Member-only story
To Each Their Own Eyesore
My mom, my kid, and the twelve-foot skeleton from Home Depot
“Mom, I didn’t paint Grammy and Grandpa’s new car.” This spectacular opening was my first clue that my day as the squashed filling in the generational sandwich was about to get real difficult.
Had there been trouble brewing for weeks? There had. Had I been hoping it would blow over? I had. And how was my strategy going? Well, you heard the kid, they just said, they didn’t paint their grandparents’ new car.
It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact beginning of this saga. Certainly the spark was lit when my twelve-year-old (who uses they/them pronouns, and I’ll call them Pippi for this story), learned about and became obsessed with the twelve-foot skeleton from Home Depot, or Skelly, as he is known to his fans.
A sample of everyday dialogue from the Skelly era:
“Hi Pippi, welcome home. How was your day?”
“In the Skelly Facebook group, people have been posting hate letters from their religious neighbors about how they have their Skellies out year-round in different costumes. The neighbors say it’s a godless eyesore. I say, that’s exactly the point.”
“Did you make it to all your classes?”
