OK, they do, but it’s usually like, “I didn’t break that,” or “I’ve got a giraffe in my house,” and not when they’re commenting about your appearance.
I drop my girls off at school this morning. It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Alexander-style day. Sasha loses the quarter we’d told her to put away and is so beside herself that we won’t replace it that she walks into the side-view mirror and gets a nasty welt on her cheek. I spend extra time with her in her classroom to soothe her and explain why she can’t have more money, so when I get to Viv’s class, she’s hysterical that I’m spending so much time with Sasha. The crying has taken on a momentum of its own so that even though she wants to stop she can’t. As I finally make my way to the door, Olivia, the daughter of friends of ours, comes up to me.
“Can I tell you something? Why is your hair so messy?” she asked, truly confused that someone could have neglected their personal grooming so egregiously.
“Because I spent so much time brushing Vivian’s hair this morning. Doesn’t it look nice?” She nodded that it did. “I didn’t have time to do my own.” She just blinked. “It’s always messy. Why?”
This I really couldn’t answer.
In the absence of a shower, in which I wet if not wash my curly hair, it looks like shit–frizzy, the curls unfurled, like Einstein’s eyebrows, although thus far not as gray. I don’t shower in the morning anymore because my husband does and it takes too long if we both do. Someone has to do the girls’ hair, which takes awhile because there’s always, like, frosting or something in it.
Olivia’s comment made me realize that although my hair looks better than when I got out of bed (I tamp it down with water and maybe some product), it’s not passable, even to a five-year-old who would probably think nothing of putting her whole face in a bowl of brownie batter and licking her way out. (OK, I do that, but still.)
Things have sunk to a new low. Time to grow some pride, get up even earlier, take a damn shower and leave the house looking human.
(Einstein = genius so he can pull it off.)
September 12, 2008 at 10:01 am
it really didn’t look that bad. and you could shower in the morning if you wanted to.
September 12, 2008 at 10:06 am
I love my daughter. But we’ll have to have that talk again. She’s famous for her honesty. Like when we’re in the elevator and she asked me why the only other guy in there with us was “so fat.” Or when we were parked at the curb and a friend stuck his head in the car window to say hi and she asked why his teeth were so crooked and brown. He has braces now. At 55 years old. And I’m not making that up. So now doesn’t showering seem so easy? Apologies on behalf of Olivia! We love your hair.
September 12, 2008 at 10:23 am
The first commenter is my husband. Bless him. I will shower in the AM. But “not that bad” was not the look I was going for.
As for Olivia, I should thank her. It was the kick in the ass I needed. And at least she didn’t ask why I was “so fat.”
September 14, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Before leaving the apartment, my nine year old son likes to do bag checks to make sure my purse isn’t open. Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?
September 15, 2008 at 7:49 pm
brown batter divers of the world, unite!
September 17, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Agreed: 5-year-olds DON’T lie. Apparently neither do 3-year-olds. Witness this conversation a 7-months-pregnant friend of mine had with her nephews this weekend (names have been changed to protect the embarrassed):
3-year-old Jack (somewhat incredulously): Aunt Evelyn, you are SOOOO fat!
Aunt Evelyn: Well, you remember that I have a baby in my tummy, right?
Jack: That is a BIG baby.
5-year-old Simon (skeptically): How big is the baby?
Aunt Evelyn: About this big [hands maybe 8 inches apart]
Simon: Your tummy is too big then.
September 18, 2008 at 8:50 pm
I can do better.
My five year old (she’s six now but my emotional scars have yet to heal from this) saw me make a mad dash up to the attic to turn on the fax machine.
Let me explain: I was expecting a very important fax and remembered, mid shower, that the fax machine was not on. I had a small towel around me (it was average size but my ass is big) and the stairs in my 100 yr old house are steep.
As I descended the stairs and ran back passed my daughter to my awaiting shower (which was still on) she said, with excitement and glee “mommy! when you run up the stairs your butt looks like JELLO!”
October 19, 2008 at 3:38 pm
My 2 yr old daughter politely shows me tops she’d rather I wear.
My son’s 3 yr old preschool classmate, on the one rare occasion in recent history when I blow dried my hair, asked me what I had done to my hair. It looked so pretty, he said.
My 4 yr son asks me to brush my carefully tousled wavy/curly/too-lazy-to-wash hair because “It’s too messy, mommy!”
Yeah.