Yes, my 14 year old graduates from 8th grade this coming Wednesday. So in a respite from brief-writing this evening, I asked her what she wanted.
Kid: "You're gonna think I'm a geek"
Me: "Of course I am. You're my kid"
Kid: "I want a cloak."
Me: "Whaaaa...?"
Kid: "An old-fashioney Jane Austen or Christine Daae one."
Me: "Mmmm-kay....no ipod, no new cell phone, no cash....a cloak."
Kid: "Yes, mommy. I'm serious. Let's look on the internet."
So after an hour of shopping, we have ordered a reasonably priced reversible black/burgundy velvet cloak, as well as a Celtic maiden over dress and a billowy, bell sleeved white cotton chemise to go under it.
She is not Gothy, has never been to a Renaissance fair[e], is anything but morose or depressed....no, she just wants to sit in her garret (a la Jo March) on the 3rd floor and write poems, surreptitiously play with her dolls, sneak downstairs to watch Errol Flynn movies, and, as she put it, "enjoy the last summer of my childhood."
Interesting little creature...
8 comments:
more power to her! And who knows? She may want to check out a Renaissance faire now that she'll have something to wear to it. :-D
There's a big Renaissance Faire not far from me in metro Detroit that's a lot of fun. The jousting is cool, and the large tankards of mead go well with the turkey legs.
One thing I found, though, is that the people who dress weird ALL the time, show up at the Faire and tend to fit in with the actors and such. Hard to tell the difference some time.
You're both onto something. Chatted with the beloved, and I think we are going to go to one up in Sterling (?), NY this year. I've been to several (an old college boyfriend was an actor and spent his summers away from the drama dept. at Northwestern performing at them) and they are fun, so long as you avoid the "Society for Creative Anachronism" types...
Hey, some of my best FRIENDS were in the Society for Creative Anachronism... ;-)
SCA is okay to a point...much past about 25 is a bit much. Getting "courted" by creepy middle-aged SCA dudes when I was 20-ish was icky.
Getting "courted" by creepy middle-aged dudes when you're 20-ish is icky. I'll grant you that.
No, my friends may still do it (they're in their early-mid thirties), but since they're married to each other, I tend to doubt there's much creepy courting going on... ;-)
I went on one date with a 42-year-old when I was 26. All I could keep thinking was, "This man is almost as close to my father's age as he is to mine."
Though it was interesting to ask him what it was like to see the moon landing, I was more than a bit put off by the fact that he freely admitted that the reason he didn't date women his own age was because he figured he'd be basically giving up on having kids, and he wanted kids. All I could think at that point was, "So you're dating me for my still-fertile uterus, eh?..."
Poor guy - couldn't win for losing. :-p
Your daughter sounds totally cool...this coming from a totally uncool mom :) She sounds very precocious but still child-like. How endearing!
We have a large Renaissance Festival here too, so if you head to MN for any reason...*crickets*
SwissMiss - thanks - she IS cool, I have to say (being the mom makes me a little biased, but you'll have that), and you're right on the money on the precocious/childlike thing, too. She's rather pretty. She looks like a little supermodel when she dresses up, but like a kindergartener when you sneak in to see if she's asleep and find her all curled up in her VonTrappist long flannel nighties with her Raggedy Ann and perhaps an American Girl surreptitiously stuffed between blankets and pillows. She gets very good grades. She's a teacher's pet, and is placed next to struggling kids in class to help them. She has turned her back on former friends who are nasty to other kids, and thus nasty to her for complaining about it. She dresses modestly, even though it's tempting NOT to when all the girls around her try to imitate Paris Hilton and that ilk.
What she is NOT, however, is "perfect." Her room is a mess. Her laundry situation is routinely despicable. She's bossy. She's lazy. She learned how to cuss like a sailor and forgot how to say "gosh" at the quasi Catholic jr. high, and forgets that I have mamma bat-like sonar hearing.
We let her know there's always room for improvement, and we are all over her when she messes up...yet somehow this makes us uniquely "harsh" and "strict" if you ask her peers and, scarily, their parents. We are hopelessly square for filtering the internet, for saying no to unchaperoned mall trips and movies, no way to "R" movies, and for not giving her a new cell-phone every year with limitless minutes. She has to work a little - babysitting, cleaning, or filing at my office - to earn money to buy or do things she wants. How positively draconian we are.
Yep, so all that makes her a lovely little imperfect nerd, and we like it that way.
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