So this week, we are sort of bridging the gap from the 1970’s into the 1980’s, and our challenger got his start in a little 70’s television show called The Streets of San Francisco, and then went on to become our favorite film victim of a crazy woman who was fond of ice picks, amongst other things.

Forgive me, since my sentences seem to have “comma-itis” today. Let’s hope it’s a temporary condition.

VERSUS

Decisions, decisions.

So after thirty seconds much careful pondering , I’m going to give it to class factotum, because she was first, and even though she didn’t have the last name, she seemed to know who she was talking about.

Really, though, people, something this frivolous just shouldn’t be so hard for me to figure out, don’t you think?  I only have so many brain cells available for this kind of stuff, and they seem to be decreasing in availability by the day.

Right then. On with today’s picture. To be honest, I was shocked, shocked! When I found out who this young lad is.

Anything that makes you look like a thigh-heavy commando in a skirt spun from nothing more than the morning mist over Niagara Falls.

Sorry, Channing Tatum, you should ditch the closety nudist and get with me.

And what, you may ask, is a PANK, exactly?

A PANK is, according to Savvy Auntie founder Melanie Notkin, someone who is a Professional Aunt No Kids. According to some statistics on Savvy Auntie’s website, 45% of the women in the United States do not have children, for various reasons.

My son happens to have a PANK in his life, and I can say that since Day 1, my sister has been a wonderful and valuable presence in his life. I fully look forward to the days when he feels like “running away” from home and winds up at his Auntie’s house, where she will be ready to either kick the crap out of him or offer a sympathetic ear and some wisdom. It will probably depend on how frantic my phone call is to her after he leaves.

Even though the Munchkin has five aunties, it is the PANK who, since she has no children of her own, has devoted the most time and energy to him. His other aunties are perfectly lovely, but are busy taking care of their own kids, and rightly so. It is the PANK who has a toy room in her home just for him, and a yard full of outdoor kid toys.

And really, a PANK doesn’t have to be related by blood at all. It can just as easily be a co-worker or good friend. I’m thinking the criteria might be if they don’t fall asleep from boredom when you go on and on about your child, if they willingly hang out with them, if they buy them presents “just because,” and most importantly, if they can babysit in a pinch. I kid, I kid.

So let’s hear it for all the fantastic PANKS in our kids’ lives, shall we?

Although I’m guessing that the applicable term for the corresponding male position will never quite take off, will it?

Demetrius Jones is a determined boy who knows what he likes. He likes trucks. He likes HIS truck best of all, and now so do his parents, since it undoubtedly saved his life. His parents are going to be even MORE fond of the locks they’re going to put on on the box they store the batteries in so this doesn’t happen again:

From KayakYak:

Three-year-old Demetrius Jones woke up about 7:00 am Sunday the 13th, snuck out of his grandparents’ trailer, and found his battery-powered toy truck. By the time his family woke up, he was out of sight.
Searchers looked everywhere along the shore and downriver, where they found Demetrius about two hours later. He was twelve kilometres downriver, floating in deep, cold water. His plastic truck had rolled over, but he was still hanging on to it…

What this says to me as a parent is that we can’t just trust in child-resistant latches for trailer doors or tent zippers when camping near water. It takes thinking actively about safety. Take the batteries out of the kid car at night. And hide the keys for the real truck.

Indeed, not every plastic truck and toddler combination is amphibious.

]]>Demetrius Jones is a determined boy who knows what he likes. He likes trucks. He likes HIS truck best of all, and now so do his parents, since it undoubtedly saved his life. His parents are going to be even MORE fond of the locks they’re going to put on on the box they store [...]http://teenymanolo.com/2009/07/15/truck-it/feed/0http://teenymanolo.com/2009/07/15/truck-it/http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teenymanolo/nEBq/~3/mKSQpWIJ0No/Bring the FunFadtasticRetroSchoolSuperfantasticThe Cuteness AboundsGlindaTue, 14 Jul 2009 11:14:08 PDThttp://teenymanolo.com/?p=3920There is a website entitled “We Have Lasers!” and it is a homage to those once-ubiquitous backgrounds in school photos. I think the laser backgrounds were all the rage in the mid-eighties, and their popularity didn’t diminish until the mid-nineties or so.

Sadly, I own no portraits with lasers in the background. I believe they might have been a choice for my senior prom, and I chose a cloud-ish background instead. I know, bo-ring.  Do you have your own laser picture lurking somwhere around your mom’s house?  Submit it and become instantly famous!

