It wasn't until we became mothers that we understood a few things -- like the true meaning of those campy TV commercials from our youth, where "housewives" begged, "Calgon, take me away!" and shrieked at their kids while in the grips of "Excedrin headache No. 22," and like the appeal of "Queen for a Day," the old game show our mothers used to watch while feather dusting the bric-a-brac and waxing the linoleum. "Queen for a Day" was the "Jenny Jones" or "Ricki Lake" of its time, offering women's true-life sob stories as entertainment. The contestants would pour out lurid details of hardscrabble lives and family misfortune and tragedy, and then the woman with the most pathetic story, as chosen by the studio audience (whose reaction was measured by an "applause-o-meter"), would be crowned Queen for a Day, complete with ratty ermine cape and bejeweled scepter, and rewarded with a shiny new kitchen appliance. Yes, it was hideous. But who among us hasn't secretly longed for just one day of queendom, where we can let ourselves whine without guilt, where other people do for us?

What's the lousiest, most absurd day you've ever had as a parent? What's the mishap or incident that, when anybody brings it up now, makes you glare at them and snarl, "Don't go there"? E-mail us, and don't spare the histrionics. Each month, we will select three tales of calamity and woe and put them to a reader vote. And if yours is deemed the baddest Bad Day Story of them all, you will become our Drama Queen for a Day and be treated to a free housecleaning session, courtesy of Merry Maids and Mothers Who Think. (If Merry Maids is not available in your town, other arrangements will be made.)

Submissions must be received at dramaqueen@salonmagazine.com no later than Monday, June 30. Our first three contestants will be unveiled Wednesday, July 2, in Mothers Who Think. So get it off your chest. Go there. We're listening.
June 20, 1997