GRUB ADDICT

How do you do it? you ask. Well, really it is just a matter of not showering for three days until the hair gets this very natural-looking oily sheen to it... Oh wait — you weren’t asking about my hair.

How do I do it? Okay, here goes — first you start buying generic — batteries, tampons, and wine — so you can afford a gym membership. Then, you ensure your kid forgets his lunch box at least twice a week, or you sign up as “room mom,” forget to put oil in the car, and definitely make sure your entire family gets the flu so you never use the gym membership. Next, you’ll want to eat as many chicken nuggets off your kid’s plates as you can and finish off that Ben and Jerry’s to celebrate surviving bedtime.... Oh wait — you weren’t asking about my muffin top.

How do I do it? You mean the triplets-plus-one, don’t you? You want to know how I “do” life with all of these kids so close in age, right? Well, the answer is somewhat complex and unflattering, but basically it boils down to this:

Grubs.

Recently, as I picked my kindergarteners up from school and after they had moshpitted their backpacked selves into their booster seats, they excitedly began to tell me about their day.

“We learned about grubs today, Mommy!” they shouted from the back.

“Grubs?” I asked.

“Yup,” they said.

I knew they were studying caterpillars and the life cycle of the butterfly, but grubs were certainly an interesting angle. However, because the kids attend a school with a 4-H program and agricultural emphasis, I chalked the subject of “grubs” up to my own novice farm knowledge.

“Well, so what did you learn about grubs?” I asked. “Do you feed them to the chickens or something?”

My question was met with horrified silence.

Finally, one of my boys gravely managed to answer, “No, Mom. We don’t feed grubs to chickens because grubs are like poison. Grubs make you sick. They can even... well, they can even kill you.”

I was lost.

“Oh! Oh! The poor little chickens!” my daughter began to wail. It was at this point I noticed via the rearview mirror the big round stickers on their shirts — D.A.R.E. Just Say No... To Drugs.

“Are you talking about drugs?” I went with my Sherlock hunch.

“Yes — grubs, Mom. They are really, really bad for you. And we are (too smart for grubs!”) (They chanted the last part together.)

I had finally merged into the kindergarten freeway of thinking. Grubs were drugs. I struggled briefly over whether or not to correct them, but I found I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Six years ago we had a five-year-old boy living in our home because he knew well the difference between grubs and drugs, not to mention about a dozen other street names, too. He knew what it felt like to wake up and not know when your mom will. He knew how to take a drug test because he’d been peeing in cups for his mom’s boyfriends for years. He was a kindergartener and didn’t just know but heartbreakingly lived the dirty, terrifying, and deep core pain of this word. These kindergarteners of mine with their “grubs” were an entire world apart. Their minds couldn’t even process the word correctly, let alone the concept.

I decided I was okay with this. I decided to let them live in the funny, innocent place of grubs for a while longer.

Incidentally, the answer to the question how do you do it? is ... grubs. I use grubs. Every day. I start off doing my best to teach and protect my children. I start off trying to discern when to speak, when to act, what to say, and what not to say. And then I fail miserably, and I spend my time wiping up the messes — theirs, but mostly my own. It is in this place of failure, of mopping up (some might even call it rock bottom), I turn to grubs.

I say, “God, just send me some grubs, please, will ya?”

Grubs is the ability to see my situation the way God must — with a sense of humor. It is the ability to levitate a bit and see my children and my life from a position of super-invested, incredibly loving observer. It is my life, but I’m not bound up in it. Grubs got me through the sleep deprivation and the terrible two’s. Grubs get me through homework and the witching hour. Grubs, frankly, are why I am not up in a clock tower with a bucket of fried chicken and a high-powered rifle.

Grubs help me to let go of my kids a bit so I can remember to cherish them in their innocence and allow them their naivety. When my kids are teenagers and they say, “Mom. Seriously. Trust me. I can totally get my term paper written on Sunday,” I’ll just smile and reach for the grubs. When my daughter brings home her new boyfriend, Dick, and declares him her “one true love,” you can bet my husband and I will puff and pass.

“Mommy, does Daddy do grubs?” they ask from the back seat.

“Nope,” I say, “Daddy gets grub tested for work.”

“How about you, Mommy? Have you ever done grubs?” And I assure my funny, innocent kindergarteners when it comes to grubs — I have never inhaled.

WET HAIR AND COLDS: BELIEVE GRANDMA (OR LOUIS PASTEUR)

WRITER: FRED HILTON

Question of the day: What do French chemist Louis Pasteur, an early 20th century German scientist, Grandma, and wet hair have in common?

Pasteur and the unnamed German scientist made an unlikely couple, but they both did studies relating to chills and infection, according to The New York Times. In 1878, Pasteur decided to expose a chicken to anthrax and then chill it in a basin of water. The chicken developed the disease and died. Pasteur repeated the experiment with a chicken he fished out of the water after a few hours and warmed in a blanket. That chicken became sick but recovered.

A German scientist studying thousands of soldiers during World War I reported that those stationed in cold, wet trenches for seventy-two hours were four times as likely to develop colds as those kept in their warm, dry barracks.

Quite possibly, somebody’s

Grandma heard about one or both of those studies and formed her famous admonition: “You’ll catch your death of cold if you go outside with that wet hair!”

Pasteur, German scientists, and Grandma notwithstanding, we know better. “Going outside with wet hair may cause your mom to worry, but it won’t cause you to catch a cold or the flu,” we are told on MSN’s Healthy Living Web page. “Instead, these illnesses can only result after exposure to one of the many viruses that have the potential to infect your upper respiratory system.” Ditto, says Discovery Health “Being cold and wet does not cause colds.” Further, the article adds, you won’t catch a cold from being outside without your coat or going to bed with a wet head — even if the air conditioner is running full blast.

Writing for Yahoo!, Dena E. Bolton agrees. “Going outside with wet hair will not cause you to catch a cold. In fact, catching a cold has nothing to do with whether or not your hair is wet. Colds are caused by a virus, not wet heads. There are over 200 cold viruses with rhinovirus being the most prevalent.” Bolton adds that you will get one thing for sure if you go outside on a cold day with wet hair. “It will make you cold and stupid.”

It might not be the brightest thing to do but going outside with wet hair is not going to give you a cold. You would be wise, however, to wrap your wet chicken in a blanket.

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