Watch Out J-Lo, I’m coming for the Alimony

By Cath Jenkin

So, you’re nearly two now. It seems to have gone far too fast.

Not so long ago, I thought, I was worrying myself stupid about stimulating you within the womb. I had headphones on my belly as often as I could – playing classical and “cultured” music. Workmates of mine were convinced I was mentally challenged. And then I started you on some of my favourites. Being a bit of a hard rocker mommy, you were lulled by the Deftones, Alanis Morissette and a plethora of other, good, all round important life music.

So, then you arrived, to the tune of “New Born” by Muse, played by a DJ at mommy’s favourite haunt, and your godmother Anne played “Minerva” by the Deftones from the moment she knew I was in labour.

And then you grew. And grew. And we played those favourites again. Some of the classical, some nursery rhymes, some of that hard rocking stuff and much to my chagrin, some of your dad’s house music but, also some of his lounge music.

How utterly horrifying then that, at six months, you went crazy over the moon for…

BEYONCE.

The epitome of so much that I cannot stand. Jiggling booty, false hair, grammatically shitty lyrics. You loved it all. You went mad every time Destiny’s Child came on the radio, television, passing car’s sound system.

It was horrible.

And then, you were one. ONE YEAR OLD. One.

And we were paging through a magazine together and you saw a picture of Jennifer Lopez and pointed and excitedly said…

MAMA.

Now, whilst J-Lo may be a beautiful woman, she stands, again for all the things I loathe – she wears fur; she does the bum-shaking thing. She groans instead of sings and again, has grammatically shitty lyrics. And now you think I’m like her, or she’s mama.

Well, baby, if J-Lo’s your mama, I’m gonna be asking her for a cheque soon. And I'll probably use that money to buy more CDs and try, so very hard, to get that R'nB booty shaking stuff out of your head.