I was, of course, the last person to find out that I was no longer cool. I stood convinced of my complete and total coolness until my
daughter, who at the age of 10 has now accumulated all the wisdom of the ages, informed me I am no longer gifted with anything even remotely approaching it. And she used all the tact she can muster to break the news to
me. I remember the incident quite well. I had put "Mambo Number Five" on the little tape player in my kitchen and was dancing around while I did dishes. Elizabeth cast one horror-laden look my way, rolled
her eyes and said," "Oooooh-Yuck! Mom, please don't dance!"
"What's wrong with my dancing?" I asked as I executed a pretty smooth hip roll.
"It's, it's...well, it's just so GROSS!"
I stopped dead in my tracks. Gross? My dancing is gross? Little does she know that I happen to be a pretty darn good dancer, even though my dancing style is a bit
reminiscent of the disco era. But that was some pretty cool dancing, if I must say so myself..
I'd get out on the floor in my wooden platform shoes and Farrah Fawcett hair and defy both death and gravity to stun the
entire room with my fancy steps and slick moves. Unlike a friend who recently confessed he'd taken disco-dancing lessons back in the 70's where he was encouraged to practice the "John Travolta one finger in the air
while wearing a white polyester suit maneuver", my dancing talents just came naturally, handed down to me by the same ancestors who also genetically gifted me with the ability to roll my tongue, cross my eyes and
smell dirty diaper at 50 yards.
But I digress. Yes, I was stunned into disbelief when my child, who has spent one entire decade on this earth, which -- as all parents realize -- empowers her to lead the free world,
end all wars and judge the dancing abilities of her elders, pronounced me a total and complete embarrassment when I shake my booty. My husband thought it humorous until she announced he's worse than I am and that,
together, we form a twosome poisonous enough to slaughter her budding social life and leave it gasping on the beaches of preteen angst merely by executing the bump in her presence.
She also objects to, not
necessarily in this order, my singing, speaking to her in the presence of her friends, accompanying her to the store or any other place where she can be seen in public with me, my style of dress, my going to any event
in which she has to identify me as living at the same address and, finally, my breathing the same air on the same planet in the same century.
She does not object to: my spending an entire tank full of gas in order to
secure the loan of a math book because Alberta Einstein has left hers at school, my spending the mortgage payment to purchase her a new pair of athletic shoes, my driving her to the many important social events she
attends, such as sleepovers, where the objective is to drive another mother to commit herself to an institution (actually, I kind of like that one, unless I'm the mother in question) and my slaving all day in order to
keep her room and clothes clean without requiring her to break a sweat.
Yes, I have gone from being wonderful to being gross in her estimation and that would bother me a lot if I were a different sort of person. But
I'm not. As far as I'm concerned, she's given me a marvelous new weapon: all I have to do to keep her in line is threaten to do the hustle in the school cafeteria and she's mine.
And I think that's pretty darn cool.
