- Snow Day Badge. Discover how parenthood decimates previously fun experiences. Remember when there was no joy more pure than waking up to find school was cancelled by a blizzard? Those carefree days of sledding and staying in your pajamas to watch terrible daytime TV are gone. Now you have heart-attack-inducing snow to shovel, children to entertain, and a boss whose eye roll you can hear over the phone when you tell him you’re using a PTO day because, legally, you can’t leave your children unsupervised.
- Solid Food Warrior Badge. Manage anxiety and trust human development. Nice work. Your child is eating whole baby carrots for lunch and you don’t have 9 and 1 dialed on your phone.
- Whiplash Badge. Acquire the ability to sit with conflicting feelings. During the last game of Little League your son makes his first catch of the season, and you leap to your feet and cheer. But then he looks directly at you and shouts, “Mom, I did it! I caught the fucking ball!” Shame gives pride a swift kick off the bleachers.
- Maintaining Friendships Badge. Honor other people’s lifestyles. You have friends who chose not to have kids. Do not force them to feign interest in any of the following: books or podcasts with the phrase “gentle parenting”, the latest preschool drama related to lice outbreaks, or your child’s poop schedule.
- Phone Hygiene Badge. Make time to edit your Contacts. Check how many people in your phone are listed as someone’s mom. If it’s over seven, plan to get to know more about these women, including their last names. Caution: do the work before you remove designations. Otherwise, you might quickly text your old college roommate, Sasha, “Happy Birthday to T. Hall’s sexiest bitch” before you remember that Kyle from your son’s robotics team has a mom also named Sasha.
- Successful Subliminal Messaging Badge. Hone the art of stealth warfare. You sneak your favorite music into your kids’ subconscious by carefully playing it in the background as often as possible without making it a big deal. When you overhear your son singing Arcade Fire’s “Put Your Money on Me” in the bathroom while he’s getting ready for school, success is achieved.
- 100-Times-You-Didn’t-Lose-Your-Shit Badge. Master emotional bottling. The time you find your favorite Owala bottle filled with curdling milk in the backseat of your car. The time you scrub blue paint out of the brand-new cream-colored rug because you convinced yourself everyone was ready for nice things. The time you overhear your father-in-law explain your kids’ ADHD is caused by your lackadaisical discipline and not his family genetics. Plus the 97 other times you choke down your rage like a spoonful of cinnamon.
- Meals on Wheels Badge. Learn how to use Google Calendar. You didn’t want to crush any burgeoning interests, so you said yes to everything. Now it’s that fateful week in April when soccer, piano, rock climbing, fencing and community theater all overlap and your kids eat every dinner in the car. Curbside pickup makes you tear up with gratitude and food in pouch form is manna sent from heaven.
- Survivalist Badge. Believe you can do hard things. A stomach virus moves through your entire household like fire in an organic mattress store, and you realize who is going to take care of everyone. It isn’t going be your husband, father of your children, oh, fuck no; that dude is passed out oblivious to the puke-sobbing children standing in the doorway. No, you alone will drag your delirious body out of bed to care for and comfort those tiny humans because you brought them into this world and that’s what society expects of you…also you love them and don’t want them to suffer.
- Fun Mom Badge. Accept what you’re willing to risk to stave off an afternoon of boredom. If Park, World, or Zone is in the name and you need to sign an incredibly long waiver with the words “all rights indefinitely” before a bored sixteen-year-old takes your $47.95, then you are officially a Fun-Ass Mom. Now go keep an eye on Splashy Bounce Zone Cadet #9137, but don’t you dare call him Benjamin. He belongs to them now.
Emily Shipman lives in Wisconsin with her husband, two kids, and an empty hamster cage. Her work has appeared in WOW! Women on Writing and Flash Fiction Magazine.