Some Assembly Required So Follow The Directions. Or Not. Whatever.

There are people who follow directions, and there are those who take a more, shall we say, flexible approach. I am the latter. It’s not that I don’t like following instructions or heeding the advice of others. It’s not that I’m confident in my own abilities to complete the task without advice. It’s simply a combination of busyness and laziness. I’m short on both time and energy, and I just want to get the job done.

Take, for instance, recipes. Most people read the recipe start to finish, make a list of ingredients to buy, and follow the instructions step by step. Me? I skim the list of ingredients and wind up making a cake with evaporated milk instead of condensed milk. Or I stop reading when the recipe tells me to place the casserole in the over, missing the warning to turn the heat down halfway through the cooking process, and wind up with Cement Casserole with Burned Cheese Topping.

Not only to do I f*ck up food on a regular basis, I’m so instructions-averse that I misread the directions for submitting essays to the book you currently hold in your hands and wrote on a completely different topic. I get lost because I can’t read a map and I tell Siri to shut the hell up. I’ve left hair dye on my head for too long and ended up looking more like someone from the Addams family than Cinderella. But nowhere has my inability to read the directions bitten me in the ass more than in my role as parent…

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So begins my essay in the newly released book “But Did You Die?” — the fifth hilarious installment in the New York Times bestselling “I Just Want to Pee Alone” series. “But Did You Die?” is a collection of terrible (but also kind of good) parenting advice from some of the funniest moms and dads on the ‘net. Now y’all know how I feel about parenting advice (i.e. I roll my eyes at unsolicited parenting advice and try not to give advice because what the hell do I know) think of this not so much as “advice” but more of a “let’s all laugh at the ways Christie has effed up as a parent.” Which is super fun.

You can buy the book on Amazon here or get a signed copy here. The book is filled with laugh-out-loud stories from other parents who seriously succeed in setting the bar low. Not only will you laugh your ass off, but you’ll feel so much better about your own parenting. Win-win.