It seems like it was just yesterday that I was a young teenager begging my mom not to come to my kickboxing class, fearing she would do something terribly cringeworthy in front of the older girls from my high school.
She promised me she’d stay on the opposite side of the room. I think her exact words were, “You won’t even know I’m there.”
I really didn’t want her to go. She really wanted to go. I went. She went. I kick-shuffle-shuffled. She kick-shuffle-tumbled into a table and fell to floor, drawing the attention of the entire room. Mortifying.
We’ve all been the teen that’s too cool for their mom, and although my peanut is only three, I’m already dreading the day that I become – dun-dun-duuunn – embarrassing. Doesn’t she know that I’m cool? I mean, I listen to rap music, cream contour my nose, and even occasionally rock the hell out of a crop top.
Nonetheless, my day will come, because all of our days come eventually. We can either acknowledge this fact and take it as a challenge to be the least cool we can possibly be, just to spite the teenage sass, or we can look as desperate for our child’s acceptance as Regina’s mom in Mean Girls.
Not a good look.
As this day looms in the not-so-distant future, I just want to take a moment to note that my future teenager embarrassed me first.
That’s right, I said it. I resorted to the old, “She did it first,” line because, well, she did it first. You hear that threenager? This next part is for you…
Today in the airport, after spending a week holding it all in because we were in my father-in-law’s very compact home, I had to (for lack of better terms) go. The close proximity to family members had prevented me from doing so the ENTIRE TRIP.
Against what should have been better judgement, I took you with me so that you could go potty before the flight. You joined me in the stall where you quickly shouted, “Mommy, you did it! You pooped!”
Chuckles came from the surrounding stalls. I started sweating, my face turned red. You hadn’t the slightest clue that your excited congratulations would force me to poop-shame-walk out of the airport bathroom. Well, it did.
Even before you were old enough to say things capable of making me hide beneath that table my own mother plowed into, you were manipulating my body to do things of the like.
Enter, pregnancy.
Had to sneeze? Peed my pants a little. Laughed too hard? Tinkle tinkle little drops. Slam on the breaks in a car? You guessed it. And nothing was quite as glamorous as having a room full of med students analyze just how dilated my hoo-ha was for hours prior to your birth.
So kid, when you finally approach the age in which you no longer think I walk on water, the age when your friends become the authority of all things trendy, the point in time when you find my utter name to be humiliating, just remember that you did it first.
Remember when you dropped your sippy cup and uttered, “Oh, shit,” under your breath and revealed to the entire church nursery that either your father or I must blurt out this phrase whenever we allow things to slip through our fingers?
You did it first. You started it. And, oh, how I can’t wait to finish it.
ParentCo.
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