Face it: When you're posting all of your kid's used junk up on Craigslist or any other virtual garage sale site, you're probably playing fast and loose with the truth. Items in "fair" condition become "barely used," and that play gym your baby just "loved" has mostly been used as your cat's chill spot. But hey, it's got to go, so you end up becoming a master wordsmith to get those Pack 'N Plays and one-time-use baby tubs out the door.
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Devinney took the opposite tack. She had some junk she needed to offload pronto for a little extra Christmas cash, so when it came time to sell off the things she had purchased for her brother's kids, she decided to lay all her cards out on the table. The result? Viral hilarity.
Devinney's ad is a little long but completely worth the read. It's full of little gems, from her teardown of the old "smoke-free, pet-free" buzzwords:
"Everything was used only part time and is relatively clean, from our smoke free, pet free home. (That's only kind of a lie — my brother used to smoke a ton of pot but as far as I know he only did it in his girlfriend's car)."
And hilarious anecdotes about said brother, including an explanation as to why the car seat base she's selling is only available sans car seat:
"A spare car seat base for a Graco Snugride (Snug Ride?) which, hand to god this is a true story, does not include the actual car seat because aforementioned stoned brother strapped it to the back of his Schwinn cruiser to pick up a watermelon from Harris Teeter..."
She'll even give you the first honest description of a noise-making toy you've likely ever encountered on Craigslist:
"A walk behind toy that has adjustable speed wheels so it doesn't fly off in front of your baby. The annoying musical bit on the front actually isn't as bad as a lot of the toys we've had, but it is removable for when you run out of Xanax."
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No wonder this thing is going viral. It sums motherhood up better than any smarmy blog post about unconditional love, any misattributed quote about hearts walking around outside of bodies and any sanctimonious image-crafted open letter about Target meltdowns.
Motherhood is multifaceted, and that's what Devinney's ad manages to illustrate, all while being genuinely funny. For every mother whose life is genuinely pure fulfillment (and nothing but), outfitted with the entire Land of Nod catalog and an extended family that makes the Cleavers look like the Mansons, there are five of us with stoner brothers and a surplus of used baby crap to jettison.
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Devinney, for her part, clearly wasn't expecting the post to garner as much attention as it has. Despite asking people to not text or call after 8 p.m. (since her sobriety window is only 4.5 hours), she ended up getting phone calls and text messages late into the night and early into the morning from people all around the country.
Not that she's a bad sport about it. Instead, she's opting to channel all of that into a Facebook page called Mommy Misses Day Drinking, which has attracted nearly 10,000 followers in the space of three days and a blog of the same name. Presumably she'll post her musings about motherhood there. We're looking forward to seeing what she comes up with next.