by Rhonda Crone

Created on: May 16, 2008

I sat in my daily uniform - an eggplant velor sweat-suit over baby faux-rock- concert tee (today it was the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour) - humming to the tune that echoed from the little green room at the end of the hall, "and that's what an island is!" I was certain the damned purple dinosaur ripped off this particular melody from Jimmy Buffet but how is any freaking toddler gonna know that? Well, guess what, purple dinosaur? The mommies are onto you! "Barney must be exposed for the hack he is!" I thought as I balanced my checkbook at the kitchen counter. $38.52. And it was only Wednesday. I heard clunking and jamming coming from the hall. My two-year-old was changing the video tape herself (this was a newly acquired skill).

And there it was, that voice. I gazed out at my flourishing suburban tomato garden, sipped my decaf green tea and fantasized that I was the demure blond (fake) chick with the dreadful baby-sweet voice that invented those "educational" videos (I knew the voice was blond because the founder gave a personal introduction with each video, in all her blondness): "Hi, I'm [Jamie Lark], founder of the [Baby Genius Company]. Enjoy the show." Every time I heard it, I wanted to puke. "Hi, I'm [Jamie Lark], I'm rich as @&$!. I have Thirty-eight MILLION dollars and fifty-two cents in MY checking account. And MY husband works for ME!"

Why couldn't I have come up with that? It's so simple, yet pure genius. All you need is a video camera and some toys, kids, dead artists and classical music. You can steal from them and nobody cares. This totally pissed me off. I was smart and creative, even blond (fake also). Why didn't I think of it first? Why couldn't I think of anything to make a million dollars? Even a few hundred would help at this point. I was grateful to be able to be home with my own child, but money was getting tight these days. If things didn't look up soon, I'd be forced to resort to a cubical and my daughter to some eighteen year-old moron for eight hours a day in an institutional-like setting where they serve beanie weenies for lunch. My philosophy was, since I went to the trouble (and pain!) to have the kid, the least I could do was raise her, imparting onto her my own dysfunctional personality traits instead of someone else's.

If I had thought of the video idea, the sad thing was, I'd never follow through with it, anyway. I never seemed to finish anything. I hadn't finished my graduate thesis. I couldn't even finish washing dishes I had to

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