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Our heroes for today! Ryan "the Ryan" Ryan and Luigi Ryan!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros._(film)

Um, neither the Wiki page for the game, nor the one for the movie, contain the word, "Ryan."

Regarding my original post, I was typing on my phone, 'cause I had to vent, but that didn't lend itself to explaining exactly why I felt this way. Lemme 'splain:

First of all, this dim-bulb of a woman was at least honest enough to admit that prior to the kid's brain injury, she wasn't a very good mother, 'cause she was constantly trying to fix him and his ADHD, thinking that if she did enough journalistic research and data-gathering, she'd somehow solve his learning disabilities and behavior issues. So it's good that she recognizes this and cops to it, but her gleeful description of her own failure as a parent and her assertion that she's seen the light and is now different don't really impress me.

Sometimes in life, when you've done wrong, you should not take that as an opportunity to go on the radio and write books as if you're now the world's cheerful authority on how not to do that same wrong.

The next thing that really bothered me is that the way she was talking about her kid and his skateboarding accident that resulted in the brain injury, I assumed this was some little ten-year-old. Turns out he was sixteen at the time of the accident, and is now college-aged. Yet she speaks of this 6"2, 270 pound, grown man as though he were still her darling little boy. I guess every mom thinks like this to some extent, but when a woman does it to such extremes, that tells me she has an almost incestuous, smothering lack of boundaries.

This is borne out by my next complaint: She speaks at great length about how they sent him away to some really impressive university for a month of freshman's prep, and it turned out he couldn't handle it, due to his ADHD and the lingering effects of his brain injury. She recounts all this with enthusiastic zeal, emphatically explaining that the new her, who is no-longer a bad parent trying to fix her son, understands that his failure in college is not a negative thing, and that it just gave them new, valuable information about where he's at and what he needs and blah, blah, blah.

Which is wonderful, I suppose, but if I was her kid, I would not want my mother writing books and going on talk shows telling the world all about my failures and challenges.

From the radio show's Web site:

In "The Water Giver," Bay Area journalist and author Joan Ryan chronicles her experiences caring for her adolescent son following a near-deadly skateboarding accident. She describes how the process helped her celebrate him.

You know what? You're not supposed to celebrate your child, you crazy bitch, you're supposed to raise him!

If you find any of this at all interesting, feel free to download an mp3 of the interview and judge for yourself whether I'm way off or quite correct:

http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/ … -forum.mp3

Last edited by Bren (2009-10-26 6:24 pm)

Anonymous Delivers! wrote:

I'll clarify. It has EVERYTHING to do with making someone's first name also their surname. Sorry for letting an obtuse post go through.

Some people won't admit to remembering lines from, or simply seeing, Super Mario Brothers (henceforth known as That Italian Plumber Film to avoid bad luck).