It’s come to my attention that today marks the 27th birthday of the US release of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Man, time flies like a 300-frames-per-second arrow through an autumnal forest, huh? One of my fondest childhood memories is of sitting in the movie theater with my neighbor and her mom while those Bayeux Tapestry opening credits unfurled to Michael Kamen’s blood-stirring score. And unlike so many 90’s kids who have since broken their allegiance to RH:POT, I remain a devout fan. (Fun fact: I won the role of Maid Marian in my South Carolina middle school production of Robin Hood because the maid I was understudying for had to back out. Kismet, Kevin, kismet.)

I’m reading a polemic so revolting that I scarcely can choke back the urge to belch. The misguided author attempts to exonerate the craven exercise of clambering aboard any bandwagon carrying a winning sports franchise. Wherever courage and integrity are aspired to and revered—wherever persevering stalwarts steadfastly refuse to abandon their lovable losers– this nauseating practice is righteously denounced, worthy of all the opprobrium that honorable people heap upon it.

I imagine potty training a toddler is super fun for all of us, but I must say, it’s especially enjoyable for mamas like me, whose children are mommy’s girls to the fullest extent of the definition, girls who have unwaveringly decided that daddies are unfit to accompany them to the john for a front row seat of these festivities, the most sacred of moments, which in my experience, go something like this: “Potty! Potty!”

I was born attached to the Catholic Church, with no avenue of escape and little chance of loosening its stranglehold, for my mother was no ordinary woman; she was a Polish woman; neither was she an ordinary Catholic; she was Polish Catholic. As surely as corn dogs harden the arteries, Polish Catholicism, as manifest in women of my mother’s generation,hardens the brain until it becomes impervious to reason.

In my early twenties, I had a Franco-American boyfriend who, despite what his background might suggest, knew very little about the world. Once, he found a childhood picture of me sitting on a black Santa’s lap and almost gave himself an aneurism. I watched him convulse, all thirty two of his little brown teeth exposed, the vein on his temple threatening to pop over a man in a bad wig. A black Santa, the hilarity! I, of course, didn’t think it was weird at all. But then again, no one had a weirder Santa than my family. Our Weird Santa came year round, and he took cramped commercial flights instead of the usual herd of reindeer.