"What I could find on this specific conversation is basically nothing," reported Jennifer Manlove, a senior research associate at Child Trends, a reliable source of data on children and adolescents.

"I was a friggin' dealer in ninth grade!" this woman remembered incredulously. That year, she recalled, she and a friend would buy a nickel bag of marijuana and smuggle it to her friend's bedroom. Under the bed was a shoebox of candy — also forbidden in her friend's household — and beside that was a second shoebox in which they would store the contraband. "We would roll joints and put them in Sucrets boxes and bring them to school and sell them for a dollar," she said. The point wasn't getting high — she doesn't remember doing that much — or even making money, but the crafts project aspect. "What was really fun was that we got really good at rolling them." She also remembered stealing. She and her friends took some costume jewelry from a department store and sorted through it at a table at Friendly's.

And she would be horrified — horrified! — if her kids did any of these things. She regrets any high school experimentation and doesn't want her children following in her footsteps. This surprised her sister, who doesn't have kids and so doesn't understand the radical change of perspective that comes with parenthood. "She thought I was going to be, like, this really cool parent: When you're ready to try [marijuana], I'll get it for you." Not hardly. It is your children who fully reform you.

The Secret Lives Of Moms [Washington Post]
Maternal Truths: The Online Transcript [Washington Post]

While...simultaneously...trying to get hits for their blogs? Okay, something, whatever. Here's what we know about Steve Almond: he has spent a lot of time bemoaning the merciless, nuance-less unrelenting meanness of the blogosphere. He has spent a lot of time doing that because his editor alerted him to the fact that Gawker had posted a bizarre collection of emails he had written to Oprah. He wrote a book called Candyfreak. Full disclosure: I read Candyfreak because my old literary agent suggested I model my own book proposal on that book. Candyfreak was about candy. My book proposal was about capitalism. It's all the same shit, right? Packaging and cool fonts and satisfactillicious content? Cause we're all just tryin to get the hits? But wait, it can't just be about the hits? I mean, as you yourself wrote, Steve:

By appealing to our most childish impulses — and with the cowardly consent of the left — the right-wing of this country has managed to Gawk the political discourse. This is why matters of policy go uncovered, while gossip and gaffes and cleavage and haircuts and (most of all) emotionally convincing ad hominems determine the outcome of elections. If this country ever hopes to rouse itself from the moral torpor marked by the Bush years, we are going to have to end our addiction to Gawking, and face up to the common crises of state.

Boring Squared [Babble]
Why I'm No Longer A Fan Of Baby Daddy [Babble]

Gregory, a 31-year-old advertising creative who lives in the East Village with his writer wife and 2-year-old daughter. "It's too easy here. Everyone has something, or can get it, all the time." Then he sighs, feeling driven to explain. "This is a terrible, terrible story," he adds, leaning in as though to confess a secret. "Seriously, my friend's wife would divorce him if she ever found out." He tells it anyway.

So anyway, "Gregory" and another guy at his firm were hanging out with their wives and babies at his house when the other guy opens his pocket to reveal a bag of coke. Greg wants some. So they devise a plan to sneak out and do it by going to get takeout at the local Thai restaurant, with a little detour to the Thai restaurant bathroom.

[The boys] were "minutes from a clean getaway," says Gregory, "when our wives started insisting, 'Take the babies! They could use the fresh air!' I put my kid in the stroller, my friend put his son in the baby sling, and we left." When they got to the restaurant, his friend realized it was a pain to undo the contraption or take turns, so they took the babies into the restroom with them. "After I did a line, I fed him one off my fist while he still had his kid in the sling. There was, like, coke dust in the air over this baby's head. Then we picked up the food and took the kids back home."