Oh sure, once you’re a parent you expect a lot of things to
change. But one of the things you probably didn’t think about is
the coolness factor.
Oh sure, once you’re a parent you expect a lot of things to change. But one of the things you probably didn’t think about is the coolness factor.
Let me explain.
Way back, it used to be that the definition of “cool” was someone who hung out at the roller rink in a pair of Angel Flight pants, sported a Farrah Fawcett hairdo and could do the Hustle. When I was growing up, the person to aspire to be was someone with big hair who could play the intro to “Stairway to Heaven” on the electric guitar and who drove a jacked-up Camaro. People who never, ever made the “cool list” were the ones who, say, drove station wagons, went to bed before 10:30 and had John Denver albums. Luckily, most people in the world fall somewhere in between.
And it’s not like the standards stay the same. Nooo. In fact, everyone expects them to change over the years. But nothing, NOTHING prepares you for how much they metamorphose the minute you become parents.
One of the first telling signs that things are amiss is that one day you’re driving along in your red convertible mustang, with your child strapped in the car seat behind you, and see a white minivan pull up beside you and think, “Hey, I’ve GOT to have that vehicle!”
And that’s not all.
Once you have kids, being cool, as my friend Barb puts it, is someone who can continue to talk calmly on the portable phone while her 3-year-old pulls out all the food in the refrigerator and runs through the house trying to squirt the cat with the ketchup. And, without a pause in the conversation, chases the child down the hallway and out into the yard, wrestles the ketchup free, puts her child in time out, and cleans off the cat.
The nice thing about being a parent is that there are lots of opportunities to achieve coolness status.
For instance, the other day my friend Julie took her 2-year-old daughter out shopping in public. The day before, she had bought her a set of pink ruffled “big girl” panties with the silly notion of potty training. But instead of wearing them, her daughter preferred to carry them around in her Little Mermaid purse. So, there they’d be, in Neiman Marcus buying a Prada handbag, and her daughter would suddenly take out her panties and start waving them around, shouting, and “Look, my chonies! My chonies!”
And each time it happened, Julie calmly finished her transaction, took her daughter’s hand, and continued on her way, not making eye-contact with the people staring open-mouthed around her. That, my friends, is the epitome of being cool.
And then there’s my friend, Linda. Her whole high school career was a flurry of bad hairstyles and Barry Manilow albums. But NOW she has a brand new metallic blue minivan with a DVD player AND Scotchgarded seats.
Of course we all know that being cool is relative. You can be very cool to your peers, the other parents, but not to your children. If you ask my son, his friend Jimmy’s mom is cool because she lets him stay up past 9 o’clock on weekends. And my daughter thinks her friend Laura’s mom is cool because she French braids her hair. Needless to say, I am a person who sticks to eight o’clock bedtimes and can barely make ponytails.
But that’s OK. I don’t know about you, but I think one of the nice things about being an adult is that you don’t need fancy material objects to be cool anymore. I know exactly who I am: I’m a successful parent with two kids, a practical car, a retirement package and a dental plan. And, oh yeah, a stack of old John Denver albums.
Hey, if that’s not cool, I don’t know what is.
Debbie Farmer is a humorist and a mother holding down the fort in California, and the author of “Don’t Put Lipstick on the Cat.” You can reach her at [email protected].
