There is a conspiracy between the generation of women above mine in our family. Truth be told, they were cooler than my cousins and I were at any stages in our lives. They were beautiful and wild and they were becoming women in the late 1960’s and 70’s. My mom and her sisters wore their hair long and drove convertibles and raised hell all over town. The three sisters had six daughters and our grandparents were still complaining about what they had to endure raising “those girls” by the time our generation was old enough to hear the stories.
This is my 6th birthday party. That’s my mom with the two party horns in her mouth. Do you see the boys looking at her ? Do you see all the little girls mad faces? Yep, that was my childhood. I was the boring kid wrapped up in a towel in a chair who couldn’t hold her breath underwater. I had to watch my mom water ski on the top of the waterskiing pyramid. I was the girl who the boys wanted to come and swim at our pool, because my mom was there and she was fearless and funny and even the room turned to follow her around itself.
We granddaughters really just wanted to be just like them. We wanted to iron our hair and wear tight jeans with high heels and go out dancing. We all wanted boys to chase after us and girls to wish they were us. I wanted to have pool parties with the stereo playing outside and wear a crocheted bikini. We all wanted to be like them.
If we were going to be as cool as our moms and our aunts we were going to need boobies. If we had boobies like them, then we too could command the entire towns attention. If we had boobies like them we could wear a crocheted bikini.
Back then you didn’t go and buy boobies like today. You either had them or you didn’t. You either had them because you were on the heavier side and since boobies are, well, fat or you sold your soul to the devil because you’re a size 2 jeans with a size D cup. These were some mean skinny girls with some giant knockers. I can prove that they worked for the dark side.
Here is my mom at my sister’s birthday party. I have no idea where my sister is.
They worked for the Dark side.
What makes them really evil? We had 250 chickens at “The Farm”.
I am very happy to say that my boobies eventually grew in and my sisters grew in so well she even had to have some taken off. It turns out someone, way back in our family, sold their soul for the boobie gene. Since I didn’t have to pay for my boobies I wonder if I can get a “belly button restoration” before I turn forty? I want to wear a bikini again and after my twins (11.5 pounds) and a 10.5 pound singleton (Peter) turned my bellybutton into a cup holder, I think I deserve it. I also think my mom, (wherever she is) would be smiling and holding up a frozen grasshopper with an umbrella at the sight of her pasty white little girl jumping in the pool in a smokin’ hot crocheted bikini and pinching her nose.
If you enjoyed this oldie read “I may be on the “No Chaperone” list after this one.”
Follow me so I can continue to dredge up all my embarrassing moments. I need an audience when throwing myself under the bus.
Were your parents cooler than you or were you cooler than your terribly embarrassing parents? 😉
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My best friends parents had a suitcase of marijuana in the closet and had a wannabe commune with members of their church called lov-a-lot. They were probably cooler than we were. Then again I went to 3 day rock festivals when I was 14 and hitchhiked across the country, moved to Hollywood and water skied with naked Swedish girls we met by accident in High school. So, I am probably cooler than my daughters. Then again one of my daughters is a folk singer in Berkeley and another is hiking the Appalachian Trail. So they will definitely be cooler than their as yet not born kids.
Ok, you are all probably just cool. I know I am not but luckily the cool folks find me which keeps me in stories. My Mom was on a waterski team and was the top of the pyramid, 1 for her. My son has a “girlfriend” who lives in Sweden and she is the Swedish version of perfect looks with a soccer game to make little boys swoon, check one for my kids. So perhaps “cool” skips a generation. I used to drive to Canada to drink when I was underage but my dad hitchhiked up to Canada and then east to west and down to California and back west to east and then north, home to Michigan. This was all because my mom divorced him. I am just going to say my “nerd” skips a generation. I will be a rockin grandma, right? 😉
my mom was way cooler than me, too. She still is.
There is something to be said about just accepting it, right? When I run into my mom’s old friends I always tell them she would be so disappointed in how boring I am!
I LOVE your blog 🙂 I have nominated you for the Versatile Blogger Award! Please check out this post for more info: http://unfinishedbizness.wordpress.com/2012/04/01/versatile-blogger-award-2/ Congratulations!!
Thank you! So sweet. Going to try and and do it this week.
I’ve always loved my mum’s pics with hot yellow flare trousers. No way a girl would wear them when I was growing up!
I wonder if Victoria will feel the same about me when she grows older…
I think it takes a while for offspring to admit that their parents are actually cool. I love the old pictures of my mom and grandmother. I am going to post a picture of my grandmother before she was a mom soon. Her best friend brought it to her funeral last year and I get all sappy when I look at it. There is so much fire and life and love in their eyes. My grandmother always told me to never get married and never have kids! bahaha! Seriously! I never understood why she would say that until I saw this picture.
Don’t you just want your kids to know who you are so when they are older they realize that you didn’t know what the hell was going on, really. You were doing the best you could and no one has all the answers. Even if the next generation wouldn’t be caught dead in your trousers they were right for you then and you loved them at the time.
The belly button/cup holder comparison is going to have me laughing all day. So true!
I am planning a whole post about my belly button. Seriously. I want to save myself a surgery so I want to make a “Belly Button Patch” fashionable, (make a little money like the Silly Bands guy too.) Either that or invent “belly warmers”. I am afraid I am too late with all of the short shirts I see in the stores recently. Oooooo….what about a tank top Spanx-like flesh colored with a pre-twin/farm-animal-birth belly button printed on it to tuck in under your short shirt?! I am always thinkin’!
Makes me remember when I was woefully certain that boobies were “it” in life–the key to happiness and success. And I never got them. Regardless, I’m happier than I ever dreamed, and that’s my measure of true success.
For most girls it is such an obsession. I find my girlfriends are getting older and it’s no longer new boobies but lifting up boobies. My husband works about 30% of his time at a breast clinic. He claims to be an expert and says my “natural” ones are stellar, (like any good husband.) The joke is though that they are completely not appreciated by him!
He comes home from work after looking at boobies all day and is like, “Put those things away! Work, work, work!” Bahhaha!
Wow, I had no idea there were kids out there who thought their parents were cooler than them. Maybe there is hope for me yet. 🙂
Seriously, they were. My dad made my girlfriends swoon and my mom was a legend in my little hometown.
My mom passed away the week she turned 39. It has been a huge motivator for writing things down. I had my kids older than my mom was when she had kids. I kept thinking if something happened to me my boys wouldn’t even know who I was. They wouldn’t know how much I loved them for being exactly who they were. Then I thought to include stories of “All that makes me…”
I thought about the frustration I have always had with my mom. Suddenly I was a mom and I make mistakes and my boys don’t know why I am not perfect. I also realized my mom never had a chance to fix all of the mistakes she made because she died so unexpectedly. One day our boys will be parents and make mistakes and that’s when I will give them their, “family history”. Hopefully they will realize we are all human doing the best we can do at the time and in the circumstance. That they, me and their grandmother came a long way.
Sorry to hear about your mother. How tragic to die so young. Your children will appreciate you keeping her memory alive.