Scary Playdate

OK don't start bitching about how when you were a kid there were no play dates, all the kids got together at the dirt lot and played ball in perfect harmony until the streetlights came on. You see, that just lets on to everyone that you're from Pangaea and were born in a mud hut sometime before the wheel was invented.

So for better or worse, we now have playdates. I have just dumped a kid from our preferred playdate list because the mother, Helga, the Russian Artist scares the piss out of me. She's a somewhat well known artist with her works on display at prestigious museums. Her haircut is geometric and her clothing is fabulous in a runway/weird/ugly kind of way. This was not a drop-off play date, it was an interrogation; the topic: the right school. This is an issue that starts making urban parents lose sleep sometime during the first trimester of pregnancy.

So Helga, who's daughter Nadia was H.'s classmate at the overpriced preschool, invited us over for two specific purposes: 1. to pump me for information regarding the quality of the public school to which I bravely sent H., and 2. for me to admire her confusing and somehow vulvar sculpture, as well as the many mostly nude portraits of herself. All this in her uber-hip architectural digest home. There is simply no other reason she'd want to associate with me.

Following 2 excruciating afternoons with scary Helga and her demon child Nadia, I know all about her childhood in Russia, her first marriage which produced an unfortunate son who is in his teens and is blamed for every ill suffered by any of the chosen ones in the family. She bitched relentlessly about her mother who appears to be her political prisoner and cooks, cleans and nannys. She blamed her recent miscarriage on the unfortunate son because he startled her by dropping and egg on the floor a week before the event. Some kind of voodoo maybe?

And what did she learn about me? Nothing. I only spoke in response to her prompts, because I was positive that if I spoke out of turn I'd likely be getting water boarded. She INSISTED that I have a cocktail with her, at noon, and since I'm basically a tea totaler (I don't object, I just don't hold my liquor very well) I was slurring and telling lies by 12:30.

SO under the influence I told her that most of the kids were black and from the projects, and that the soccer coach was being investigated for "inappropriate" behavior with the eighth grade girls. Additionally, I mentioned that the metal detector had been malfunctioning lately.
I also told her we were wait-listed by the school at which Nadia had been accepted and we were just DYING to get in (didn't actually apply).

Soon after, I was released to stumble back to my non-architectural digest home. I was sure we hadn't made the cut for a follow-up, but apparently Nadia likes H. and demanded another get together. Sheeeat. Museum date. Luncheon with cocktails. She tore the waiter a new asshole for not putting enough liquor in her drink, which might have been true, maybe he put it all in mine by accident, as I was feeling pretty shit faced.

Then she trashed the other moms from our pre-school. I guess I'll be part of that list now, but at least I've done my bit to safeguard our school from an unsavory element.

Nick Nicety #6: criminal record expunged.