One day, I made the mistake of parking downhill from the grocery store. I learned a big lesson. I certainly won’t do that again. It was not one of my finer moments. I barely lived to tell the tale. At first, I was delighted that the terrain was working with me instead of against me for once. As everyone knows, it is far easier to cruise downhill than to push uphill. I enjoyed the ease of my progress and felt like I’d caught a little break at the grocery store, like finding a two-for-one deal on spaghetti sauce. Unfortunately, my delight didn’t last long. My buggy began building up a head of steam at an alarming rate. It took on a life of its own, gathering speed with every foot like a roller coaster headed down the first hill of a loop-de-loop. I wondered if my buggy was possessed by a demon. Nothing short of a priest or a calf-roping cowboy could have brought that thing back under control. Clearly, it was beyond my skills.
At first, all I felt was a smidgen of doubt about the forward momentum of my cart, but that soon blossomed into downright worry. As it sailed forward, the buggy pulled me along. The momentum shifted. I was no longer driving the food train. It was driving me. I was riding that out-of-control buggy like a runaway horse.
The first thing I tried to do to correct the problem was to hold on with my hands and pull back in a just-about-to-squat-down-on-the-ground position. That should have provided enough drag to stop a barge, but it didn’t even slow the buggy. That’s when I felt the first pangs of actual fear. Almost immediately, I realized I had another problem. I could no longer see over the buggy because I was so busy mock-sitting and pulling back with my arms stiff. I put both feet flat on the ground and began dragging them on the asphalt like I used to do when I was a little girl and I wanted to stop swinging. All that did was scuff up my new Joan and David flats and make me mad as a hornet.
I felt the first wave of panic roll through my body about then. I decided on a people-over-property response to the crisis. Although I could not see a way to protect the cart or its expensive contents, I felt a duty to the safety of grocery-buying citizens around me, so I took drastic action. With both feet, I jumped up on the rack underneath the buggy while still holding on and attempting to steer. My whole weight was on the cart now. It felt like a ride at the fair—the Tilt-A-Whirl, I think. My kids used to love to ride the grocery cart when they thought I wasn’t looking. They’d kick-start it like a skateboard and then glide forward. But I wasn’t having nearly as much fun as they seemed to. Of course, I fear pain much more than they do.
I soon gave up any hope of a dignified way out of the runaway cart scenario. I began yelling at shoppers in my way. “Clear out! Move it, sister! Out of the way! Coming through! Excuse me! Rogue buggy!” I shouted warnings at everyone in my path. I narrowly missed taking out a toddler who was totally fixated on the candy his mom had just unwrapped for him.
I could see a disaster in the making as a little old lady and her walker appeared on my radar at twelve o’clock. It was time for a Hail Mary pass. I tossed the giant pack of toilet paper off the top of my cart out in front as far as I could. I figured if I could just keep the Charmin in between my buggy and the little old lady, she had a chance of making it out of the collision alive. I continued to shout warnings at the top of my lungs. She continued to rummage around in her purse, completely oblivious to her impending doom. I felt like I was riding a meteor headed to earth in one of those disaster movies. At the last minute, I closed my eyes and prayed. I knew it was hopeless. No way was I going to be able to stop the grocery cart until it met an immovable object.
Time slowed. Somewhere in my brain, I wondered if the buggy would lose momentum when it hit the little old lady or whether it would just bump right on over her like a speed hump. I figured my final resting place would be the side of someone’s car. I wondered briefly how much that was going to cost to fix, and if my insurance would pay for it or not. I hoped the car belonged to someone who would be nice about it. I wondered if I had my insurance card in my purse. I also hoped the impact wouldn’t break the bottle of wine in my cart. I felt sure I was going to need it if I lived through the initial impact. Although the whole out-of-control ride lasted less than a minute, I had time to think all of those things. I swear it. Finally, I lowered my head and braced it on my arms like flight attendants tell you to do right before impact in an airplane crash.
