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My Profile
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone... - 2009-11-05
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9:52 a.m. - 2009-07-05
I don't often get epiphanies in Old Navy, though I did burst into tears once when I realized I had lost enough weight to shop on the women's side of the store instead of miserably settling for whatever men's XXL I could scrounge to fit over my mountainous body, but I had an epiphany at Old Navy the other day and I've been turning it over in my mind ever since. I realized how easy it is to knock someone's self-esteem to the ground without any malice or intent to do so. Wolf and I had gone there to get him some shorts. Summer session starts tomorrow and the child needed some school clothes. He's actually worn out his jeans and it makes more sense to replace those in the fall. Shorts will do for summer session, length won't matter with those if that explosive bamboo-like growth spurt I see lurking in him hits over the summer. Though if he follows the time honored tradition of kids everywhere he'll wait until we've bought 4-5 pairs of spandy new school jeans and then grow a foot and a half taller overnight. Anyhow, we picked out a few pairs of shorts and Wolf was mooching around the t-shirts. He's always on the lookout for ones with a funny quip on the front. However, he got distracted by the muscle shirts and asked if he could have a couple of those instead. I'm no fan of sleeveless shirts of any sort- as clothing a tank top has all the class that a toilet bowl planter has as yard décor- and while muscle shirts aren't quite as bad, I still think flaunting one's armpits is pretty gross. Then, of course, there's the absurdity of my kid with his scrawny pretzel stick arms wearing a muscle shirt. It was on the tip of my tongue to say so when I realized what I was about to do. I was about to unload a big old glurt of self-consciousness and possibly shame on my kid. What a cruddy thing to do! Far as I know Wolf is okay with himself. I mean, hello? My son doesn't see anything wrong with wearing a muscle shirt despite having the physique of a swizzle stick, who am I to barge in and make him feel bad about his skinny arms? To make a mock of him for wanting to wear a muscle shirt when he has no muscles? It was exactly the sort of thing my own mother would have done. She would have laughed herself sick and kept piling on the humiliation until I was ready to crawl away and die of the shame. Right now Wolf is still innocent of the concept of how he feels about himself somehow being tied to how others might see him. He is who he is and he's happy. Something it took me a very, very long time to figure out and apply to my own self, thanks in no small measure to that idiotic shame and miserable self-consciousness pounded into me by my ever lovin' mother. The irony I face in the mirror every day and see the older I get the more I turn into her on the outside is one of those cosmic practical jokes I'm slowly coming to terms with. Thank goodness I've finally figured out how NOT to be like her on the inside.
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