I've spent the afternoon shopping with my 10-going-on-14-year-old, who starts middle school on Monday. I need to lie down.
I thought (silly me) I knew a thing or two about how to put an outfit together, but today I found out I am hopelessly Fashion-Impaired. I know this because my daughter tells me so, very loudly, every time I pick something off the rack to test her reaction, which is always "NO."
"I want to be stylish," Rebecca tells me. "Not dumpy." Okey-doke. I see a pair of capris, gray pinstriped with a pink belt. This, I think, would go nicely with the array of pink shirts she has picked out (she loves anything as long as it's in pink), but it turns out I am wrong, wrong, wrong. This time, she doesn't even say no; she sees me pick it up off the rack and holds up her hand as if I am a vampire and she is wielding a crucifix. She turns and walks away, looking at the racks of clothes and pronouncing, "No, no, no, no and, let's see, NO." You'd think she was Anna Wintour, that's how imperious she sounds. But I bet Anna Wintour doesn't wear ratty pink and white sneakers with a t-shirt and polyester pants when she is making her fashion pronouncements. Or any other time, for that matter.
"There is NOTHING here," Rebecca announces a moment later, after having given the juniors department a thorough 30-second assessment.
"Let's keep looking," I suggest, which is greeted by a loud sigh, and if there were a thought bubble above her head, it would read, Why did God curse me with such a dimwit parent? I catch the eye of another mom one aisle over. "I hear nothing," she says, and grins.
"Mom," Rebecca says, speaking distinctly so that even a dumbass like me will understand, "I said I want stylish." Stylish, apparently, means heavily decorated. Solid colors are out of the question; the more sequins, the better. "Good Lord, Rebecca, are you auditioning for the Porter Waggoner Show?" I ask. She turns those beautiful hazel eyes to me and fixes me with a blank look. "What?"she says--which gives me the giggles, because it was a good line, you have to admit, and I just wasted it on the wrong audience; even my fellow mom has moved out of earshot. But it doesn't matter, because Rebecca has been distracted by a pair of leopard-print leggings. "These would go great with my new leopard print top," she says, and I think, Yeah, if you want to look like Eartha Kitt circa 1965, but this time I keep my mouth shut. What do I know? I am just a mom. A mom who still has a finicky six-year-old princess to shop for and who is wondering, at this moment, what it would have been like to have had boys.