Dear Jessica Brennan,
When you first have kids, you want to be the cool parents, the ones that all the other kids like and their mums and dads wonder how you possibly stay so current and trendy.
As you get older, you start to realize that staying cool is pretty impossible, and you discover something better. Not being cool.
There’s hours of entertainment in this not-cool world that you could never have imagined when you were cool, and they all revolve around watching your kids squirm.
How many times Dear Jessica, have you and I been in a dress shop, with me pulling things off the rack while you’re saying,
“No”.
“No”.
“Oh, just no”.
(Inside I’m giggling).
The best is shoe shopping, I mean let’s face it the first function of a shoe is to be comfortable to walk in, right? Apparently not.
“These?”
“No.”
“These?”
“No.”
“These?”
“No.”
“These?”
“Mum, no, you’re not a nurse!”
Of course another way to make your kids squirm is simply to place the word “the” in front of everything and an “s” on the end. Try it. The Facebooks. The Youtubes. The Snapchats. And if you are in the sandwich generation like I am, make sure that you teach your elderly parents to call things this too. That allows for the cringe to happen sometimes even if you’re not there to witness it.
More ideas…Make sure you innocently ask about things that relate to hair (think: Why do young women want white hair?), fashion (think: torn jeans), tattoos (think: That dove is going to look like a pterodactyl in a few years!) and beards (think, garden gnomes). This will prove you are out of touch and haven’t a clue.
Words are great for embarrassing your offspring too. Make sure you say things like “hook-up” and “Koolio” a lot, and mix up acronyms whenever possible.
LOL? Oh, lots of love to you too sweetie.
BTW? Yes, best to wait.
A few other suggestions. Don’t use your thumbs to text. Poke at the phone with your index finger and make sure the typing sound is activated so that every backspace and re-poke can be heard. Say things like, “There’s something wrong with this stupid thing!” as often as possible.
When the kids are wearing their trousers narrow and just to the ankle, make sure you’re tripping on your wide-legs. When they have large 70s glasses frames, get some really small ones and then tell your kids how you used to have big ones until you realized how ridiculous they look. Make sure your necktie is wide when everyone else is wearing thin, and send lots of emails and leave lots of voicemails because kids love checking those.
The other night Dad came up with something very cool. He was lamenting his lack of activity on (the) Instagram(s) and when I suggested he needed to post more often, he said, “Well I just posted early last month…”
If Dear Reader, you don’t understand why that’s funny, you are well on your way to embarrassing your kids. Well done.
Love,
Mum xo