That’s when my runaway grocery cart met an immovable object. It wasn’t the little old lady. Hallelujah! It wasn’t an expensive car. Even better! I opened my eyes and looked right into the face of one of my older son’s friends from the football team. He’d spotted my out-of-control buggy from the parking lot and sprinted over to help. What a good boy!
“Hey, Mrs. T! You okay?” he shouted from the spread-eagle position he was holding in front of my cart, which he dragged to a halt with sheer brute strength.
I lifted my head. “When I get home, I’m going to bake you something delicious,” I told the boy.
“Excellent! I like your pound cake a lot,” he hinted.
“You got it,” I said.
He walked away laughing and texting someone on his cell phone. There was no question that story was going to be all over town by nightfall.
Feeding a houseful of teenagers and their friends is a lot of work. It’s shockingly expensive. Sometimes, it’s dangerous. Just loading up all the bottles of Gatorade and water to feed the football team a single meal is a recipe for back pain.
Once you give birth to children, you’re obligated to feed them, you know, no matter how exhausting and expensive it is. I always say that the reason all of these children keep hanging around our house is because we continue feeding them. It’s like feeding any wild animals. They’ll keep coming back for more.
On the bright side, as long as teenagers show up to eat, I know where they are, and that is a recipe guaranteed to make me happy.
THINGS TEENS SAY THAT ENRAGE THE COOK
1.“I like it better when we eat out.”
2.“I forgot to tell you I have to eat with the team tonight.”
3.“Are we having anything good for lunch?”
4.“I’m not hungry. I just ate with my friends.”
5.“We’re always out of ice cream!”
6.“Can I just have dessert?”
7.“Maybe I’ll try some later.”
8.“What is this supposed to taste like?”
9.“Can I be excused? I made other plans.”
10.“Can I have something else instead?”
11.“So-and-so’s mom makes this better.”
TEENS ON THE LOOSE
Where Are You
Going Dressed
Like That?
It all started with the red-glitter shoes from Target. My daughter was three years old, and she was obsessed with Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. Recognizing a good thing, Target raked in the bucks selling Dorothy shoes to little girls. They were charming. Those shoes would tempt the tootsies of any female with a pulse. If they came in sizes big enough for me, and I could think of a single place I could wear red-glitter shoes without getting myself talked about, I’d have bought a pair myself. I wish I’d owned stock in Target when it first began selling those shoes. They flew off the shelves. Every little girl in America wanted a pair. My daughter loved them more than anything else in her wardrobe. As her feet grew, I combed the stores for bigger and bigger sizes. In the attic, I still have the first pair she wore. Because she loved the gritty sound they made when she rubbed her feet together, the sides are bald and shiny.
In our family, my daughter’s Dorothy shoes represent our clothing Fort Sumter—the first skirmish in a long clothing war that is still being waged today. It was a sign of things to come. If you’ve never argued with a three-year-old about whether or not she can wear Dorothy shoes to church, you have no idea how formidable an adversary a baby girl can be. Think about trying to pull a fast one on Margaret Thatcher. It can’t be done. Little girls know how to dig in. They can outwait you. They are hard to embarrass, and they do not appreciate the nuanc
es of compromise.
I was unprepared for fashion controversy. Since my older children are boys, a keen interest in clothing was new to our house. When they were little, my boys could not have cared less what they put on their bodies as long as it was comfortable and went on fast so that they could get outside to play as soon as possible. I am sorry to say that their indifference to fashion ended in high school when they both discovered their inner clotheshorse. From then on, those boys lusted after expensive sunglasses, brand-name shirts, cashmere sweaters, silk ties, and hand-sewn moccasins. In the South where I live, young men’s clothing comes with dry-cleaning bills from hell or hours of starching and ironing. It’s hot down here. Boys sweat. You do the math.
My daughter’s first fashion statement was simple. She wanted to wear her Dorothy shoes every single day, no matter what. If we were headed to the pool, she coordinated her swimwear with the Dorothy shoes. She was convinced she looked fabulous. Nothing I said changed her mind in the slightest. Every day, the shoe selection was a given. The only question became, “Do I look more beautiful in this dress, Mommy, or that dress?”
