The Intensity of Little Girls
It’s common for my friends, as well as myself, to say about our boys, regardless the age, “They’re so uncomplicated… boys are simple. Really.”
Those of us with girls, regardless the age, “OMG… what the hell was I thinking… this child is possessed… or at the very least right out of her cotton pickin’ mind!” or, ” OMG… what the hell?!??! Was it something I said?! Did I happen to look at her sideways?!?!?! While I was completely occupied in my own thoughts, chopping the GD vegetables?!?”
Look, I know right now is relatively easy. She’s only four… not fourteen, exerting her independence, convincing the world she was, in fact, conceived, gestated and birthed under a rock on some imagined shore of a remote oasis in the middle of the Sahara. “Parents?!? Hell, no… not me… Parents are, like, sooo-oooo not cool…”
But, here’s the deal… I asked her if she might chop with her butterknife, the mushrooms, just a teensy bit larger… rather than the flecks she was reducing my pizza fixin’s to. I’d be dressing my ‘za at breakfast the rate things were moving. Hey! You, there, thinking I should have just sucked it up and let her continue competely masticating my precious fungii…. Uh huh. Yes. That was made abundantly clear the moment my constructive criticism left my lips!!!!!!!
And despite my immediate revelation and my subsequent inadequate attempts to apologize/make amends/back-pedal, the drama… it did ensue:
A look of complete, utter dejection. As though I’d literally sucked all of the air out of her. Slamming knife onto cutting board, leaping from kiddie chair upon which she stood, “I quit this job!”
And falling to her knees, “You hate the way I cut mushrooms…. aaaaaa-nnnnndddd you hate the way I ballet…. aaaaaa-aaannnnnnnd you hate my ballet girl dre-eeeeessssssss….!!!!!!!!!
What the….
And, wailing, “This is not my reeeeee-eeaaaalllll family!!! They just… they just… DROPPED me off here!”
“You don’t love me…. You! Are! The! Worst! Mummy! EVERRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!
Ahem… OK. Lesson learned.
