Donna Reed wouldn't...

I am old.  Not necessarily chronologically, but my numbers definitely sound less fresh and dewy as I get closer to this birthday.  I am old as in black and white classics, crinolines and pearls.  Old fashioned.  I want to live in place ad time where things are a little more…classy.

I am old-fashioned and more conservative than I would have imagined in my teens.  I am easily embarrassed and blush furiously when friends launch into private aspects of their lives, marriage, relationships, and body functions.    I'm not offended.  I can giggle and laugh, see the humor, even sometimes join in the conversation, but not without a lobster-red patina. 

This is great fun for my co-workers, most of whom are younger than I am and way more cool than I have ever been, but it also leaves me wondering if I am raising my children to be as ill-fitting as I was as a teenager?    Still, I can only teach what I know and what I know is 1950's culture and values.

Recently I realized that I probably emerged from the womb at age 40 in terms of my social sensibilities.  I spent weeks agonizing over finding the right dress for my upcoming high school reunion and found that what I am drawn to is the fashion of the movies I grew up watching with my mother.  Movies where women wore dresses every minute of the day, vacuumed in pearls, and never broke a sweat.   I love dresses that seem to appear only on fetish sites these days.    

I finally found my perfect dress only to find that it is probably more dress than the occasion calls for.    So could someone please have a cocktail party with 40's jazz so I have a reason to buy this dress?  I NEED it….

Today Miss Five and I had a lesson in being lady-like.  It seems that at the age of five, some things are just not going to go away through sheer modeling or indirect suggestion.    And at this time, as well as all the others that came before it, I ask "Who am I to be teaching this?  What if I'm really all wrong and my poor daughter ends up carrying on my legacy of 'not getting it'?"    What if, for example, retrieving a "wedgie" is actually totally acceptable in the middle of the check-out line, and I'm just the last to know?

Lesson one:  If you are wearing a skirt, criss-cross applesauce may not be your go-to seated position.  Why you ask?  "Everyone can see your undies…."  (Assuming that this was a morning you actually put them on and didn't give your bear an uber-fashionable hat.)"….Yes, yes, I know your undies are really nice and have Dora on them and that your friends love Dora…No, it isn't okay to show them to your friend at daycare even if he is the boy you are going to marry…Why?  Well,…big girls just don't.  Why?....because they cover parts of your body that are more private and not for sharing with everyone…Why isn't an elbow private?...Um….I think…well, I don't know exactly, but for now  the rule is undies cover things that are private and undies are not for everyone to see."

Lesson two:  "When you are sitting in a skirt, maybe try sitting with your legs on one side….okay, nice try, but maybe on one side and your legs together?"  We actually went through a step by step that had my grown-up brain hearing it being broadcast in therapy years later…."Well first, try getting down on your knees"…(OMG, that sounds all wrong)….and then kind of sit on one side and bend your legs…together…bend your legs together on the other side…..What do you do if a bug crawls up your skirt?"…(whatever the heck you have to do to get the bug out of your skirt!  Run!  Flap!  Shake, whatever!)…"Um…I think that won't usually happen, but people will understand if you have to get up quickly."

Lesson three:  "If your hands are messy, wipe them on a napkin and not on your shirt.  Oh, no, we don't wipe them on pants or skirts either.   Socks?  Um, no….Undies?  Even bigger no….Why?  Because the Queen wouldn't do that…..Yes, I'm pretty sure that queens and princesses do not wipe their peanut butter hands on their royal undies."    We have even made up a pseudo-Mary Poppins song that cycles through "We wipe our hands on a napkin, never on a shirt.  A shirt is for a kiddo and a napkin is for dirt."

It seems like every day there is a new layer of reminding to be done and it seems increasingly a miracle to me that children ever go off to school with manners and a lack of ferity.      It seems equally amazing to me that the same child who cannot care less that her hair is an untamed bundle of fuzz; her face has peanut butter from chin to eyebrow; and fights tooth-brushing; is the same child who walks by a rack of fashionable printed bras and coos  "Oooh…..Mama, isn't that pretty?"    

Yes, very fashionable, but please… stop retrieving your undies while standing in the middle of the aisle?