Don’t you love the self-confidence of a little girl who can ask that question with a totally straight face? I wish girls kept the confidence they have as toddlers all the way though middle school and high school. That would sure come in handy when mean girls tear them apart. How do girls go from thinking everything they try on makes them look beautiful to doubting that they look pretty in anything? It just about breaks my heart.
If my daughter wore her Cinderella nightgown, she didn’t need glass slippers. In her opinion, the red-glitter shoes were bound to look good. Shorts, dresses, pajamas, tutus, an occasional tiara, red-glitter shoes, and … nothing else. Bare bum. Naked as the day she was born. This fashion statement was confined to our house. I was a real stickler about that.
I tried to be understanding. I like to wear what I think makes me look my best; why wouldn’t my daughter? Most of the time, it didn’t matter one bit if she wore her Dorothy shoes wherever we were going. We rarely go anywhere exciting. She had cute regular clothes. I made sure that I purchased only choices that I could live with, which gave her an illusion of control. She got to pick out what she wanted to wear each day. However, since I’d approved all the choices, she couldn’t get too far off the reservation. She had a penchant for beads, glitter, and jewel-encrusted trim—an overwhelmingly bedazzling fashion statement that was more appropriate for a retiree in Miami than a little girl.
One problem I never anticipated: having to enforce the selection of seasonally appropriate attire. If it’s cold outside, you’d think kids would know instinctively that they can’t wear summer clothes, right? If it’s a hundred degrees in the shade, you’d think my daughter wouldn’t dream of sticking her feet in fur-lined UGG boots, correct? You’d be wrong. Kids don’t care about minor weather-related details. They don’t care if it’s raining so hard there’s a flash-flood alert. If they have new suede boots, they will still want to wear them to school. Teenagers, girls especially, want to wear what they want to wear when they want to wear it. They expect their favorite outfits to be clean, pressed, and ready to go at all times. They expect five-star valet service, and they never tip. As you might expect, this causes some tension on the home front.
You can’t get away with dropping off your kid at school when it’s seventeen degrees outside and she has chosen to wear shorts, flip-flops, and a halter top. First of all, there is the little matter of frostbite. Second, it takes just one phone call to stir things up at DHR. Third, it’s horribly embarrassing. I learned to remove the off-season clothing options from my daughter’s closet to avoid the beachwear-in-January discussion altogether.
The best thing about little girls and fashion is that they generally look adorable no matter what they wear—with one big exception. Children should never be dressed up like miniature adults unless it’s Halloween, when countless princesses and Miss Americas pop up on every street corner. When I see little girls draped in hoochie-mama tank tops, fanny-hugging leggings, and four-inch heels, I immediately judge the parents guilty of something felonious. Like mother, like daughter, I always say. Here’s a memo to those of you who missed this news flash: little girls should not look as if they are dressed by Whores “R” Us. Sexy is not a word you want bandied about when describing your kid’s sense of style. It’s creepy, dangerous, and tasteless. And while I’m on this soapbox, let me go ahead and say that little girls don’t need makeup either. Their cheeks are rosy. Their lips are perfectly formed cherub’s bows, and they have no lines or wrinkles. Even if their cheeks are sallow, their lips are barely visible, and they are pale as ghosts, they still don’t need makeup. This is the only time in their whole lives when it really doesn’t matter what they look like. When I see a twelve-year-old girl made up to look thirty-five, I immediately suspect that an aging-beauty-queen mama is trying to relive some unfulfilled dreams of her own. That is just icky.
When I see a teenage girl dressed like a ho, I think to myself, That’s mighty tacky. If someone I like to gossip with is sitting next to me, I say out loud, “That’s mighty tacky.” I assume the girl has clueless or absentee parents. If you allow your teenage daughter to leave your house dressed like a ho without throwing yourself across the threshold to prevent it, you’re not doing your job. In between the professional escort look and a full burka is a lot of room for personal expression. There has to be one outfit that you and your teenager can agree on. I know it’s hard. I feel your pain. But that doesn’t give you any excuse to bow out of the conversation. Pick your battles carefully. Remember, you’re out to win the war, not every battle. But when you have to, get in there and fight! Your daughter will thank you for it one day. (You may have to wait a while. Parenting is all about delayed gratification and long-term investment.)
