Excerpts from "Battle Hymn of the Subway Rat Mother"

** Here are the rules: no sleepovers, no playdates, no computer games, and you will learn one instrument and only one instrument.  The one being played by the homeless guy asleep on the platform.  He sleeps eight hours a day, and if you're not practicing for six of them, you're not getting any of the Snapple backwash left in the bottom of the bottle I found on the tracks.

** I'm using the term "rat mother" loosely.  I know some mice who qualify too.  A few feral cats, and the occasional stray dog.  A pigeon or two.  A family of cockroaches born in Canada.  I'm also using the term "subway" loosely.  If you live along the train tracks, the trolley route, or even an electrified bus line, you qualify.  Public transit comes in all varieties.

** "That's a birthday card?  That birthday card looks like it was run over by a train.  Oh, it was?  Well, you could still have done better.  How about a little glitter, or some Cheetos crumbs?  You couldn't have dipped it in a river of Diet Coke or something?  You disgust me."

** What subway rat parents understand is that nothing is fun unless you get electrocuted doing it.

** I didn't care if she was lactose-intolerant, she was going to be the first rat to the end of the maze, and she was going to eat that cheese.  There's no excuse for coming in second.  Not a dead end, not selective breeding, not the harmful side effects of an experimental medication, and certainly not those stem cells that the researchers keep injecting us with to make us go blind.  I don't know what the point of their ridiculous research is, but if they think there's anything they can do to prevent my children from finishing this maze, they're as crazy as a restaurant owner who doesn't think we're living in his kitchen.

** "All you eat are candy wrappers and McDonald's bags.  Of course you're fat.  Try eating an apple core for once, you bloated rat whore.  I'd call you a piece of garbage, but in this world, that's a compliment."

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[Pablo]

The tiger mother is crazy... This is comical!

[Tim]

Is this a movie or a book? I'm trying to place them...