Here are some delightful examples of the photos they have over at the site:

How fantastic is this picture?

What’s not to love here?

This one is too awesome for words.

She is seriously rocking those lasers!

I truly heart this one.

Ack! Acid-wash and lasers! My eyes!

via Boing Boing

Frontier Former Editor Says:
July 12th, 2009 at 2:16 am

Pepe, you idiot! First you forget the cherry tomatoes, feta cheese and onion quarters, and now you don’t even brush them with olive oil after you spit them!

Congratulations and imaginary prizes to FFE for what is, I believe, his first win in our illustrious contest. Now, to the virtual presentation of the hypothetical swag: in this case, we’ve chosen the snappily retro Jaxon Rude Boy hat from TheVillageHatShop:

Last week’s poll asked which celebrity mom you’d rather hang out with (based on the small amount of knowledge you have about their real personalities) and the big winner was Jennifer Garner with forty percent of the vote. It was a crowded field, and forty percent is pretty impressive. The next highest vote-getter was Reese Witherspoon with nineteen percent.

Poor Katie Holmes and Sarah Jessica Parker! They got no votes at all, which makes me feel sorry for them. Which is ridiculous because they both are fabulously wealthy, have husbands that seem to love them, and beautiful children. If anything, they should be feeling sorry for me. And they probably do.

Today we’re venturing into more serious territory. There have been alarm bells sounded by some researchers regarding what they call “the boy problem.” They claim that because so much focus has been on girls, boys have been neglected in the past twenty years or so, and the cracks in that strategy are beginning to show. Examples of this being high drop-out rates in school, lower school performance, as well as higher arrest and suicide rates.

*crickets*

Exactly.

Where was I? Well might you ask, even though you were too shy to ask and I had to do it myself (do I have to do everything myself? Right, I’m single. I do. NOW I understand why women get husbands. Wow, the things ya larn in a common blog post parenthetical (although whether parenthetical is a noun or an adjective is not, apparently, one of those things, just FYI)).

I was in the second row of the floor seating to watch the Lipizzaner Stallions travelling show, which is one of the better places on Earth for a horse nut to be except for the front row of the floor seating to watch the Lipizzaner Stallions, especially when Front Row has a great big honkin’ cowboy hat in it obscuring the airs above the ground. Dude, I don’t care if you’re Kenny Chesney, the whole world can tell you’re Bruce Willis bald anyway, and you’re lucky I didn’t have anything more offensive in my handbag than a paperback of Pistol Packin’ Madams: True Stories of Notorious Women of the Old West . Although now that I think of it, I could easily have split your thick skull with it, as it is a weighty tome.

We moved to some empty front-row seats and all was well. Since it was my birthday and all, which is why I had the ticket in the first place, I felt somewhat licensed to squeee; indeed, I felt it a sacred duty to do so, in homage to Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet, that girl in Hidalgo who almost ended up with Viggo, “The Daughter of Sheikh Maktoum al Maktoum” (you’re not allowed to use her personal name, apparently, but she was one of the winningest jockeys in the Middle East, no lie) and all those other horse-crazed girls throughout history (one wonders if they were all so fond of horses when they had to ride sidesaddle…but I digress…). I was, however, too Canadian (in the end, and everywhere else as far as I know) to squeee.

I need not feel ashamed, nor unloyal neither, as an entire stadium of presumably favorably-disposed-towards-the-pretty-horsies people sqeeed not, not one among them, not once. It was no Jonas Brothers Concert, despite the superior beauty of the performers.

Which is really just a very long-winded way of getting to the point that the rather surprising gender balance was as follows:

Horses: 100% stallions. And one of them took the opportunity to prove it, too, but that’s enough of THAT kind of talk.

Riders: Head rider male, subordinate riders female. T’was ever thus, since that double-agent Percheron assassinated Catherine the Great.

Audience: 55% male/45% female.

That’s right. Predominately male, and I’m not just saying that because I will NEVER AS LONG AS I LIVE FORGIVE FRONT-ROW HAT-WEARING DUDE. Is the horse-loving tween girl an endangered species? Most of the females in that audience, my friend and myself aside, were what is colloquially known as “popcorn heads” ie old enough to buy their own perms since shortly after they were invented.

Où sont les cavaliers d’antan? Margeurite Henry, we hardly knew ye!