How Cool I Am vs. How Cool My TWEEN Thinks I Am

Original Illustrations for So Then Stories by Shelly Draven

So then…my grinning tween daughter Chloe says, “Oh, Mom, you’re so aDORable!” (a bit patronizingly, if you ask me)

“What? I am not!” I say. “I’m a ‘hip, cool, with it’ Mom!”

She laughs. “Mom, the very fact that you used those terms means you are anything but those things.”

Lately I feel my tween daughter finds me…archaic.

When I ask her to take a sweater, she rolls her eyes indulgently and smiles, shoving a sweater in her backpack, leaving me with the distinct feeling that it’s merely a pacifying gesture.

When I ask her to call her friend to arrange carpool pickup time, she grins, shakes her head at this old-fashioned notion of “calling,” and fires off a quick text.

When I get excited that she wants to borrow something from my youth that she found buried in my closet, I then realize the outfit I once wore so earnestly is the same outfit she’s planning to wear “ironically!”

When I promote good manners by advising her, “Never say anything that you’d be embarrassed for everyone to see on the front page of the newspaper,” she looks at me blankly – then nods kindly and says, “Oh, you mean don’t say anything you wouldn’t want to pop up on everyone’s Instagram account?”

When we goof around, I often hit her in the face with a pillow and yell “Make-Up!” She always giggles, but recently asked, “By the way, why do you always say that?”

She had no idea that’s what old-time movie directors yelled when they wanted the make-up crew to powder puff the actors’ faces! When I try to explain, she nods soothingly, like “There, there, dear, it’s all right for you to reminisce about the good old days.”

Honestly, she makes me feel positively quaint!

But I’m not sitting here in white gloves and a pillbox hat!

I’m not rocking in a chair covered in a quilt I crocheted myself with the help of seven cats!

I don’t even wear Mom jeans!

Why does she think I’m a sweet old relic?

Maybe I’ll ask her when we go out today.

“Omigod, Mom! Are you wearing a fanny pack?” she asks.

“No, no!” I sputter. “It’s a little fabric pouch for money that you clip to your belt loop!” I display it proudly. “It’s called a ‘Hip Clip!’”

“Oh, Mom,” she says, looping her arm through mine. “You are aDORable!”

(Of course, the tables are soon turned when SHE totally and completely MORTIFIES me in front of Dr. “Fancypants” in this hilarious true tale – CLICK HERE!)

— Darcy Perdu of So Then Stories

Visit So Then Stories for short hilarious true tales about embarrassing kids, exasperating coworkers, vexing relationships, and the ever-perplexing public!  Writer Darcy Perdu has won 3 national humor writing awards this past year!

(Anyone else have a kid making them feel like a relic? What do your kids tease YOU about? But a Hip Clip IS cool, right? Right? Hello?)