I’m a good mom. I really am. My daughter eats. I bathe her regularly. I’ve taken her to the zoo and the library in the past year.
But I f*cking hate crafts.
I hate them the way people hate war and poverty.
I hate them the way people hate serial killers.
If I could throw all of Earth’s construction paper into the ocean or burn it in a massive public bonfire, I would.
Someone gave my daughter glitter for her birthday two years ago. I haven’t spoken to that motherf*cker since. That shit is like HPV, it’s everywhere now. Every time I turn around I see a sparkly speck that I missed shining in the light, taunting me, “You didn’t get me, bitch. We’re still here.”
I hate craft kits. I hate the way they make promises to children on their beautifully designed boxes that are impossible to live up to. “I want my paper bag tiger to look like the one THEY made” she cries, looking down in disgust at the piece of utter shit in front of her.
I’m not artistic. I have no eye for design. I have the patience of an 18-month-old. It’s not that I hate doing stuff with my kid, but drawing and glueing pointless crap to other pointless crap is what I send her to school for.
There’s a reason I’m not a teacher. If I were, my entire class of first graders would watch Bubble Guppies and eat popcorn until administration finally fired me.
I’m not a craft mom. I never will be.
One of my ongoing fantasies is to put whoever invented Playdough on trial for crime against humanity. Yesterday I stepped on a dried piece of that hellish salt dough and it almost cut my foot. Oh, and thanks for the 10,000 accessories, guys. I definitely majored in Biology so I could spend my entire adult life picking out pieces of salt rock from a thingamasquisher with a fork.
I don’t like making things. I appreciate already made things from beautiful retail centers such as Target. They sell toys that you don’t have to stitch together, scarves that are ready to wear, and t-shirts with designs already on the front.
If I lived during Little House on the Prairie times my family would walk around in sacks designed to store grain because I do not sew. My children would not have homemade dolls, they would play with blades of grass and dead animals on the floor of our undecorated, sparse log cabin with no drapes. The other families would gawk at us, but you know what, I wouldn’t care.
I’m just an anti-craft girl living in a Pinterest world and I’m ok with that.
Don’t judge me. And please don’t give my kid glitter.