When my daughter was an infant, I suspect she deliberately spit up sweet potatoes or green peas on any outfit she found distasteful so I would have to change her before taking her out in public. That’s a fairly sophisticated ploy for a non-walking person. Nowadays, she rolls her eyes, stomps around, and slams her bedroom door to make her point. I am regularly unmoved by such displays. This is not my first fashion show.
We had our first real difference of fashion opinion one Easter Sunday morning when my daughter was still immersed in her love affair with Dorothy shoes. She thought the $7.99 red-glitter shoes looked perfect with the hand-sewn, French-smocked dress with exquisite lace that took three months for nuns in a Greek convent to make and cost me half the month’s grocery budget to buy and two hours to iron. I heartily disagreed. Rock met hard place. Mountain met deep blue sea. She wasn’t budging. Neither was I.
“I want to wear my Dorothy shoes!” my daughter demanded loudly and theatrically. She was Evita Perón standing on a balcony, appealing to the masses. Her feet were spread wide. Her hands were on her hips. She was not giving in without a fight. She was sugared-up with candy from her Easter basket and ready to rumble.
“You know you can’t wear them to church, sweetie. They don’t match your dress. You can wear them when you get home,” I explained. I wanted her to know the decision was non-negotiable but wouldn’t last forever. It isn’t wise to give a three-year-old much wiggle room in a standoff situation.
“But I want to wear them to church. They do too match! They match everything!” she exclaimed, gesturing dramatically to her wardrobe door as if to emphasize the importance of red-glitter shoes to the fashion industry as a whole.
I was through discussing. However, I sure didn’t want tensions between North and South Korea to erupt into an all-out shooting war on Easter morning. I had other fish to fry and less than an hour to get everyone to church on time.
“How about if we take them with us in your bag? You can’t wear them, but you can keep them with you.”
“Nobody will be able to see them in my bag!” she wailed, as if I was somehow confused as to the purpose of shoes in general. She was clearly unwilling t
o be appeased.
“True,” I said, “but you’ll know they’re there, and you’ll have them ready to wear after the service is over. You can put them on in the car.”
My daughter paused to consider her options. I continued wiping down the kitchen counter and let her. At one point, I saw her lips begin to jut out in a pout, and I knew she was contemplating throwing a full-scale tantrum, something absolutely not allowed in our household. She balled up her fists, opened her mouth, and took a deep gulp of air like she was preparing to let loose with a blood-curdling scream. I paused with the sponge and made eye contact with her. Not a flicker of a smile crossed my face. I did not utter a single word. I watched her face as she made her choice. She whirled around and stomped back to her room to change shoes.
“Wise decision,” I said to my daughter’s three-year-old back.
I repeat: you can’t argue with toddlers. You have to outsmart them. If you can’t do that, you’re not wily enough for the job. The same thing is true for teenagers. If you have kids and no backbone, I suggest you buck up fast. Kids can sense weakness from their bassinets. They can smell it on your breath like peanut M&Ms. They know instinctively how to weed you out from the herd and take you down.
Tantrums never worked at our house. I never rewarded a tantrum in any way, even if it was over something the kid was going to get anyway. I don’t care if the kid was screaming for a vitamin. If a tantrum was involved, nothing would be forthcoming. Period. I’m convinced this is the reason my kids never went through the tantrum stage. They knew instinctively that it would be a waste of time. My parenting policy is to not give in to the demands of terrorists. I know that if I do, it will come back to bite me on my fat fanny at the most inconvenient moment.
One of my kids’ friends tested this policy at our house one afternoon.
I've Had It Up to Here with Teenagers Page 9
