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The Mathematical Equation for Cool

I am not cool.

I'm okay with this. I know it. I own it. After all, I lived through my own junior high years and I know just how supremely uncool I can be. Can a girl with enormous tinted glasses and a bad spiral perm ever truly rebound?

By the way, I think there is a scientific formula that shows that your cool factor is inversely proportional to how hard you try to be cool. It just happens naturally, like being a 5' 10" supermodel. The universe cannot predict these things, and the harder you work toward it, the faster it slips through your nail-bitten fingers.

Which only goes to prove my point--sometimes (most of the time for me) we just luck into being cool. The planets align so rare, as Olivia Newton John would say, and there's magic in the air. And the uncool mom accidentally buys her son the hot new tennis shoes that "everyone" has.

Apparently, "Zigs" by Reebok are the new thing. I know this because someone told me, which is what happens when you are on the fringes of the cool crowd. Those people just know it; I have to be told.

Anyway, I came home with these shoes--primarily because they were all over the stores and I really didn't have many other options--and my son greeted me with more jubilation that I may ever see out of him ever again over a pair of shoes. "Oh Mother!" he proclaimed. "You are the most wonderful mother in the entire world. Please, let me do the laundry for a week for you. Sit down, let me rub your tired feet. Can I make dinner?"

Okay, perhaps I'm exaggerating. But the point is, this was one happy kid, who generally gives me no more than a shrug when I bring home clothes for him. Fashion isn't a word in his vocabulary. Comfort, however, is. If he could wear athletic pants and t-shirts every day so that his clothing just barely touched him, he would be ecstatic.

So, sometimes we just luck into these things. And since my guy is only 9, I have a better shot of it. There's another universal law that says the closer your child creeps toward being a teenager, the dumber things you will do as their parent. Until right about when the kid hits age 17, when I think parents hit the peak of their stupidity. I wasn't a cool teenager, and even I remember this phase that my parents went through. I'm so glad they're over it now.

A wise woman would have gotten out the video camera (a cool one would be able to use her iphone, but obviously, I don't have one) and recorded that moment for posterity. So that when I hit the peak of my own stupidity, I can play it back for my child and remind him that once--ONCE!--I was really cool.

But by then, he'll look back at these shoes and say, "Aw, mom! I can't believe you made me wear those shoes! How embarassing!" Yes, cool mom points are fleeting, especially for one who quotes Olivia Newton John in her blog.

Anyone know where I can get a spiral perm these days?

A Word is Dead When it is Said, Some Say

End of the year mini-rant:

I realized the other day that words like "veggies" have made their way into the mainstream. It isn't often you hear someone actually utter the full word "vegetables" anymore, have you noticed? Even waitstaff, giving you the rundown on the dinner specials, will call them "veggies." Am I two? Do they come with ranch for dipping?

I saw an interview recently that said even Scarlett Johansson hates the whole ScarJo thing. Maybe JLo thought it was cool back when she was a fly girl, but can we be over this now? Our parents gave us names for a reason. They spent months arguing over just the right moniker for your little toothless self. If you're going to have a nickname, have one that we can all appreciate. Like "Duckie."

We have a generation of people who can't spell, and it isn't because of a rampant illiteracy problem or some No Child Left Behind hullaballoo. U no who u r. Unless you are a shortish, extremely talented gentleman with a purple suit and a penchant for girlfriends with names like Mayte or Vanity, you need to learn to write out entire words. Pls.

Do you see the common theme in my rant? I guess it is because I grew up in the '80s, when we threw in extra words just to be cute--I mean, rad. What-EVAR. Totally awesome. Totally. See? We liked it so much we said it twice. We just had more of everything in the '80s. More hair. More makeup. More synthesizers. Oh wait--scratch that last one. I forgot about Will.i.am.

I was a journalism major way back in the day. I think we are nearly obsolete now. But then, we were taught that USA Today was the enemy--everything was getting fed to us in graphs and bites, no one wanted to read a whole news story anymore, people just wanted the highlights. Now we only want the highlights of the highlights.

Maybe I'm the oddball. I love words, how different people--next door or worlds apart--can string together 26 letters in new ways every time, and come up with something beautiful, or sad, or passionate, or inspiring. I love the way they make you think, make you believe, transport you.

I could go on and on, but I'm way over my 140 characters. So I'm off like a dirty shirt.

Totally.

Five

Today our baby turned five. And yes, I understand that five isn't fifteen and asking for the car keys; honestly, that's a whole other blog, if in fifteen years we haven't all moved on to holographic reading. But still, five--when it's the LAST five-year-old birthday you'll celebrate in your home--is pretty traumatic.

And when he's a younger sibling (translation: he is fully aware of Angry Birds, and knows everything about Star Wars and Harry Potter, where his older brother would have still been building with wooden blocks and not allowed to eat sugar) it is even more upsetting.

Example: "Mommy, FIVE-year-olds don't like Thomas." He said this to me within fifteen minutes of waking up at his new, prime-numbered age. As in, Thomas the Tank Engine, in whose theme we've had not one, but two birthday parties, and even dressed as for one Halloween and a good forty-six random other days during the year? Even though, personally, I'm a little over Thomas and Percy and Gordon and all those emotional engines, I don't know if I'm quite ready for my little guy to be over them.

Especially when, weeks before Halloween he approaches me with this. "Mommy, I want to be a Deatheater for Halloween." If you cannot say the "th" sound, you cannot be a Deatheater for Halloween. And thankfully, someone in Harry Potter licensing land had the smarts to not even make a size small in that particular costume. And to maintain my "good parent" status, let me explain that he only knows what that is from playing the LEGO Harry Potter game on my iPad, which is not wooden blocks but still slightly better than the alternative, I suppose.

