“My friend uses a credit card to do cat eyes with her eyeliner,” she tells me as she’s getting ready for seventh grade picture day.
Huh, I think. I’ve wondered about the elusive cat eye strategy for like a decade—how do they get it so straight?!?—and now my daughter is just casually explaining it to me like everyone knows this. This teen girl thing may be pretty useful. I wonder what else she knows. Make a mental note to bring up contour kits and why people are using something called a “highlighter” but not the kind for studying lines at theatre camp. She might know more.
My life has become one big “Who Wore It Better?” post. My daughter borrows my clothes, and daggone it, she looks incredible in them. All of a sudden I feel like Middle-Aged Barbie and I’m not even mad.
The first time this happened was when I gave her one of my t-shirts. This shirt had never quite fit me, on account of my lopsided feedbags ravaged by her brother during Our Year of Perpetual Nursing. The t-shirt didn’t stand a chance, between the too-small crewneck and the way the design on the front caused an optical illusion that my boobs stretched precisely to my natural waist. It was an illusion, my boobs are fine, MY BOOBS ARE FINE DAMMIT STOP ASKING.
I nonchalantly passed it to my daughter, she threw it on like a freaking movie star, and when I looked at her I realized that’s what it’s supposed to look like. It wasn’t the t-shirt’s fault that it sucked. It was my son’s for sucking so hard for a whole year. My mom boobs were to blame.
Wait, I was trying to write an essay about how lovely it is having a teenager but ended up talking about my ladybags again. This happens a lot. Read more at Coffee+Crumbs
