishcloth.

Even if you start limping and hollering about how your knee is probably broken from having a toy car thrown at it, you will not garner much sympathy.

Keeping in mind that it takes two to tango, or fight, I confiscated the cell phone AND iPod  belonging to the Larger and Smaller Hooligan, respectively.  They are locked in my glove box and will stay there until The Man Who Lives In My House gets back.  He will be given a heroes welcome, you may be sure.

In the meantime I pointed out that neither Hooligan has spent as much time reading this summer as one would hope.  It is possible that they are becoming illiterate cretins.  This is unthinkable.  Cretins I can accept, but they must be literate.

So they read.  But they got me back by refusing to read anything but the stash of Us and Life & Style magazines that were at the beach house.

They are now veritable fonts of information about celebrity hijacks and scandals.  They have told me all about Miley Cyrus' and Amanda Bynes' stints in Rehab, Madonna's gold teeth, and Christina Aguilara's plastic surgery. They know way too much about the Real Housewives of New Jersey, too.

They also had a few questions: What is rehab?  What does DUI spell?  What is plastic surgery?  Why would you want gold teeth?  What is reality TV?  Why do people watch it?  How can we get a show?

I had to give this all some thought--how do you answer these questions fully, accurately AND appropriately?  I did my best.

So It surprises me to be in the position of recommending utter trash as a fabulous starting point for Cretinous family discussions on long car trips.  Happy trails.