Mompetition (and Examples)

Don't you love mompetition [competition between moms]? I've never really been competitive; maybe it's the Only Child thing. I just don't really care what other people are doing and don't have the desire to one-up them.

You know when you're dealing with one of these. They ask you a lot of questions about your life. Not normal questions in a normal manner, but lots of POKING questions, trying to find your weak spots, where can they be BETTER than you?

Here are some examples of mompetition:

"My kid is only 12 and is almost an Eagle Scout." [for those of you non-Scouters, an Eagle Scout rank is HARD to get, takes a while, involves a major service project and is usually earned by an 18th birthday.]

"Yeah, we homeschool using XYZ curriculum, which costs $2,000 per year per kid, and we homeschool for about 8 hours a day. We're on track for Harvard." [WTH? Just put the kids in private school for the same price and go run a small country or something, lady!]

"In the last school fundraiser, we my kid sold $10,000 of wrapping paper and $5,000 of cookies to the diabetic lady down the road ALONE. All together we sold half a mil and SAVED this damn school."

"Yeah, I think we're just going to learn 3 foreign languages this year."

"Wow, you really need a gray hair touch-up! When I get wrinkles like yours I am SO going for Botox. And are your boobs SUPPOSED to hang like that? I'm getting a reconstruction when I can save up." [yes, mompetition is also mom-to-mom combat, not just pitting kids against kids]

"Shoot, I have to go. It's time for 2-year-old Mitzy to go to her gymnastics competition, 5-year-old MooMoo to go to National Cheer Competition and 7-year-old Mark to go to his National LEGO Robotics competition." [it's not all the activities here that bother me; it's the ages of the kids! start 'em early!]

Folks, I'm just happy being me. Maybe that's because I'm almost 42 and I've lived long enough to know what's important and realize it has nothing to do with how much stuff my kid sells, whether or not my kid gets into Yale, how much I weigh, how few wrinkles I have or what I do for work or fun.