So he's growing up. They're growing up. No matter what we'd like to think to the contrary, this is only the most recent of my bittersweet moments in what will be a long list. I'm already stocking up on tissues for his pre-K graduation and trying to figure out how to get my car not to go on autopilot to the preschool I've driven to for eight solid years.

It is a beautiful thing, to watch these little guys grow and learn, and make new connections and spout out amazingly insightful comments. And I wouldn't want either of my guys to stay little forever. But don't we all just want one more day?

Every moment is precious, and I'm looking forward to the next 364 days of Five-dom. Starting with this one--when he says, holding his hands about 15 inches apart, "Maybe five-year-olds like Thomas THIS much."

Thanks for tossing your sappy mom a bone, sweetie.

 

 

 

Tube Tops, Shaun Cassidy and Consequences

Being a grown-up isn't all I thought it was going to be.

I can eat chocolate for every meal. I can stay up as late as I want. I can walk into a liquor store with my head held high and buy anything on the shelves. I can wear whatever I want to and it doesn't have to match. I can put posters of Shaun Cassidy all over the walls.

Except I can't. I mean, I can--but there are consequences. Ew, that's such a dirty word. But it's what keeps (most) grown adults from staying up all night in their Shaun-Cassidy-papered bedrooms drinking Mad Dog and eating chocolate ice cream for dinner, while wearing tube tops and leg warmers. And aren't we thankful for that?

This morning, I was contemplating the pros and cons to being a grown-up, while I was thinking about all the things and people I needed to pray for--a prayer that usually goes much like author Anne Lamott's two most common prayers: Thank you, thank you, thank you, and Help me, help me, help me. Except I would throw in a third--Help them, help them, help them.

All the stuff that our parents shelter us from as kids becomes reality as we shift into adulthood. Today I'm praying for friends with new jobs, and novels they are giving their hearts and souls to, and who are going back to school to find their passions. For new babies, and babies yet unborn. For cancer that is in remission, for cancer that may not be in remission, for the thing that could be cancer but we have our fingers and toes crossed that it isn't. For moving away from friends and family, for moving to the unknown.

What happened to the joy of eating chocolate for every meal? It sneaks up on you, this grown-up stuff. It isn't always fun--but it's meaningful. Once that Hershey bar is gone, it's gone--except for the part where it shows up on your hips about 30 seconds later. But all of these friendships, and relationship crises, and jubilant celebrations--getting to pray for these things is a blessing no matter what the outcome.

It means I'm not alone on this journey, in my tube top and leg warmers. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

 

Forty Smackeroos

A dollar is a dollar, right? My son is learning about money in school, all the ways to add up to a dollar. One hundred pennies, four quarters, ten dimes...you know the routine. He's being taught that money is one of those things that has a finite definition. Except there's more for him to learn--like when the economy stinks or inflation is high and it really isn't worth as much as it used to be.

And then there's another kind of value I've been thinking about--relative value. We might all agree that a dollar is equal to four quarters. But my dollar may be worth more to me than your dollar is to you. That mom over there may shell out handfuls of dollars for her kid to go try to win a rubber duck out of that dumb claw machine, and I may think--what a waste of money! No one ever wins at these things. But then again, I don't know what kind of day she's had, and that may be the best five minutes (okay, three) that she's spent in peace all day long.

Yesterday, I went to Dick's and bought my son a new bat bag for baseball. Because he needed one and the zipper was broken on the old one. But I bought a new backpack-style baseball bag, which was forty smackeroos. I hesitated--but then went ahead and got it because I knew that was the cool new style the other boys had and that he'd like, and he did really need one.

To me, forty dollars was a lot for a bat bag. Then I told my husband I'd coughed up that much for it and he said, "Oh that's not bad at all." We live in different worlds. A bat bag means something different to the two of them than it does to me. However, I did get to be the best mommy in the whole world for about ten seconds, and that has a value of its own, doesn't it?

I also watch The Real Housewives (only when there's nothing else on and I can't find the remote, by the way) and of course for anyone out there who will also admit to watching it, you know a new season of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills has just started. Every time I flip on that show, and it shows the ladies shopping, or pans across a closet twice the size of my bedroom with an entire wall dedicated to Christian Louboutin shoes, it makes me just a little envious--I mean, ill.

But look at their perception of value. Forty dollars is more than I really wanted to spend on a bat bag, and certainly $1500 is more than I care to spend on a pair of shoes. And these ladies have a wall of them. Does a dollar--ten dimes, one hundred pennies--mean the same thing to those girls as it does to me? And who, in turn, can look at my life and say--wow, she spent forty bucks on a bat bag. I could feed my family for a week on that. I send less than that to World Vision to sponsor a child in India for a month.

I guess a dollar isn't just a dollar. Our sense of value is a living thing--it changes, fed by our environment and bred by our upbringing. What was worth a quarter to me as a kid--that rubber duck in the machine--isn't even worth that to me now. In my twenties I would have thought it was a joke that I would have $1500 available to me at all, much less to spend on a washer and dryer. It was a lot more money then, and new appliances just didn't have the appeal they do now. Even if I didn't get the shiny red front loaders. <sigh> 

Every dollar I spend--every moment I spend--needs to be met with a critical eye: What is this worth to me? To the person I'm spending it on? There is value to my money, so sayeth the government (for the moment). And there is value to my time, to my efforts, to my love, even to my thoughts. What am I wasting on things I don't really  need or want?

Forty bucks for a bat bag may be more than I wanted to pay. But it was met with a big grin and true appreciation. And it will likely be used for several years--very practical. But the real value of that bat bag isn't the dollar amount--it means I get to watch my little boy play baseball, and even pitch for the first time this week.

And that of course, is priceless.